Jeff Jarrett Says He Has A Lot Of Respect For David Arquette, Defends His WCW Run

In an interview with Wrestling Inc, Jeff Jarrett praised David Arquette for his time in the wrestling business and defended his run in WCW from 2000. Here are highlights:

On David Arquette’s time in the wrestling business: “In my office, up here in my man cave so to speak, I got a picture of the triple cage, an action shot of David. I’m blessed I always got to look at the business through the promoter’s eyes. You don’t have to. You can choose to do this. I’ll say this, David, nobody held a gun to his head and said, ‘You got to do this.’ He wanted to do this. So he came into this business. He didn’t have creative control. He didn’t call the shots, so I’ve never thrown shade on him. I’ve never looked down on him. Look, he did what he was asked to do and did it pretty damn good. Now fast forward 20 years and he has this affection for it, and we text back and forth and stay connected. I mean, for what he did and the incident that I’m still not completely clear but I saw him at All In and we hugged. ‘Dude, great to see you!’ I joked with him through the years, the only reason Jeff Jarrett’s name got mentioned on David Letterman was because David Arquette said it. I got a lot of respect for Dave personally that he took a scenario 20 years ago, and now fast forward, he doesn’t have to be doing this, but it’s pretty cool. The documentary and then RJ [City]. He dug into it. He dug into this industry, and I’m happy for him.”

On growing up in the wrestling business: “The couple of different examples that I’ve always liked to share are, do you remember The Moondogs? There was a legendary video that got seen over and over of them coming up out of this swamp, and it looked all descriptive. That in reality was a pond on the back of our farm. You didn’t go around there because there was a bunch of bugs, but here are two wrestlers, you get a camera and my dad was the producer and that video was shot. Watching the Andy Kaufman – Jerry Lawler episode from my couch and knowing the story behind the story. We used to call, not even ‘smart to the business’, but I wasn’t smart to the business. That sort of happened over time. When you see different guys come by the house, heels and babyfaces in the same car and whether it’s picking up programs or a suitcase, or paychecks or whatever it is but when you see guys not coming through the curtain and getting up to the ring but you see them in their street clothes and leaving the gym, you see the business behind the business. That always fascinated me, and then as a 14-year-old boy, me riding to different towns with my grandmother meeting Jim Cornette’s mother. Jim was just getting into the business so seeing it from that perspective and going into small towns in Kentucky and Tennessee, and northern Mississippi and Arkansas and hanging up window cards, which I did. When you go in and you’re talking to our store owner and they said, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ ‘Hey, can I hang this poster up in your store to promote the event?’ ‘Oh, who’s coming?’ Having those kind of conversations, little did I know, I was literally learning the business on the fly, and it was the early stages of understanding the promotion business that the more cards we hang up, the more chatter we have [and] the more talk, the more people show up. And the more people to show up the more concession stands you can sell. And if you have a great show and the main event’s great, they’re going to come back next week. Just those layers of the business, I got lucky, I’m blessed. A lot of people don’t get to be around that side of it and understanding that it takes everybody rowing in the same direction.”