NWA owner Billy Corgan is open to the idea of collaborating with WWE or AEW, even as a developmental brand for the top US promotions.
Corgan has previously stated publicly his willingness to collaborate with other promotions. He recently spoke with the Metro UK’s Alistair McGeorge about previous discussions with WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H about getting the NWA on the WWE Network.
“It didn’t go anywhere and that was fine – very, very good discussions, very open and cool,” Corgan said. “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 discussed the NWA possibly serving as a sort of developmental brand for certain wrestlers who are struggling for TV time to help them develop into top stars.
“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,” he said. “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 stated that he has learned to distinguish between business sense and personal taste.
“I’ve been in the entertainment business long enough,” Corgan said, laughing. “I can not always understand or appreciate everything WWE does on a business level, but II can go to WrestleMania, and be a fan like everybody else. And then in the reverse, I don’t have to like what everybody’s doing on a product level to do business with people. I think I can separate those things. I don’t need somebody’s wrestling vision to align with mine if we can do good business together, and at the same time I don’t need them to agree with everything I’m doing.”
Corgan also mentioned how he’s worked with many of WWE’s main roster Superstars and made friends with people just by being in the industry.
“And I’m lucky in that, when you look at the main event roster in WWE, I count some of those people among my friends, and some of those people are people I’ve worked with,” he said. “Bobby Lashley comes to mind as somebody’s who’s very underappreciated in the time that he was in TNA, and Bobby’s gone on to be a main event guy again as he should be.”
Corgan also expressed his optimism for the future, particularly with Triple H succeeding former WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon.
“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,” Corgan said. “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.”
