NWA owner Billy Corgan addressed some of the criticism NWA World Champion Tyrus receives from fans during an interview with the Under The Ring Podcast interview.
Tyrus brings “old school heat,” according to Corgan, who compared him to Andre The Giant and Ernie Ladd and claimed that Tyrus hasn’t crossed any political lines that could harm the NWA.
Tyrus will defend his championship at the ‘312’ NWA PPV on April 7 in Highland Park, Illinois. Corgan had the following to say about Tyrus:
“On the wrestling side, I’ve been very, very happy and very satisfied. I think he’s (Tyrus) done everything I’ve asked him to do and he’s been great to work with. As far as Tyrus as a public person, I knew Tyrus when he was working with TNA and basically standing with his arms crossed behind Matt Hardy and holding one of the babies, right? I saw when he first started working for FOX so, and we’ve stayed in touch all these years. We have our own relationship. Like myself, when you’re a public person, you say things that not everybody agrees with but look, he’s on one of the biggest networks in the world, he knows what he’s doing and so for better or for worse, he writes his own checks that way. As far as I’m concerned, he has never crossed the line to the point where it’s been detrimental to the NWA. Now, I know not everyone agrees with that opinion but I think people have this weird kind of sliding scale because there’s lots of blame to go around when you look at the professional wrestling landscape of where people look the other way at different things. Most of the heat around Tyrus is political and as a person who’s been through some of (those) things myself, I try not to pay a lot of attention to that stuff. Not because it’s not important… There’s a lot of energy behind it which has other agendas and it’s not really down to the individual as much as it’s like a culture war type of thing so, as far as I’m concerned, we’re a professional wrestling company and we’re here to wrestle.
“Can I say one other thing? What people don’t understand is I grew up in a time when wrestling heat was different. This world we live in, it’s like fake heat or a five-star matchup, five-star matches. To me, Tyrus brings that old school heat that an Ernie Ladd brought or an André the Giant brought. There’s not a lot of guys who can, at that size, bring that level of heat and so, look, it’s professional wrestling. Come and boo, come and hate him, come and wish the next guy, in this case, Chris Adonis is gonna take him out. That’s what wrestling is for. When we overly kind of try to bring life into wrestling, I think that’s kind of an uncomfortable thing because you and I could spend an hour talking about where somebody did this and then people look the other way and they still have a job… As far as I’m concerned, he’s been a model employee for the NWA and I don’t have anything else to say about it other than he’s been great to work with.”
You can check out the complete interview below:
(h/t to Andrew Thompson of Post Wrestling for the transcription)
