After rumors on social media that something “huge” was going to happen on Impact, Jeff Jarrett made a shock return and cut a promo with his wife Karen about having one last match in a TNA ring at Slammiversary this Sunday. He wants to be the King of the Mountain one more time!

However the presence of the TNA founder cannot simply be chalked up to a one-off PPV appearance – can it? Only a few weeks ago TNA barred Tyrus from wrestling on a GFW live event and the relationship between the two companies did not seem to be in a good place. What’s changed?

The wording of “one final match” is particularly interesting. Is this one final match for Jarrett, or is it TNA that’s coming to its final end? The company are filming a huge chunk of TV episodes from July 22nd to 29th, which will take them right up to September. This is when Destination America can use their clause to cancel Impact, and it’s already been reported that there have been internal plans to do just that.

So the speculation is rampant, has Jarrett been brought back as a way of giving closure to the storylines before TNA ceases to exist? Has he bought TNA outright from Panada Energy, taking control in September? Are they merging together? Or has he simply worked out a short term deal as a way to promote GFW?

In some respects the latter scenarios seem the least likely. What does TNA gain? GFW doesn’t have a platform to provide them anything, so why would they give Jarrett a platform, when only a couple of weeks ago Dixie viewed GFW as a rival? TNA might be able to squeeze a few extra buys out of Jarrett appearing on PPV from fans who are just wondering what the hell is going down, but if they’re so willing to flip flop perhaps they should be giving Tyrus a pay-bump from that extra money for being screwed out of his GFW date.

As is common in “wrasslin” the last people to know what’s going on seems to be the talent. As with the Vince Russo fiasco, Destination America deal, and ROH moving to the network, Dixie seems hell bent on pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes and destroying any trust between wrestlers and management.

Matt Hardy did not seem too pleased with the segment. He wrote on Twitter:

Neat that a competing talent showed up on TNA TV. But I felt a long winded Jarrett cut in2 my TV time tonite-Not sure how I feel about that.

Jeff Jarrett who remains a minority shareholder in TNA released the following statement on the GFW site:

Global Force Wrestling founder Jeff Jarrett shocked the wrestling world when he made a surprise appearance on Impact Wrestling. Jarrett announced that he will walk down the aisle for the last time on his own terms at the TNA Slammiversary pay-per-view. Jarrett made his surprise appearance alongside his wife Karen Jarrett.
Slammiversary airs this Sunday, June 28th on pay-per-view.

Dixie Carter wrote on Twitter:

There is so much history with @RealJeffJarrett in TNA @IMPACTWRESTLING Tonight was a moment many thought they never would see again.

She’s not wrong … but there are a lot of unanswered questions.