NWA President Billy Corgan recently spoke with the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling to discuss the working relationship between his promotion and AEW, as well as his thoughts on world’s champion Nick Aldis and how Tony Khan has helped the NWA reach a bigger platform. Highlights are below.
On the current AEW and NWA relationship and him being open to more collaboration in the future:
I’m open to all that stuff. I think it’s sort of like where do you want it to go? You know what I mean? Because right now, the NWA is in a position where we’re just building back up. So, like I said, I totally appreciate those opportunities but we’re not really geared in that way, you know what I mean? If you saw some of the comments that Chris Jericho had about AEW working with IMPACT, who I’m publicly no fan of because of my dealings with them, including them stealing a former talent from us. Not to mention what went on with Dixie Carter and that whole [situation]. You know, Jericho completely buried the situation with IMPACT, because he basically was talking about the disparity in power and star attraction. Now there’s plenty of talented people at IMPACT. Not to denigrate them and I’ve worked with some of them, particularly like the people in Decay, super talented people, Rosemary, Crazzy Steve. So yeah, no mark on the talent but look, you’re not an equal in the situation so you’re put in a situation where you’re trying to convince another fan base to believe in some form of equity, it’s always a bit wonky. So I think under the right circumstances like the Serena [Deeb] dynamic, being the holder of the title, Thunder Rosa is an NWA talent working for AEW with great regularity, that’s a nice balance. It’s balanced out by a couple forces. If Tony [Khan] calls and wants to do Cody [Rhodes]/Nick Aldis III, I’m all over it. Some of the traditional ways people work together, invasion angles and stuff like that, I don’t think that’s a good fit for either one of us. Tony’s got more talent than he knows what to do with. He doesn’t need our talent too.
Praises Tony Khan for getting NWA on a bigger network:
Yeah, I met Tony [Khan] — actually, he came to one of my shows with a mutual friend, Chris Nowinski, who wrestling fans would know as Chris Harvard but now is very much in the concussion research field. Chris is doing amazing work in that field really for making sports, particularly for children safer, and actually all professional athletes involved [in] contact, including wrestling, and so we met back then, just kind of socially and then when Tony looked like he was lining up to launch what is now AEW, we had a conversation that — just sort of see where he was going, where I was going and so we’ve stayed in touch and then we built a business relationship on top of that and he’s just been a great business partner. I can’t say enough good things about him, as how he’s been in terms of the business side of the thing. You know, having the NWA Women’s Title on AEW television has been super valuable to us. Tony kept the name of the brand up when we were shut down for a while due to the pandemic, and then Tony allowing his talent to come wrestle on NWA television is huge and of course, Tony helped bring Thunder Rosa to national, international prominence as she should. She’s an incredibly talented person so I think that’s been a cool relationship for everybody involved.
Talks Nick Aldis:
Can’t say enough good things about him [Nick Aldis]. A real leader in the locker room, in the ring, behind the scenes, just a total stand-up dude and it’s so funny because I knew Nick a little bit, but when I came in to work at TNA for a while, Nick was kind of — Mickie [James] was there and Nick were both there at the same time and you know, of course I was in the office and I heard — the whole way the office there painted Nick as a problematic, complaining and they didn’t wanna book him and I could never quite put my finger on it and the guy’s just smart, you know what I mean? He’s not a difficult personality. He can be difficult but that’s because he believes what he’s saying.