On the latest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Jeff Jarrett pushed back on the narrative around TNA’s early funding crisis, explaining how the loss of his first backer led him to the Carter family and Panda Energy — and how his grandmother’s advice guided him through it. You can check out his comments below:
“This is where the narrative gets misunderstood — I hadn’t even begun to look for money. HealthSouth, and Richard Scrushy, a personal buddy of mine, basically started the funding and said, let me know when you need more. He was all into it. Well, six weeks into that, business things went south for him. So I immediately, out of respect for every one of my vendors — I didn’t want them to hear it from somebody else, and I wanted to be straight up and honest, that’s straight from my grandmother: look somebody in the eye and tell them bad news before you tell them good news, and they’ll respect you immensely. So I went to every vendor, everybody in that sphere — the production company, the pyro folks — and Dixie was one of probably 15 calls I made. She sat back in her chair, and I’ll never forget it, she said, what are next steps? I said, I’m going to go raise capital. She said, do you have any materials? Nope. Could you put something together? I sure could. I had no idea who Bob Carter was, or Janice Carter, or Panda Energy International. Me and my father were going to go look for money from banking that would have raked us over the coals. But that’s another thing that’s misunderstood: if it hadn’t been for Panda Energy International, TNA would have gone away. That’s not a possibility, it’s a fact.”
