Jeff Jarrett motion for WZ Hall of Fame

[Trill Co$by]

First of all, I realize that the moderators said that they weren't listing current TNA competitors because they didn't feel that they were worthy of the HOF prestige, but they forgot about one person... The King of the Mountain himself, Jeff Jarrett. And why do I think he should be in the hall of fame?

Because I 100% honestly believe that if you're going to add Brian Pillman, then you damn sure need to add Jeff Jarrett. Make no mistake about it, whether you love him or hate him, Jeff Jarrett has been a work horse in professional wrestling.

In the 90s, he was given a crappy gimmick by the WWF where he was a country singer who toted around a guitar and alongside him came the Road Dogg Jesse James. Jeff Jarrett made it clear that he was going to be a legit player as he battled his way up the ranks and won his first Intercontinental Championship and feuding with likes of Razor Ramon, Diesel, Shawn Michaels, and Bob Holly to name a few before being released and went to the World Championship Wrestling.

It was there when Jarrett would somewhat shed previously mentioned gimmick and prove to be a legit bad ass in the ring and a free agent between the Four Horsemen and the nWo before beating Benoit to become a new Horsemen. Capturing the WCW United States title where he would go into rivalries with Benoit and Dean Malenko, putting on 100% great technical matches with the two before once again being released and sent to the World Wrestling Federation.

In his second run, it was there where he would become a big time success in the wrestling world as he began to feud with the likes of Owen Hart, Barry Windham, The Undertaker, Degeneration X (putting the likes of X-Pac and Road Dogg on the map), and even the weird one known as Al Snow. Jarrett would once again gain his IC title along with capturing the tag team titles with the legendary Owen Hart. Jarrett would lead into even more feuds with the talented athletes such as Ken Shamrock, D-Lo Brown, Mark Henry, Chyna (again, putting her on the map), and even becoming the first big rivalry for recently retired Edge.

Jarrett, in his second WWF return IC title reign would begin to rivalry with the innovator of the Attitude Era, Stone Cold Steve Austin, before contractual disputes and holding the WWF IC title hostage for a check caused Jarrett to once again split from the WWF and head back to the Hogan and Flair dominated WCW.

It was in the WCW when Jarrett would finally rise his way up the ranks and become the United States champion once more before uniting with Bret Hart and the reigning WCW tag champions the Outlaws Hall and Nash to reform the nWo, calling themselves nWo 2000. It was during this time when Jarrett would have a wrestler vs. management rivalry against Terry Funk where he would face such legends as George Steel, Tito Santana, and Jimmy Snuka in one night... winning each match successfully. However, during his match with Snuka he was stripped of the US title due to a concussion he suffered. It wasn't long however as Nash gained management position and it was there when Nash gave Jarrett his title back.

During this time, Jarrett and Nash began to butt heads while Double J was on the quest to become the first US and WHC simultaneously and seeking a seat in management. With nWo 2000 ending, Double J would go on to join the New Blood where he would challenge then WHC Diamond Dallas Page for the title and win his first ever World Heavyweight Championship. In the dying days of WCW, Jeff would go on to regain the World title 3 more times before the doors closed and Jeff Jarrett was left without a contract.

And with him having nothing else to do, Double J (with his father and mutual friend) put forth their money, went to the NWA Board of Directors (before WWE had a BoD), and it was there where the Nashville Created NWA-Total Nonstop Action would come alive. In TNA, Jarrett's work is absolutely unparalleled and some would say it's because of his greed to never give up the spot light... However, looking from my perspective and that of others, Jeff Jarrett was simply the person they needed along with the likes of Raven, Sandman, Sabu, The Flying Elvises, S.E.X., AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn, Daniels, and James Storm to bring the NWA-TNA to the mainstream eyes.

WrestleZone HOF inductors have gone on record to say "
I'm not going to count TNA and Ring of Honor as I'm not near knowledgable enough on ROH, nor do I think wrestlers from ROH, nor TNA for that matter are "classic" enough to be in a HOF."

And now I ask you, do you honestly believe that to be true? Do you honestly think that after the career the man from Henderson, Tennessee has lived is not worthy of a Hall of Fame recognition? Jeff Jarrett, in my opinion, is one of the last outlaws in pro-wrestling who came up through the territories... Yes, he was one of the back and forth people in the 90s, but the fact that he COULD keep us following him for that long and through his troubles is testament enough to his legacy. Simply put, Jeff Jarret in fact is one of the few in TNA who indeed deserve to be in the HoF.

Especially if Benoit is going in.

 

[JGlass]

I will be doing my best to prevent this waste of life from entering the hall of fame. I can't stand Jeff Jarrett, the man has politicked (or simply booked himself) to the top of two major companies and has failed to ever draw a dime. I would say he's overrated, but I think most people recognize him as the sack of cow shit he is.

