In the Greek tragedies, the son always ends up cursing the father. In TNA’s tragedy? The son got powerbombed through a table by his dad’s biker gang.
Garett Bischoff, son of the infamous Eric Bischoff, didn’t walk into professional wrestling — he tripped and fell headfirst into it. A legacy hire in the truest sense, Garett debuted in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling not as a second-generation superstar poised for glory, but as a striped-shirt referee named Jackson James. That’s right — TNA introduced the next Bischoff not with fanfare, but with a generic alias better suited to an ’80s sitcom extra. Nepotism, but make it subtle.
From Referee to Ring-Rat
For a while, he stayed in the shadows, raising arms and counting to three. But all secrets in wrestling leak faster than kayfabe in a group chat. On October 16, 2011, during a Sting vs. Hogan bout at Bound for Glory, Jackson James made his true identity known when he (reluctantly) helped Sting win — and got bashed over the skull with a steel chair by his own father. Forget Thanksgiving dinner; Garett’s 2011 was already a family feud live on pay-per-view.
This launched one of TNA’s most bizarre angles: Eric Bischoff vs. his own flesh and blood. Think Succession meets Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Garett transitioned from anonymous referee to reluctant babyface, becoming a beacon of hope for fans who believed DNA was enough to carry you to main event status.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
A Babyface, but No One Was Cheering
Despite looking like the guy who sells pre-workout powders out of a CrossFit gym, Garett was presented as a plucky underdog taking on TNA’s most established names. Hulk Hogan (yes, that Hogan) was even assigned as his mentor. Not since Billy Kidman got Torrie Wilson has someone been so overbooked for so little.
His initial feud with Gunner (wrestling’s answer to a human protein bar) saw him winning matches via disqualification, countout, divine intervention — any way but a convincing pinfall. TNA kept feeding him opportunities while fans slowly realized that Garett had all the charisma of a test pattern and the ring awareness of a sleepy possum.
Still, TNA insisted. Matches against Kurt Angle? Sure. Tagging with Jeff Hardy? Why not. Beating Daniels and Kazarian? You bet. Losing to Gunner on pay-per-view with Eric in his corner? Absolutely. This was the Bischoff family redemption arc, and the final boss was, fittingly, Lethal Lockdown 2012. There, Team Garett defeated Team Eric, and father Bischoff was forced out of TNA — in storyline only, of course. In real life, he presumably just walked over to Gorilla and grabbed a headset.
Aces & Eights: Sons of Mediocrity
When you can’t win over fans as a plucky babyface, why not join a fake biker gang? In 2013, Garett dropped the clean-cut act and embraced leather, sunglasses, and vague notions of rebellion as a member of Aces & Eights. The stable was basically Sons of Anarchy by way of Dollar General, and Garett’s addition was like putting raisins in potato salad — strange, unnecessary, and hard to ignore.
He joined best bud Wes Brisco in turning on Kurt Angle, because if you’re going to stab someone in the back, it might as well be a gold medalist. Suddenly, Garett was cutting promos about “respect” and “earning his spot” while dressed like the guy at Sturgis who sells bootleg Kid Rock merch.
The problem? He still couldn’t wrestle. Or talk. Or look intimidating. Garett had the look of someone playing wrestler on Create-a-Character Mode, with all the sliders defaulted. And yet, he kept getting TV time, which is a testament to the raw power of having “Bischoff” on your driver’s license.
Post-TNA: The Vanishing and Return
After Aces & Eights slowly imploded into parody (earning Worst Gimmick of 2013 in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter), Garett quietly disappeared from television. His profile vanished from TNA’s website in 2015, around the same time his family and Jason Hervey sued TNA for unpaid salary. Turns out you can only powerbomb your own kid on TV so many times before HR gets involved.
He resurfaced occasionally on the indies — notably reuniting with Brisco for some small shows and capturing the Atomic Revolutionary Wrestling Tag Titles in Florida. He even returned to Impact in 2022 for a nostalgic cameo with Aces & Eights, because nothing says “we’re out of ideas” quite like bringing back a gimmick fans actively booed out of existence.
The Legacy of Being Second-Best
Garett Bischoff’s career is a strange one. He wasn’t the worst wrestler in the world — he could take a bump, sell reasonably, and had a passable dropkick. But he was never particularly good either. His biggest asset was his surname, and in a business where connections are everything, that was enough to put him in matches he had no business being in.
He wasn’t born into greatness, but he did inherit airtime. In a better world, maybe he’d have gotten a few years on the indies to sharpen his craft instead of being thrown headfirst into the fire (and still needing Hogan to hose him off). Maybe then he’d have been more than a footnote in TNA’s long list of baffling pushes.
But Garett Bischoff’s story is the kind of pro wrestling tale that would make for great bar conversation among bitter veterans and smirking smart marks: a guy who beat Jeff Hardy in a tag match, turned on Kurt Angle, led a team against his dad at a major PPV… and still somehow remained anonymous.
Final Bell
Today, Garett keeps a relatively low profile. He’s a husband, a father, a business owner, and — unlike many of his peers — avoided total self-destruction. In that sense, he may be one of wrestling’s rare winners. But in terms of legacy, Garett Bischoff will forever remain pro wrestling’s greatest “he was fine, I guess.”
He wasn’t a chosen one. He was the chosen someone. And in the chaotic scrapbook of TNA’s wildest era, he’ll always be the guy who debuted as a referee… and peaked as an extra in his own storyline.