NWA President Billy Corgan had a conversation with Chris Van Vliet on a number of topics including how top WWE Star LA Knight (F.K.A. Eli Drake) has a main-event level ability in the ring and has great promo skills as well as how he was being set up to be the NWA World’s Heavyweight Champion, which was around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic as Knight was still under an NWA contract at the time.
Corgan said, “Yes, one of the great promos of all time (Corgan said about L.A. Knight). And that’s not to take away anything from his wrestling. He has a main event-level ability in the ring. But we all know that if you can walk and talk, that you hit that other echelon. It’s great to see him hitting that now. You know, we booked him, he was being set up to be NWA Heavyweight Champion. And that’s right around, I think the time of the pandemic. He was under an NWA contract, and it got to the point where it was like, you know, I can’t remember what it was. But me and him always did good business so no heat there. But it was obvious that it was like, he needed to go pursue other opportunities. And where I was standing at the time was just going to hold him back. There was something there. But it was clearly understood that, obviously, was built around (Nick) Aldis for a while. But once Aldis was going to drop the title, it was going to clearly go to him. So it’s a shame that it never happened because we would have had a lot of fun. Always great to work with him. And somewhere there’s a picture of my 50th birthday. And it’s me, Aron Stevens, Eli Drake, EC3 and I can’t remember, another person from wrestling was there. So yeah, I’ve always gotten on with him. And I’m very happy for him and he deserves every bit of success that’s coming his way because he’s fought and clawed his way to get there.”
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(H/T to PostWrestling for transcribing the above quotes)
