Jeff Jarrett Shares Best Way Hulk Hogan Could Have Helped TNA

In the years since his brief but eventful run in TNA, much has been made about Hulk Hogan's involvement with the promotion, and how much he helped, or hurt it. Jeff Jarrett, who founded TNA and was with the company when Hogan appeared, feels Hogan was put in the wrong role with the promotion, explaining why on "My World."

"From the beginning, I always thought Hogan's best role would be an ambassador out validating what we were already doing," Jarrett said. "We were having success, we were profitable, but we needed a louder megaphone, a louder spokesman, a more well-known one." Instead, Hogan and Eric Bischoff would take the creative reigns in TNA, something Jarrett understood due to their high salaries, but something he felt hurt TNA by changing what Jarrett believed was working. That included Jeff Hardy, who Jarrett described as a huge merch mover until the promotion decided to turn him heel at Bound for Glory 2010.

"Creatively, I thought 'Okay, you're going to make Jeff Hardy ... I don't even want to call him a heel, let's call him an antagonist,'" Jarrett said. "'What will he do to antagonize his protagonist? What's Jeff going to do to make people either hate him or resent him, or angry, or whatever it is? That's just not in Jeff's character, and I'm not saying real life, I'm talking about his persona. ... I thought it was, from a business perspective, a horrible decision. But at that point, I was on the outside looking in, and from a creative perspective, I ran the play to the best of my ability. I was worried about live events and international, but creatively, I went right along with it."

To quote this article, please credit "My World" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.