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When Billy Corgan announced that NWA was coming to The CW despite the network landing a deal with WWE's developmental brand NXT, it turned more than a few heads around the professional wrestling world.
Can a network have two professional wrestling shows? Or was the NWA simply a placeholder until NXT officially takes its place this fall? Either way, if The CW does decide to keep both shows, Corgan told Comicbook.com that he wouldn't mind crossing over with WWE's developmental brand at some point in the future, as he's had positive interactions with the promotion in the past.
“I would love that. With NXT coming [to The CW], we respect that. WWE is a huge, huge company. We’ve seen recently where they are reaching out to some independents. They worked recently, of course, with TNA. I would love to work with the WWE, but we don’t sort of thinking on it in the sense like we’re waiting for the phone to ring, but I would love to work with them,” Billy Corgan told Comicbook.com
“I’ve certainly interacted with them through the years, both before I was in wrestling and then of course, now being in wrestling. They’ve always treated me great. I have nothing bad to say about them. They’re a class organization through and through as far as how they treat people like myself. My experience has been so positive. I have nothing but good feelings towards them.”
Would it make sense for WWE and allow NXT to have a crossover event with the NWA? Maybe yes, maybe no, but either way, it would appear NWA will still be on television when NXT starts on The CW next year, as Corgan told TV Insider that he's already landed the promotion another television deal, even if he won't say where it is just yet.
“I just signed another TV deal, which I haven’t announced yet. I saw someone in wrestling media wave off the NWA’s success, but I don’t know a lot of companies out there that have three television deals as an independent solely funded by me. We’re really fighting a lot of wars here not only to create a wrestling product that fans will like but also to beat the world’s perception that it can’t be done. That unless you have a billion dollars in your pocket, you can’t manifest enough energy,” Corgan told TV Insider.
“But what people don’t understand is I’m one of the only people in the world who understands how to take something literally from nothing and take it to the top of the mountain multiple times. I know it can be done with faith, dedication, and hard work. It will be interesting to see the behind-the-scenes stuff going on, which by the way is not work, but true and honest stuff that is happening. I insisted on real and organic storylines. It will be interesting to see if people perceive that as integrity or weakness on the part of the company. I think it’s a strength because we have nothing to hide.”
Will NWA be able to establish itself as a viable contender for wrestling the new Big 3 now that TNA's hype has cooled off considerably? Or will they remain a fringe promotion that only the hardcore fans follow, let alone watch with regularity? Fans will find out soon enough.
Billy Corgan sets the record straight on the NWA cocaine spot.
Elsewhere on his expansive press conference surrounding NWA's new show on The CW, Billy Corgan finally opened up about NWA's infamous cocaine spot, noting to Fightful's In The Weeds that the network executives he works with had no issue with the spot at all.
“After the ‘cocaine spot' where Sinister Minister and his hot minions were snorting sugar off a table in Cleveland, that story took a life of its own. ‘NWA is going to lose its CW deal, they've lost their CW deal.' About four days after the event, CW, I don't want to say who, but certainly one of the top people at CW called me and said, ‘What is this all about?' I said, ‘I don't know. No one for your world has reached out to me.' He said, ‘There is no problem over here. We're reading all these articles, and we don't understand what the issue is.' ‘So, to be official, there is no issue with what we did?' ‘No, we think it's funny.' There was no issue. It was a completely invented story by either a troll inside the company, a leaker, or something,” Billy Corgan explained in an interview with Fightful.
“As I joked about at the time. A fake drug spot versus a cheese grater to somebody's head. That's okay in professional wrestling. I didn't like all the pearl-clutching. The fake rumors that we had endangered our CW spot, that was certainly annoying because it was putting a perception out there that we had done something wrong when we had never done anything wrong as far as CW was concerned. If people took offense to the spot, that's fine; that's wrestling, but the pearl-clutching from the crowd, that I found really amusing.”
Welp, there you go, folks; if Corgan is telling the truth, then fans really were more offended by the spot than the executives were and it was all blown out of proportion. The more you know.
