Jeff Jarrett made his surprise AEW debut on this week’s AEW Dynamite, immediately aligning himself with Jay Lethal and his group of associates. Lethal teased ahead of this week’s match with Darby Allin that he had a friend who knew all of Allin’s weaknesses, and a man wearing Sting’s coat and fake eventually cost Allin the match. The masked figure was revealed as Cole Karter, but just as Lethal and co. were beginning their four-on-one beatdown Sting’s music hit. The heels left the ring, but instead of “The Icon” Jarrett suddenly appeared and whacked Allin over the head with a guitar.ย
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Jarrett cut a promo proclaiming himself “The Last Outlaw,” a gimmick he first introduced in GCW prior to returning to WWE earlier this year. He declared war on the rest of AEW, while subtly dropping references to his days launching and running TNA (Impact Wrestling).ย
Jarrett’s arrival in AEW caps off an incredibly busy 2022 for “Double J.” He kicked off the year returning to the ring for the first time since 2019 for a match with Effy at GCW’s The WRLD on GCW.ย He then popped up in the NWA to serve as a special guest referee for an NWA World Heavyweight Championship match between Nick Aldis and Matt Cardona. After a one-off appearance on SmackDown, Jarrett was rehired by WWE to serve as its Senior Vice President of Live events and was referee for a tag title match at SummerSlam. He left WWE in August, but not before competing in the main event of the Ric Flair’s Last Match event alongside “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair, Andrade El Idolo and Lethal.
Jarrett spoke with ComicBook back in May 2021 and talked at the time about what made AEW so successful so quickly. He explained, “Consistency, and look, obviously I’m the outside looking in. Again, that’s a part of the podcast that I’ll get to tell story behind the story, behind the story that resonates. Not knowing behind the scenes, but it goes without saying, a guy like Darby [Allin], there’s some consistency with them over the last year-and-a-half that, more than anything, when Bruce Prichard on Something to Wrestle told my story and I got to do a little remixed version of it here recently, just to get into the [podcast] family, so to speak, and promote and talk about [the show], but I did 12 vignettes as the Double J character before I ever wrestled. Literally, a quarter, 13 weeks, that’s patience, before I ever appeared on TV, I think there’s something that’s to be said to that today. If you throw everything out on the table and do your seven or eight moves in a match and do all this kind of stuff and then your act’s over, again, going back to Cody, his storytelling with his promos, on a week-to-week basis, candidly, can be must-see TV, because it’s a story.”
