Jeff Jarrett was a guest on Wednesday’s episode of Busted Open with Dave Lagreca and Larry Dallas where he discussed the rebranding of Global Force Wrestling.

“Obviously we’ve had our ups and downs and in-betweens between myself — not just professionally — but personally with Impact,” said Jarrett. “And then, you know, I launched Global Force Wrestling and it’s so ironic how things have come together.”

Jeff Jarrett co-founded Total Nonstop Action Wrestling with his father Jerry in 2002. They ended up selling the company to Panda Energy later that year, with Jeff staying on as a minority owner.

“In the early days it was TNA and the name of the television show was Impact,” Jarrett continued. “And then it got into early 2010-2011 it was called Impact Wrestling and where does TNA stand? So I’ll be the first one to say it was a bit of confusion as far as the brand. And as an older promoter once said, ‘If you confuse them, you lose them.’ That old saying goes a long way.”

Earlier this year, TNA was purchased by Anthem Sports & Entertainment and Dixie Carter resigned as Chairwoman after 14 years at the helm. Jarrett later returned and has now merged the company he founded with his 2015 upstart Global Force Wrestling.

“In one essence we’re back to the way it was originally branded,” said Jarrett. “The name of the television show that comes on Thursday nights on Pop TV and Friday nights on Spike TV in the United Kingdom, Friday nights on Sony 6 on India. The name of the television show is Impact and now the name of the brand, as you stated, is GFW. So we’re really excited. We realize it’s not going to happen overnight. You know, the confusion didn’t happen overnight so the re-brand is not going to happen overnight but we’re heading in that direction.”

Jarrett stated the buzz at this past Sunday’s Slammiversary pay-per-view was one of excitement, comparing it to the company’s glory days.

“I can’t state enough just the buzz in the building Sunday night almost felt — I hate to, I’m not one to look back in the rearview mirror — but in essence, you know, we’ll call it the glory days of TNA, it really, really felt good on Sunday night,” said Jarrett. “The Impact Zone so to speak was rocking, it was off the charts; they seemed to really enjoy the show that went down the 15th anniversary show of Slammiversary on Sunday night.”

Source: Busted Open via WrestlingINC

Tonight on GFW Impact Wrestling on POP TV:

* Fallout from Slammiversary

* Unified Impact World & GFW Global Champion Alberto El Patron and Unified Knockouts & GFW Women’s Champion Sienna

* Gail Kim returns

* Super X Cup tournament

Dave Meltzer reported on Wednesday night’s episode of Wrestling Observer Radio that the new GFW belts will be unveiled at next month’s Impact Wrestling tapings on August 17th.

Source: WrestlingINC

We noted earlier in the week that Impact Wrestling has officially acquired Jeff Jarrett’s Global Force Wrestling promotion. The Tennessean reported on Friday that Impact is re-branding as GFW.

The Tennessean reports that the acquisition is designed to distance the company from the financial struggles and legal drama that has followed the brand. The story is that Impact parent company Anthem Sports will re-brand as GFW and Jarrett will take over the creative aspects of the promotion. The Thursday night show on POP TV will continue to be called Impact.

Sunday’s Slammiversary event is being seen as the re-launch of the company’s pay-per-view business. GFW will be headquartered at Skyway Studios in Nashville, where they currently do pre and post-production work.

“We’re a global brand,” Jarrett said of the re-branding. “We have partnerships in Mexico, Japan, other places. Collectively coming together, we’ve combined forces and basically the rebrand final touches happen (on Sunday) at ‘Slammiversary.'”

Anthem’s Ed Nordholm told The Tennessean that the company is developing an on-demand streaming service to tap into the valuable tape library they have. Nordholm also said the re-branding was done for two reasons – the double meaning of “TNA” was a turnoff for some potential marketing partners and the name was tainted because of negative media coverage.

“When Anthem got involved we saw a rare opportunity to get involved with an asset that already had global distribution,” Nordholm said. “It’s a 3,500-hour library, broadcast in 120 countries, existing distribution contracts in India, Africa and now the United Kingdom. The timeline to take a ground zero promotion to that kind of penetration was 15 years. The work now is to fix some things.”