When WWF viewers first saw Jeff Jarrett, he was a wannabe country music star…

…an aspiring singer hoping success in the ring would catapult him to the top of Nashville somehow.
In 1995, “Double J” Jeff Jarrett (That’s J E double-F, J A double-R E double-T) would perform his first single, “With My Baby Tonight” live on pay-per-view…
…which was supposed to kick off a storyline with his roadie, The Roadie.

The Roadie was to reveal that it was he who actually sang Jarrett’s song on the record and at the pay-per-view, leading to a match at SummerSlam.

Instead, both men left the company together under murky circumstances.
Then Double J returned with no Roadie.
Then the Roadie returned with no Double J (who now worked in WCW) and feuded with him in absentia.
When RD inducted Double J onto this site in its first year, readers protested. It was one thing to write off the Isaac Yankems and Mantaurs of the world, but Double J? Ain’t he… great?

But had RD instead inducted Double J’s second run, there would have been no such controversy.
See, one night in October 1997, Jeff Jarrett showed up to WWF Raw unannounced…

…coming to the ring to bury not just WCW, but his old gimmick from the WWF. This was a new, more realistic era with no room for fake country crooners. Thus, not only did he trash the Double J character, he singled out Vince McMahon by name for coming up with such a stupid idea. And Vince agreed!
Jarrett also told him to stick “With My Baby Tonight” up his butt. Vince may or may not have agreed.
But other than a brief pop for the Scream mask a fan threw at Vince…

…Jarrett’s segment fell flat. His grievances came across as self-defeating—he complained about working with Mongo McMichael, who couldn’t even lock up, but who still managed to beat him for the US title.

Or racist—he described Ahmed Johnson as “a Black man who can’t even speak the English language”.

Or hopelessly uptight—he was aghast that Steve Austin would shave his head and say the word, “ass”.
In fact, Jarrett tried to tear down the whole Stone Cold character, declaring the top star’s top merchandise as blasphemous…

…and, in an all-time bad prediction, telling Austin that no matter how hard he tried to change his persona, he would “always be the Ringmaster”.

“What’s the ringmaster?” asked a million Stone Cold fans simultaneously.
If you thought these call-outs would lead to on-screen feuds with the likes of Stone Cold, however, you’d be wrong.

After all, Vince had signed Jeff in a rush just five days earlier and didn’t know what to do with him.
Thus, Jarrett soon wound up in the NWA faction, defending a title no one had heard of against guys no one cared about. Then, after months of spinning his wheels, Jeff shifted gears and put the pedal to the metal.

Reverse is a gear, isn’t in?
Yes, when I titled this induction, “The Return of Double J”, I didn’t mean the return of Jeff Jarrett. I meant the return of Double F’ing J.
Bucking the Attitude Era trend, Jeff Jarrett went from being himself to being his cartoonish New Generation Era gimmick.

You didn’t see Triple H don his riding gear again…

…or Faarooq his gladiator helmet…

…or Stone Cold, his Million Dollar belt.

But inexplicably, just months after stating that the Double J gimmick was garbage that held his career back—and the boss himself concurring—Jarrett was once again decked out in his electric hat and vinyl jacket, strutting down the aisle to that MIDI fiddle and asking, “Ain’t I great?”

Helping proclaim his greatness this time around was Robert Fuller, now known as Tennessee Lee. Surprisingly, despite the name, Lee never tried spelling his own name.

In his effort to prove once again that Double J was the world’s greatest singer, entertainer, and wrestler, Lee hooked Jarrett up with all the best gigs.

For a few shows, Jarrett rode a horse.

At WrestleMania, Jarrett introduced Bill Clinton’s mistress, who introduced the Intercontinental title match (which he wasn’t in).

And at Unforgiven, Jarrett made his triumphant return to the musical stage after famously lip-syncing the first time.

Advertised as a live concert with country band Sawyer Brown, there would be no singer behind the curtain this time around. Instead, WWF gave us full-blown miming. Not only did Double J lip-sync, and not only did the lead singer of Sawyer Brown lip-sync, but the entire band pretended to play their instruments as their studio track played over the PA.
Most live performances, you’ll find, do not begin with a fade-in. This was plainly a fake concert, and that was before Double J took the mic and badly mouthed the lyrics.

That’s not to say it was 100% phony; the second singer on the recording might very well have been Jarrett himself (because he wasn’t very good), but it sure as hell wasn’t live.

So how did the announcers react to this obvious ruse? Naturally, heel Jerry Lawler loved it and agreed that Jarrett was the new king of country music. But Jim Ross, the voice of reason? He called Double J’s performance, “surprisingly excellent” and praised it for weeks on end.

None of this accomplished anything for Double J, however. It turns out that the gimmick he said sucked, sucked. Eventually, Jarrett kicked Tennessee Lee to the curb and resumed his original mission:
Shooting to the top of the card…

…without crutches like haircuts, profanity, or that dumb blonde Debra McMichael.