NWA star Tim Storm revealed during an interview with Post Wrestling that there was an offer for him to drop the NWA World’s Title to someone in Japan while he was champion, an offer that Billy Corgan ended up passing on shortly after he took over the brand. Check out the full story in the highlights below.
Says there was an offer for him to drop the NWA world title in Japan:
Historically speaking, that’s not unheard of (champions being offered to drop their title in another promotion). I think Jerry Brisco did it, Harley (Race) was with him and it was a huge amount of money and I wanna say it might have been the drop to Giant Baba maybe, where they basically dropped in I think what? Three days later, won it back and the NWA, if I’m remembering right, NWA didn’t approve any of that. So historically, that’s been done before and I guess, truthfully for me, there was more than one offer for that. The amounts of money were pretty different but, there was some discussion as I was going to make the trip to Japan and planning some other trips and those kind of things that maybe we do something like that. I think that was actually pitched to — and I don’t remember if this was pre-Billy (Corgan) or Lightning One or post but, to maybe drop the belt over there and then the guy hold it for three months because I think about that, you’re made.
How he ended up working with Nick Aldis which he was very happy about:
Going to Japan as the NWA World Champion is completely different than anywhere else on earth. Their respect and their love of the NWA Champion, it’s almost worship… Kind of the way the situation worked was they did not — that wasn’t a good idea. We’re not gonna drop it. To me, you don’t turn major titles over quickly and short term, I think it loses some of the meaning if you’re just constantly changing champions, it loses the respect of that title. It was a considerable amount of money and I won’t say it was life-changing. It’s not like, okay, I do this and I’m retired. It’s nothing like that. But it was a lot of money. But it never even was a realistic decision. You think about it. Like you said, you kind of go, ‘Hmm, what could I do with that kind of money? You know, I’ve always wanted a Corvette.’ There’s a lot of things that you can look at. But truthfully and people are gonna go — because that’s not wrestling now. It meant too much to me for me to even consider that realistically and then even back here, no names because I will probably run into these people, but there were some other states who thought that it would be great to come up and drop the title to their guy or to them personally and that’s a whole different ball game, that’s a joke. I would not even consider doing that. The other money, got your attention. Yeah, I better leave that alone. There was even some finagling to go, ‘Hey, you know that the plan was for you to probably drop it to me anyway before they bought it so why don’t we do this and he’ll pay the fee.’ ‘No.’ That’s a little shady but, you know, to the point where I did call Billy and say, ‘Hey, did you know anything about this? Was that ever gonna happen?’ He goes, ‘Nope. Not gonna do that. That was way before me. We’re not doing that so’ and truthfully, they put a ton of trust in me. When I found out that the NWA had been purchased, my first thought was, it was a really good run. It doesn’t take anything away from what I’ve accomplished. I never thought I’d be on the list of the greatest wrestlers of all-time in my opinion, of NWA champions. So, I really thought, probably my first match out, whoever they picked, because Billy came from TNA and probably had a list of guys that were in consideration but to leave it on me, let me run a program with Nick so that it meant something, couldn’t ask for anything better.
Elsewhere in the interview, Storm spoke about potentially shifting to a backstage role in NWA. You can read about that here.