Billy Corgan thinks the NWA could potentially serve as a developmental brand for WWE.
Corgan previously worked with TNA and went on to become the president of the promotion. After he left the company, he bought the NWA in 2017, and he has been its president ever since.
Speaking with Alistair McGeorge of Metro, Corgan described how he previously spoke with Triple H, the head of NXT at the time, about getting NWA on the WWE Network. While it didn't pan out, he made it clear that these talks went well, and they left him feeling optimistic about the potential for the two companies to collaborate.
"It didn’t go anywhere and that was fine – very, very good discussions, very open and cool. They certainly liked what I was trying to do, and they’ve always been cool about what I was doing in the NWA, so I remain optimistic going into the future that there might be some business there to do," Corgan said.
The NWA president described how the promotion could potentially operate as a developmental territory of sorts, and the arrangement could be mutually beneficial. He noted that the same concept could be applied to AEW, and he pointed out that the company has plenty of talent that struggles to consistently get on TV.
"There might be economic models where they say, 'Take these 10 talent, let us have an oversight position, you help develop these talents. It’d be good for the NWA, it’d be good for the WWE.' There are lots of opportunities there! I would say the same thing even as it pertains to AEW – AEW has a tremendous amount of talent under contract, not everybody is able to be on their main shows, there might be opportunities where they wanna send those people on a developmental level," Corgan said.
Corgan noted that he doesn't need his vision for wrestling to align with that of someone else in order to work together. He also pointed out that he has plenty of history with WWE stars, such as Bobby Lashley, through their time together in TNA/IMPACT Wrestling. Now, with a new regime leading WWE, Corgan expressed his belief that everything is wide open.
"If you’re a fan, it’s an exciting time! Things are wide open again as professional wrestling really was. The last 20 years is really an aberration to the way the professional business ran. Before the McMahons really took power of the wrestling culture for 20 years, wrestling was pretty much a wide open business. You might see a different flexibility with WWE as far as other company’s go, moving into the future. Certainly my conversations in the past with Triple H would indicate there’s a different degree of openness then maybe there would have been in the regime that was running things before," he said.
Corgan previously discussed WWE's interest in having NWA on the WWE Network. Check out his comments here.
In an interview, Corgan reflected on NWA's working relationship with AEW. Click here to see what he had to say.
Check out the card for NWA Hard Times 3 here.
