Jeff Jarrett Explains How He Wound Up in AEW

Jeff Jarrett made his surprise AEW debut on this past week's AEW Dynamite, attacking Darby Allin with a guitar before aligning himself with Jay Lethal's crew. All Elite Wrestling then announced Jarrett was joining the promotion in a front-office capacity as its Director of Business Development. While fans were amazed by the fact Jarrett was able to work for GCW, the NWA, WWE, Jim Crockett Promotions (in its one-night return for the Ric Flair's Last Match event) and AEW all in a single year, "Double J" appeared on his My World podcast to explain how his arrival in AEW happened.

"The pieces of the puzzle started to fall together and the behind the scenes role, as well as in front of the camera, all those pieces started to kind of fall in and it didn't happen overnight. This has kind of been a work in progress for quite some time. It wasn't something that just kind of happened overnight," Jarrett explained (h/t WrestlingNews.co). 

"I don't know if I'm more excited about the behind-the-scenes work or the executive work or all that, or the in-ring stuff because Karen texted me Wednesday, about one o'clock or 1:30, and said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I feel like I'm a 19 year old rookie pacing around WMC TV studios.' I said, 'I'm nervous about tonight.' I'm thinking things through. I wanted it to go right. I wasn't all sure of that," he added. "So that's kind of one of the messages I want to throw out there. Folks, I've been doing it a long time, but I was as nervous as could be, and when the lights were restored in the ring, it was a surreal moment. The reaction had a little fresh coat of paint, little red guitar, little red and black guitar. It was really cool. I got a good crack on old Darby. I am super grateful. I'm excited. I'm ready to dig in, in all kinds of ways." 

On top of appearing as a special guest referee at SummerSlam, the WWE Hall of Famer was rehired by the company to be its Senior Vice President of Live Events in May. He was let go in August, weeks after Vince McMahon departed from the promotion and Stephanie McMahon & Nick Khan took over as Co-CEOs while Paul Levesque was put in charge of booking.