And two things about this "quote"

I'm not going to count TNA and Ring of Honor as I'm not near knowledgable enough on ROH, nor do I think wrestlers from ROH, nor TNA for that matter are "classic" enough to be in a HOF."

A) Who said this?
B) Where did they say this?
C) Is this in reference to the HOF or something else?
D) The bulk of Jeff Jarrett's career happened pre-TNA, and it wasn't enough to make him Hall worthy. Booking himself to the top of TNA is also not HOF worthy.

Jarrett's number won't come for a long long time, and when it does I will do everything in my power to have it shot down.

 

[Trill Co$by]

I will be doing my best to prevent this waste of life from entering the hall of fame. I can't stand Jeff Jarrett, the man has politicked (or simply booked himself) to the top of two major companies and has failed to ever draw a dime. I would say he's overrated, but I think most people recognize him as the sack of cow shit he is.

And two things about this "quote"



A) Who said this?
B) Where did they say this?
C) Is this in reference to the HOF or something else?
D) The bulk of Jeff Jarrett's career happened pre-TNA, and it wasn't enough to make him Hall worthy. Booking himself to the top of TNA is also not HOF worthy.

Jarrett's number won't come for a long long time, and when it does I will do everything in my power to have it shot down.

To answer A-C, I apologize for I have misread the "Chronological Order for future inductees" thread.

However, to answer option D, do you mind telling me of anybody else in TNA at that time who would've been better suited to hold the NWA strap? Other than Jarrett and Raven, in the beginning, TNA had nobody to fully put confidence in except for AJ Styles and they did just that, gave him a title run. They gave the belt to Ron Killings for about two months and he did an OK run with it, but nothing worth getting wet panties over.

If Raven had the title the entire time, it would've looked like another ECW. Rhino had it for a small bit, and while I liked him with the title (I'm a huge Rhino fan), I wouldn't say that he is the guy to trust when carrying the title.

Not only that, but as champion, Jeff Jarrett has put names like Abyss, Styles, Siaki, Daniels, and even Samoa Joe over to build up TNA's own stars. Before there was a Sting, a Christian Cage, or a Kurt Angle... there was only Jeff Jarrett to carry TNA on his back so that they can GET other wrestlers interested and that's what he did. That's not hall of fame worthy? Especially considering the fact that the NWA (which TNA was apart of at the time) also managed to agree that Jeff Jarrett was the best option for the title?

Even if you don't count his TNA run, his pre-TNA run is FAR more than enough to merit him a pass to the Hall of Fame. Especially if you're going to add in someone like Benoit or Jericho or even Owen Hart. Face it, whether you dislike the man or not, Double J has earned his way into credentials of being a Hall of Famer, and if you can't see that then you've obviously not been watching wrestling in the 90s.

 

[The Prodigal Anti-Lemming]

I’ve no more say in it than the OP, but I’m with Friendly Neighborhood JGlass on this. As long as actual deserving stars—especially deserving stars of this era such as Hart, Michaels, and countless others—aren’t on the list, there’s no place for Jarrett anywhere in the hall of fame. Even acknowledging that he helped found TNA (which has nothing at all to do with his ring acumen), he was an overrated champion, in both WCW and TNA. As was mentioned, he was only TNA champion until my brain bled and my eyeballs temporarily dropped out of their sockets because he was in charge of the books. Meanwhile, fans were so enthusiastic regarding his utter dominance of the championship that they practically drilled him with negative heat. “Get your hat, your coat and leave,” directly implied, “Go away for awhile; we don’t want to see you right now.”

He was champion of WCW at a time when the promotion was falling apart around him, and the fact is that every new champion WCW promoted after Goldberg seemed like a desperate attempt to play catch up with the WWF. In that way, Jarrett was a flavor of the week, as the company bureaucrats scratched their collective heads and said to themselves, “Hm...let’s see if Kevin Nash will draw...no good. Well let’s try Dallas Page...still nothing. Well then, let’s try Sid Vicious, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett, etc. No dice.”

From a different perspective, the practice of inducting active stars at all somewhat defeats the whole purpose of a hall of fame. The real point of any such grouping is to honor legends, specifically retired or deceased legends. It’s why Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair were never added to the WWE’s version until they retired. It’s what makes a hall a hall, and not some redundant top ten list. If the book officially has not been written on a specific wrestler, what is the point? The flaw in adding TNA wrestlers, or unretired WWE wrestlers for that matter isn’t that they’re “not classic enough.” It’s that they’re still active, and thus still have something to contribute, resumes of which to add to.

