Professional wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett who is a former four times WCW World Heavyweight champion recently looked back at the formation of Ring Ka King and revealed why it was difficult to use original TNA talents in the mentioned show.
In early 2012, TNA opened a territory in India naming it Ring Ka King. The popularity of professional wrestling in India was growing really fast. Was the first ever professional wrestling promotion that tried to capitalize on this popularity and that is also more than 10 years ago. It was actually a revolutionary move but they did it too early.
Jeff Jarrett Looks Back At Ring Ka King And Discusses Its Creation
They mostly used Indian development talents in the show since the so was completely Indian. They also used some of the original big names from TNA Wrestling like Scott Steiner, Chavo Guerrero, Matt Morgan, Brutus Magnus, Sonjay Dutt and some other big names as well. The idea was actually pretty impressive but as we said, it was too early to execute.
The Indian live audience was still not matured enough to go along with the show. Moreover, TNA was not as popular as WWE in India, which TNA failed to understand in that time. Ultimately, Ring Ka King turned out to be a massive failure. It died in less than four months time. TNA put hard effort into it to make it successful but ultimately they failed.
Jeff Jarrett who is a former four times WCW World Heavyweight champion recently spoke on his My World with Jeff Jarrett Podcast where he looked back at the formation of Ring Ka King and revealed why it was difficult to use original TNA talents in the mentioned show. He said;
“I think 2010 or 2011 is when discussions started. Endemol India is a production company, and they ran season one of Ring Ka King. It’s a startup promotion. We had a deal with Sony to air Impact, Xpolsion are our PPVs. So that’s what aired in India. It was the biggest contract we had for TNA Entertainment. They had all the exclusive rights.
“This had to be a completely different entity. From the very beginning we had to figure out the strategy. It was a completely separate business entity legally as well. Yes it fell under TNA Entertainment, but it was not Impact, Impact programming or Impact contracts. In the very beginning they were an off limits kind of deal because they were exclusive to the brand. We worked through some of those issues.”
“Sonjay the obvious. His parents were born and raised in India. Sonjay was raised in an Indian household. He stuck me at a young age because he couldn’t make a TNA booking due to a college class. Brian had just come out of his biggest darkest times of his life. BG’s knack for vision of a television product and he was available. The responsibility that Sonjay and BG had was massive. They’re going to go over there and scout, and that’s what they did. ”
“Well, we kind of massage that and worked through that. From the very beginning it was out of respect and responsibility to the Sony deal of TNA talent. Once we kind of worked through that and understood that some guys on the roster aren’t currently being used, can we use them? Abyss first comes to mind… Abyss is so damn talented and he was Joe Park in Impact, let me clarify that. So, the Abyss character would be great for the Ring Ka King product on screen, but off screen Abyss can produce, he’s super responsible.. I love the dude.”
Quotes via 411 Mania