Wrestler, promoter Jarrett has died
As a professional wrestler who partnered with such celebrated grapplers as Jackie Fargo and Tojo Yamamoto in Memphis, Jerry Jarrett learned all about the throws, reversals and other actions that could confound an opponent.
But Jarrett’s most impressive moves were outside the ring. As a promoter and owner, Jarrett was as important as anyone else in the business in tightening wrestling’s hold on Memphis and the nation, expanding the entertainment sport’s audience during a 1970s and ’80s renaissance that showcased such spectacles as the Jerry Lawler-vs.-andy Kaufman feud and influenced the World Wrestling Entertainment arena extravaganzas of today.
“He changed the business, and that’s not an understatement,” said wrestling historian Mark James, co-author of Jarrett’s autobiography, “The Best of Times.”
“Not only did he help build Memphis wrestling, I think that he built wresting in general,” said Dave Brown, longtime host of local Saturday morning television wrestling in Memphis. “In my opinion, Jerry Jarrett is responsible for reforming wrestling, so that when Vince Mcmahon started his big push with the WWF and WWE, it was something a mass audience could enjoy.”
Jarrett, 80, died Tuesday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. He had been candid in recent months about his health woes, and at the time of his death he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus.
Born in Nashville in 1942, Jarrett devoted his life to wrestling, even selling refreshments and helping to construct wrestling rings in small towns as a teenage enthusiast eager to get his foot into the door.
Eventually, while remaining based in Middle Tennessee, he started booking wrestlers for the territory that included Memphis and was controlled by promoters Nick Gulas, who was from Nashville, and Roy Welch, of Dyersburg.
Jarrett recognized the brash, motormouth appeal of such relative newcomers as Lawler and “Superstar” Bill Dundee, and he helped transform them into area celebrities by placing them at the top of the “card” on Monday nights during the wrestling bouts at the Midsouth Coliseum. This strategy helped rebuild the live audience for wrestling that had declined in the wake of the Sputnik Monroe era and in the aftermath of the 1968 sanitation strike and assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Meanwhile, the blond and handsome Jarrett became a popular and successful wrestler himself, earning several tag team championship belts and delighting fans who mostly were unaware of his behind-the-scenes influence.
However, Jarrett made his greatest impact on the sport starting in 1977, after over a decade in the business, when he broke away from Gulas, whom he believed had “bamboozled” him in a business deal, James said, and founded the rival Continental Wrestling Association.
The move broke the Gulas’ company’s longtime hold on Memphis. The top stars signed with Jarrett, and some became partners in his business.
Perhaps most important, the extraordinarily popular Saturday morning TV wrestling program left its longtime home at WHBQ-TV Channel 13 for WMC-TV Channel 5. Veteran Channel 13 program director and “studio wrestling” host Lance Russell came with it, becoming a Jarrett employee, accompanied by his longtime sidekick Dave Brown, who left WHBQ to be a newscaster and wrestling commentator at WMC.
“And from that, he was able to build a dynasty,” Brown said. Soon, the show was airing live throughout the region and beyond, even as far north as Indiana, while also being syndicated for late-night broadcast in other markets.
“He was forward-thinking, he was meticulous,” Brown said of Jarrett. “He was great at coming up with storylines, and that was a key to the success of Memphis wrestling. It was like Saturday morning soap opera.”
Brown said he, Russell, Jarrett and various wrestlers would meet an hour before the show’s 11 a.m. airtime, to plan the specifics of the action. “And keep in mind, we were live, there was no tape delay at all. It was absolutely live, but all planned in advance.”
With canny entertainment instincts, Jarrett modernized and energized wrestling, expanding its pop-culture appeal for a hipper audience while also retaining the loyalty of longtime fans. Perhaps most notably, comedian/performance artist-turned-mock (or was it mock?) wrestler Andy Kaufman came to town, and launched a “Hollywood”-vs.-memphis feud that made television history when Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair during a 1982 joint appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman.”
The encounter later was immortalized, with Jim Carrey as Kaufman, in the Kaufman biopic “Man on the Moon,” directed by Milos Forman, the Oscar-winning director of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus.”
Brown said Jarrett was “very involved” in the Lawler/kaufman dynamic, and recognized the value of having “the star of a big hit sitcom, ‘Taxi’” participating in Memphis wrestling.
“I’ve always called it the glory days,” James said of the Jarrett era. “The most sell-outs at the Mid-south Coliseum. Three-hundred-thousand people watching it every Saturday morning between 11 and 12:30, at a time when the city had like 500,000 people. A huge audience.”
Brown said that on some weeks during the program’s heyday, 80 percent of all televisions in use in the Memphis market on Saturday mornings were tuned to “studio” wrestling. The show ran, in one form or another, until 1997.
Jarrett’s innovations, including the promotion of colorful, telegenic personalities and increasingly theatrical and byzantine storylines over more-or-less straightforward wrestling, were embraced by other promoters, including Vince Mcmahon, whose WWE company (originally, WWF, or World Wrestling Federation) used cable television to create a national professional wrestling empire that eventually made the relative small-potatoes appeal of the local territories obsolete.
Jarrett’s business was “the last territory left, and it lasted until the late ’90s, before it all went national,” James said.
“Jerry understood the audience better than any other promoter,” Brown said. “He gave the audience what they wanted, but he held back enough to keep them coming back for more.”
Jarrett leaves a daughter, Jennifer, and three sons: Jason, Jerry Jr. and Jeff, who also was a top professional wrestler. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.