Posted By James Walsh on 10/07/25


While speaking to Bobbo’s World, former WWE writer Jimmy Jacobs commented on the differences between his time with WWE and TNA aka Impact Wrestling….

“I could wear a few hats [in TNA]. I was a manager on TV, and I could produce matches, promos, and pretapes, and all that stuff, right? Whatever you needed, I could do at that point. And that’s, look, that’s thanks to WWE, right? I learned so much there. I learned so much. I was still better off from it. I’m nothing but appreciative of my time in WWE. You know, again, my firing — that was me. I was the problem. No one else was the problem. You know, it’s like going into someone else’s house and demanding they run their house a certain way. You can’t do it, right? It was Vince [McMahon]’s house. But I learned so much there from, you know, the writers, who were all brilliant, and just like — WWE is this massive production. Seeing how all the wheels turn to make this machine go — it was so amazing.

And so, going to Impact, you know, there were some struggles. All of a sudden, it’s like you go from WWE, where they’ve got the best production and all the resources you want, to like — we’re trimming down. Scott [D’Amore]’s there to go from the huge budget they were on to, ‘Okay, let’s make this work within a budget,’ right? We’re optimizing the budget we have, the resources we have. And so I learned that skill — that was a skill I learned at Impact. In WWE, whatever your idea is, if it’s good, it can be as big and as wild as you want. Now it’s like, okay, now we have to make it work with what we have, and here’s what we have available.

I just loved not being micromanaged. You know, in WWE, it was just — Vince read every single word that was in the scripts. He wanted every single word written down that the performers were going to say. And there’s reasons for that; I’m not faulting him for that. But part of the trouble at WWE is like, if you wanted something changed, it was a difficult process because Vince has to okay it. Vince has to approve it. But Vince is a busy guy. So if Vince has already approved a promo, and I’m talking with the talent and a talent wants to change something, it’s difficult to get to Vince to get him to allow that change to happen. Now, John Cena can change what he wants more. But Stone Cold, Undertaker, those guys — Undertaker, you know, I worked with him once, and Vince was like, Vince said to me literally, ‘Let Undertaker do whatever he wants.’ It was the only time I’d ever heard Vince say that. Undertaker was like at a different level of respect for Vince McMahon than everybody else.

In Impact, if I wanted to try something, I just did it. And if Scott didn’t like it, he’d go, ‘Why’d you do that?’ I’d go, ‘I thought this, this.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t think that.”’ I’d go, ‘Okay, great.’ Like at WWE, so many people were playing — I’ve said this before — but it’s like they were playing to not lose. Because Vince was pretty volatile, and you were always one weird interaction with Vince away from being in the doghouse. Walking on eggshells, they’re not trying to do what’s best — they’re trying to do what won’t get them called to Gorilla by Vince going, ‘Why the hell did this happen here? Why the hell— if I say the sky is green, the sky is green, damn it.’ That’s a Vince quote. So I just loved the freedom at Impact — and the schedule.”