Billy Corgan is the current President of the National Wrestling Alliance, but that isn't his first venture into a well-known wrestling organization. Corgan was once apart of the ownership and creative team in TNA Wrestling, but as he will tell you, that did not turn out the way he had hoped.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Billy discusses what went wrong during his time in TNA, including what he thinks Dixie Carter viewed him as while they worked together, saying, in his eyes, he was a bargaining chip for then-President Carter.
“Obviously, [Dixie Carter saw me as a money guy in TNA.] I mean, I thought I was being brought in to help the company, which I did. But at the end of the day, I think it's pretty easy to see that I was brought in as some sort of strange insurance policy they could either provide cash or a chip that they could play to try to get a network deal,” said Corgan. “It's wrestling. I don't care what people think in the sense of if it's good for the product, it's good for the business that people talk smack. Totally fine with that. But at some point, I think there's a through-line there that I'm a creative person in my home where I'm good at is taking a creative vision and executing it on a business level. That's a bit boring. But the fact of the matter is, as I've done that now for two businesses."
Speaking further on TNA, Billy would discuss the falling out with the company and his thwarted attempt to purchase what is now IMPACT Wrestling.
"I tried to buy it and I and I very forcefully tried to insert myself in the process. I had a legal right to do so, which is very complicated and boring and probably a podcast unto itself. And and and the forces that were against me conspired to defraud me from those resources," Billy continued. "I went to court over that. The judge didn't necessarily rule against me as much as saying, I can't rule for you now, but if you want to prosecute your case, it was never resolved in that way. And I obviously finger Dixie Carter in that defrauding. And I've been public about that as well. Yeah. What had to be happening, as was the case was settled and what is now Anthem IMPACT and I ended in that particular time on a handshake. That handshake is no longer valid. But the point of the matter is, is that it was resolved in a business frame, but it was never resolved sort of spiritually speaking because I had every right to try to take over a company that I had invested a $1.3 million."
Continuing on, Billy would discuss what he learned during his time with TNA, crediting the time he spent working with Matt and Jeff Hardy and they're “Broken Universe” as an educational experience for him allowing him to see what all could be possible in wrestling with the right performers.
“I don't want to be a cog in a bigger wheel, you know, because my vision sort of takes a sort of it has it has to be applied from the top down because it goes all the way through staffing and how we run,” Billy would say. “The other thing I would say is that I was intimately involved and happily so with, you know, the whole deletion angle and the broken universe. Got to shoot. A lot of great stuff with Matt and Jeff [Hardy]. You know, you've been shot on The Hardys' property for the one crazy segment where we [had] drones. I mean, we did it all. We did it all. I don't, you know, can't believe the fire marshals didn't show up anyway. So. I saw where the power of an idea can -- wrestling is 100+ years old. And like music, a cynicism can creep in that tells you there's really nothing new. And kids and great ideas can prove over and over again that no, that's not true. You can always rewrite the rules of gravity. And so being intimately involved with the deletion angle told me that if you've got a cool idea and you have great talented people like Matt and Jeff and the other people that were involved in that, Rosemary comes to mind and Abyss and Crazzy Steve, you can change the world. You can turn it upside down on its head. And if you remember during, though, that that that period of time that was the most talked about thing in professional wrestling, good and bad as it should be. So I saw where the power of an idea can still work even in an August institution like professional wrestling. So I was able to see that at the highest levels.”
During a press conference in 2019, NWA Vice President Dave Lagana would say that the NWA is interested in working with any and all promotions except for IMPACT Wrestling. Billy’s current product, NWA Powerrr can be seen every Tuesday on YouTube streaming live at 6:05 P.M. Eastern.
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