As for me, I have long preferred TNA to WWE, but I think if I hear that annoying southern drawl while carrying the TNA belt for one more go...then you might as well flush my fanhood down the toilet, what with everything else that has happened in the biz over the past year.

What I find most remarkable about this whole undertaking of starting a hall of fame is the fact that we inevitably have people championing the cause of [insert whatever world champion here] just because that individual so happens to have carried a world championship belt (I won’t even to get to my battles with the immature Sid Vicious cheerleading squad on a certain different site that no longer exists, lol). When will people realize that simply being a world champion is not a guarantee of immortality and is not a plausible excuse to include just anybody into what is ideally a highly selective group of legends?

With all due respect to the OP, the day guys like Jarrett, John Bradshaw Layfield and Sid Vicious get inducted into this hall of fame is the day it becomes directly synonymous with the vaunted WWE “ toilet bowl” Hall of Fame.

 

[Mustang Sally]

Make no mistake about it, whether you love him or hate him, Jeff Jarrett has been a work horse in professional wrestling.

You did an admirable job of outlining his back-and-forth careers with WWE and WCW and I can see why the total body of work Jarrett has put in makes you deem him worthy of HOF consideration.

For me, however, your outline also spells a good reason for excluding him: he's never been loyal enough to any company to establish himself as someone who should be in their HOF. Despite the heavy pushes he received in each "visit" to the big two, he apparently existed in abject misery, enough so that he kept bouncing back and forth between the two. One could make arguments for why he was unhappy in each case, but it really boils down to one thing: the companies weren't doing things the way he wanted them done. Plus, that trick he pulled on Vince McMahon when his last WWE contract expired (leading to his "Good Housekeeping" match with Chyna) was one of the lowest things I've seen in this business. Given that the sports entertainment industry is a pretty limited field, he should have given thought to the door he was shutting permanently. If his Daddy hadn't opened a wrestling company for Jeff, he would be building sandwiches at Subway, since he could never go back to WWE.

His disloyalty and lack of continuity with either wrestling company excludes him from HOF consideration, IMHO. Give me a guy who appreciates the efforts made on his behalf instead of spitting in everyone's face.

 

[Rayne]

I could see Jeff Jarrett getting into this Hall of Fame. In about three years, after about forty more deserving people get in ahead.

I'm not saying Jeff Jarrett isn't accomplished. He's been near the top of every major promotion at one point or another. (WCW counts, even though he was champion while the company was suffocating on its own vomit.) He connects with audiences. A lot of the hate he gets online is that legitimate heel heat; he's good enough at what he does that the audience doesn't know how they're being hoodwinked.

A lot of what he'll suffer from though was that when he was hot in a promotion, the promotion wasn't much good. He had an Intercontinental Title run in the '90s which was pretty good, then he got caught up in the middle of the Monday Night Wars, and neither side trusted him much to book him well until WCW was almost dead. He was a TNA champion when TNA was smaller in revenue and name recognition then ROH is today. He's not Main Event material; he's main event material.

But there are just so, so many people who deserve to get in ahead of Jeff Jarrett. Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Bruno Sammartino, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Steve Austin, The Rock, Chris Jericho, Vince McMahon, Triple H, Kevin Nash, Sting, The Undertaker, Mick Foley, and those are just the obvious ones- I didn't list any people for whom you could have strong arguments about, like Arn Anderson, Scott Hall, Roddy Piper, Psycho Sid, John Cena, Chris Benoit*, Scott Steiner, Edge, Owen Hart, Booker T, Diamond Dallas Page, Rey Mysterio, and The List Goes On.

Jeff Jarrett will get in, provided that people don't get bored with this Hall of Fame concept for a while.

 

[It's...Baylariat!]

He should never EVER be in any sort of Hall of Fame. He's proven that he can't draw anywhere he works. His in-ring moves are average at best and his promos are average at best. He's simply an average wrestler who's been apart of some of the darkest days of wrestling.

When most people think of Jarrett, they don't think of Double J or his work in the USWA with Lawler.. they think of his laying down to Hulk Hogan and his shit work in TNA. It's sad, because he's had some good runs, but HOF worthy?

Absolutely not.

 

[The Crock]

The epitome of mediocrity, Jeff Jarrett. I don't see how he could possibly be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Jeff Jarrett? No, no way. He's legitimately just average. I have never seen a worker that doesn't do anything special, don't get me wrong, he's solid, but he doesn't stand out, nor does he get any reaction. In TNA he was the top guy because they didn't have anybody else to put the strap on. He had his nice moments, winning the Intercontinental Championship, some nice times in WCW, but he's nothing but... ordinary. When you think of Hall of Fame, you think of the extraordinary, and Jeff Jarrett certainly doesn't come up in that conversation.

An average worker who has a cult following doesn't deserve to get into the Hall of Fame.