When WWE announced that they'd agreed to a new five-year deal to bring NXT to The CW, fans around the professional wrestling world, at least fans in the know, wondered what this meant for Billy Corgan's NWA, the promotion that was previously reported to have agreed to a deal with the very same network the month prior.

Were these talks a little earlier in the conversation than it initially seemed? Did CW simply find a better deal and go with it, choosing NXT over NWA outright? Or was it the now-infamous cocaine spot at NWA Samhain that reportedly shook the network and made them reconsider getting into business with the “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” singer?

While we don't know, at least for now, the exact ramifications of the NXT signing, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff believes that NWA should have never put themselves in this situation, period, as it proved to be the sort of unforced error that needlessly hurts the business.

“It's weird, isn't it, how wrestling still, to this day, despite how mainstream, how large it's become, now powerful it's become, still finds residence in this weird spot in television where certain things are just off limits. If we're gonna watch a scripted series, I don't know how many I've watched where you see somebody doing cocaine or shooting heroin or doing whatever within the context of a scripted presentation. But yet when wrestling steps outside of the bounds, and I don't even know where the boundaries are, I don't think anybody else does either, there's no definitive right or wrong. It's a matter of taste and judgment at a particular point in the time,” Eric Bischoff said via Fightful.

“But in this particular case, you've got people doing cocaine on camera, but it's probably not real cocaine, we all know that. But if you're using cocaine to advance a character or storyline, you got people throwing flags. I think a lot of that has to do with the reason why beer companies still are hesitant, to this day, to advertise in wrestling because there's still either a real or perceived component of the audience, too large of a component of the audience, that are children. That's where I think the gray area is. Some television executives recognize it for what it is. Some of them are still, ‘Oh no, we don't want to be associated with that.' They're fearful of it. But I think TV versus pay-per-view, it doesn't f**king matter. It's still the NWA. It's still your brand. It's still your characters that we see on TV. Yes, pay-per-views are seen on television.”

Whoa, interesting stuff, right? Well you don't know the half of it, as Bischoff decided to really lean into Corgan for his naïveté, as it may have cost wrestling as a whole more than just NWA versus NXT.

Eric Bischoff has no idea why the NWA would lean into controversy.

Discussing the spot Billy Corgan reportedly pitched himself, Eric Bischoff questioned virtually everything about the decision, as, in his opinion, making fun of a real world issue like drug abuse in the midst of the opioid crisis is about as smart as doing so to get a performer like Father John Mitchell over with the crowd.

“So I think to find any kind of comfort, where you're able to get away with things, big things, controversial things like a cocaine spot, but you're gonna be allowed to get away with it because it's on pay-per-view and not on television, is naive as h*ll. That's just inexperience, not having dealt with television networks, not having been in a position where you've got a television partner that actually cares about what you do. It's just naïveté. It's all it is and a fair amount of stupidity because you know you're bringing that attention to yourself. You got people dropping dead in the streets from snorting blow, from fentanyl. I don't know, man. I don't know Billy Corgan. I've had lunch with him and spent a little bit of time with him, but that was just flat-out frickin stupid. Especially [because] you're trying to emerge. You're trying to break out of YouTube and actually get a television deal, and you feel strongly about a cocaine spot. Which by the way, didn't get anybody over anyway,” Bischoff asked.

“What was the purpose of it? You're gonna get [James] Mitchell over? Are you kidding me? The guy's never been over in the 20 years he's been in the business. How is this going to make a difference? The more I think about it, the more p*ssed off I get because it's the kind of thing that really damages the wrestling genre for television. People are inventing ways to screw stuff up. I don't know. I hate when people blow opportunities. They're hard to come by, folks. They're really hard to come by. Why would you do something that you know is going to blow up in your face? If you don't know it's going to blow up in your face, get out of the business because you shouldn't be in it.”

Should NWA have done the cocaine spot? No. Is there a justification for the decision? No. And now, well, unless CW is going to double down on professional wrestling, something that WWE is almost certainly not down for, it looks like Billy Corgan is out of luck when it comes to landing a major television deal.