5 Defunct Wrestling Promotions That Could Have Been Big
If there's one thing that the wrestling world has never been short of, it's wrestling promotions. Whether it be the glory days of territories, wrestling's highest peak during The Monday Night Wars featuring WWE, WCW and ECW in between or even in recent years with Impact Wrestling, Ring of Honor and the upstart All Elite Wrestling on its way, fans have often been spoiled for choice.
And while a company like All Elite Wrestling has so much buzz and hype before they have even presented their debut show, it is not always that easy for a new company to debut to much fanfare. Even if they have the talent, financial backers and even TV deals in place, sometimes everything can fall through in a matter of weeks.
There have been a few ambitious promoters to rise up over the years and present their own wrestling organizations in an attempt to fill the void left from WCW and ECW following their demise and today, we will be looking at the top five now-defunct wrestling promotions that could have been big.
#5 Global Force Wrestling: 2014-?
This one is actually cheating just a little, because Global Force Wrestling is still active as Global Force Entertainment, but has not presented any wrestling shows in quite some time.
Things didn't really go according to plan for TNA founder Jeff Jarrett when Total Nonstop Action lost so much money during it's first few months in existence that led to him selling up most of his ownership to Panda Energy.
It eventually got to the point where Jarrett himself would depart from the company in 2014. The news of his sudden and shocking departure from his own founding company would soon be followed by the news of he and wife Karen Jarrett founding a new wrestling company, Global Force Wrestling.
It seemed like there was potential at the beginning for GFW as they ran live events featuring talent like Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, who were with the Bullet Club at the time, as well as Bobby Roode, Scott Steiner, Nick Aldis, KUSHIDA, Cody Rhodes and of course Jarrett himself, among others. Jeff Jarrett said that they had sixteen one-hour shows filmed in Las Vegas between July and October in 2015, that he was shopping around different networks.
GFW had an invasion angle with Impact Wrestling in 2015, which ran for a few months. Plans were announced in 2016 for GFW and Impact Wrestling to have a merger, but those plans fell through when Jarrett departed from Impact once again. GFW has since co-produced several events with FITEtv, although they are not fully fledged Global Force Wrestling events. It is not impossible for GFW to resume plans of becoming an active wrestling company again, but with Jeff Jarrett now back with WWE as a producer, it seems unlikely for the foreseeable future.