During last night’s “live” episode of Impact on Pop TV, Karen Jarrett briefly announced that Global Force Wrestling has now officially merged with Impact Wrestling.
This move had been expected as Jeff Jarrett, the founder of Global Force Wrestling, revealed in an interview during WrestleMania weekend that both Impact and GFW were “becoming one” in the weeks and months going forward since his return.
GFW was launched back in April of 2014 after Jarrett had departed TNA Wrestling, although still remaining involved with TNA with a minority ownership. Jarrett quickly began forming partnerships with various wrestling promotions in both North America and overseas.
In 2015, GFW presented a series of live events at minor league baseball stadiums in what were the first official events for the company. The promotion then held television tapings in July and October for a yet to be announced distribution platform for what was then called “AMPED TV.” Those tapings featured a host of former TNA talent including Sonjay Dutt, Bobby Roode, Eric Young and Magnus. New champions were also crowned at the tapings.
Almost two years later, the television tapings were never released through a television outlet or any online digital platform. GFW at one point announced a deal with A. Smith & Co. Productions to produce an “all-new wrestling show” that was likely to be footage from the AMPED TV tapings in Las Vegas from the prior year. Despite the announcement, the show was never released and the GFW TV taping footage still has yet to be seen.
While still the owner of GFW, Jarrett made a surprise return to TNA in the summer of 2015 and took part in the main event of the Slammiversary PPV. Jarrett was given the opportunity to promote GFW on TNA television for a few weeks and later captured the King of the Mountain Championship at the Slammiversary PPV. This was during TNA’s time on Destination America before announcing a TV deal with Pop TV in November.
Wrestleview.com spoke with Jeff Jarrett back in 2015 regarding any plans for a television deal for GFW. At the time, Jarrett hesitated to commit to any sort of an announcement with a television partner and even suggested that a traditional television deal was not something they were looking for with the introduction of the WWE Network and the overall popularity of other streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and more.
Jarrett has yet to officially comment on the “merger” as of Friday morning as he is currently pushing the debut of Impact Wrestling on Spike TV in the UK this week. The company is continuing to hold television tapings for Pop TV the rest of this weekend while hyping the upcoming Slammiversary PPV on July 2.
Either way, Global Force Wrestling appears to be officially done.