Various: Jeff Jarrett on “I Knew With TNA That I Had No Interest In Going The WWE Direction Of Women’s Wrestling At The Time”, Evan Husney on Dark Side of the Ring Almost Did An Episode Based on Heroes of Wrestling, Indies/Misc.

Jul 15, 2026

Jeff Jarrett Comments on “I Knew With TNA That I Had No Interest In Going The WWE Direction Of Women’s Wrestling At The Time”

A recent episode of The Wrestling Classic podcast featured former TNA Wrestling co-owner and current AEW Director of Business Development Jeff Jarrett as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Jarrett’s thoughts about women’s wrestling in TNA and how he knew from the beginning that he did not want to go the WWE route with the Knockouts division.

“It means a lot. There is a guy by the name of Mr. Cavazzini, Michael Cavazzini in Philly. He is a doctor. He did a thesis. He did a study. It went really deep into this, Justin. It’s very cool for him to kind of dial into the DNA of that. But I think back to Gail Kim. ‘Jeff, I want to wrestle. I want to wrestle.’ ‘Gail, we’ve got to create the division. We can’t rush this. It’s got to come along.’ I think about the many conversations, and shout out to Dutch Mantell, Dutch having the patience to think through in the process of Gail versus Kong, I think of The Beautiful People, ODB, all the different players that came with that division. They were, you know, 8 10, 12 girls that all had distinct personalities. It really is. Obviously the X-Division is, is a huge calling card, but I knew at the time, on the other channel, as they say, you know, on WWE, bra and panty, diva, that was what they represented, and I knew that I had no interest in going that direction. I wanted to create a women’s division that is athletically based, competitively based, given the right perspective and the right time and the right placement in the main event when it made sense, and we did that. It’s something that I, to this day, very, very proud of, of all the work we did as a team, both in front of the camera and behind as well.”

Jarrett also gave his thoughts about what advice he would tell to his younger self at the beginning of TNA in 2002 if given the chance.

“Oh, it’s very simple, and I, I try to instill this with my kids, with people I’ll run into. There is no such, it is impossible…. I think it’s pretty clear to say that, it’s impossible to over-communicate. I have failed miserably in many, many relationships by not communicating, and so a young Jeff assumed so many different things, expected so many different things, and a lot of it can be traced back to my lack of communication, and so a Jeff that is here in 2026, if I could go back and talk to that Jeff in 2002, I would shake him to his core, Justin, and say, over-communicate, if that is a term, but communicate about everything consistently and constantly.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2

Evan Husney Comments on Dark Side of the Ring Almost Did An Episode Based on Heroes of Wrestling

Fightful held a recent interview with Dark Side of the Ring series co-creator and Executive Producer Evan Husney. One of the topics discussed included Husney’s thoughts about getting requests from fans for episodes topics and revealed Dark Side of the Ring almost had an episode that would have been based on the infamous Heroes of Wrestling event in 1999.

“I’ll say about Heroes of Wrestling, because that’s another one that always comes up. I’ll say that we were like that close to doing it, I think last year we were going to do it and we had like everybody lined up and just like the sort of linchpin character fell through. I don’t feel like rolling the dice that it’s gonna be what it should be. But we had some people who had worked behind the scenes on the show who had wild stories. Never say never though, it could rear its head around at another time. But that one we were very close on and it was too bad because that would be a good one. But obviously it does make a lot of people not look very good too at the same time.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Masked Republic recently announced that El Hijo del Fantasma, former Santos Escobar in WWE, will be making an appearance at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con event on July 23-26 in San Diego, California.

As noted before, Trey Miguel has been out of action for TNA Wrestling since this past April’s Rebellion 2026 event due to a broken patella injury and was recently medically cleared for an in-ring return. Miguel provided an update on Tuesday on Twitter posting a letter from his doctor who had officially cleared him to return to wrestling.

In a recent interview with the Marking Out with MVP & Dwayne Swayze podcast, Will Ospreay gave his thoughts about him being “real passionate” about helping women’s wrestling grow in the indies through his role outside of AEW. Ospreay stated “I get real passionate about women’s wrestling now. Because I do believe that being a part of it, I’ve seen the short end of the straw. A lot of the times on the British indie scene, you’ll get the one women’s match — at best two. So they’re kind of like the side piece. Eve, they’re the whole focus. They’re the story, they’re the main characters, and we can dictate the story however we want it to go. Honestly, it’s like, doing that Wrestle Queendom show was like top five moments of my entire career. It was so cool to watch that thing come to life.” Ospreay also gave his thoughts about how his NJPW career led to him forming friendships with a lot of Japanese women’s wrestlers and how he used those connections to help out Pro Wrestling EVE. Ospreay stated “I’ve got an amazing relationship with a lot of the Japanese joshi girls. I’ve got an amazing relationship with everyone at AEW. I just bring them over. I put them on like at the end of the night. I put them on meet and greets. I make my money back from the flight and the tickets, like, pay their wage.” (Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com)

In a recent interview with Denise Salcedo, AEW talent and coach Billy Gunn gave his thoughts about his recent work for Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling and him having multiple backstage roles with the company. Gunn stated “It is so good and it is so much fun. I’m lucky that Tony and AEW lets me go do other things on the side. This is one of the things that they let me do. So, I have many roles there, Scott has total faith in me and I love Scott to death and he’s done something here that is very Tony Khan-ish. It’s very risky but it’s paying off because the shows are really good, the talent is really good, there’s a good camaraderie and they’re all fighting for the same thing, just like AEW. They’re all fighting to make a very good product and they have one. Scott’s done an amazing job and the people that he surrounds himself with are doing an awesome job of producing it, writing it, letting the talent do their thing and kind of just guiding them through this. It’s so much fun.” Gunn also gave his thoughts about some of his roles with Maple Leaf Pro. Gunn stated “I coach, producer, put stuff together. I wrestle there. I cut promos and make people laugh there. I clean up after people, I do catering. When you’re in something like that, you don’t mind doing it. I’m beneath doing none of that. If he were to say, ‘Hey, will you help them tear down the ring?’, I would do that. ‘Would you help sweep up the floors?’, I would do that. It’s that kind of atmosphere. Hey, if you need me to sit here in this chair and watch people and tell them what they’re doing after their matches, I’ll gladly do that. It’s the same thing in AEW, I do whatever is needed of me because that’s where I’m at. I don’t have to be that guy anymore, I’ve been there, I have no ambitions. Just plug me into where I fit. Just plug me in and I’ll do it because I can literally do anything, which I think has helped keep me around a long time too. I don’t have a problem doing anything. Not everybody’s going to be able to do what I tell them, but it’s okay as long as they hear something and maybe they can work it out a different way.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

Maple Leaf Pro recently announced one new match for the card of their debut MLW Mayhem show on July 15 on TSN2: