NWA world’s champion Trevor Murdoch recently spoke with the PW Torch to hype up this Saturday’s Hard Times pay-per-view event, where the champ will be defending his title against Matt Cardona and Tyrus in a triple-threat showdown.
During the interview, Murdoch addressed the current controversy surrounding NWA President Billy Corgan and his decision to not run a second all-female show (EmPowerrr) following the success of the 2021 event. Highlights from his chat are below.
On NWA not running a second EmPowerrr event and why he agrees with Corgan for not running another one:
“It’s a subject where, I’m going to get heat in whatever direction. Any answer, other than, ‘we are going to do it,’ I don’t think would have satisfied anybody. First off, look at the first EmPowerrr. We had a quarter of our girls on that show. We had girls from all over the globe, we had girls from other companies. We had different working relationships with other companies when we did that first EmPowerrr. Number two, when you look back at the first EmPowerrr, how many talents we had on that card for that show, there were a lot of wrestlers on that show. A lot of people don’t understand, someone had to pay that bill. Someone has to pay those girls, as much as Tony (Khan) wanted to chime in and say he paid for Leyla, which is great, but Billy covered the rest of that shit. That’s a huge bill.”
Says it is easy for fans to be negative on the announcement rather than rationally thinking about the business side of holding another event like that:
“When it came down for the second EmPowerrr, there isn’t a book out there that just has every great female wrestler out there and we can just look at it and go, ‘We get this person, that person, this person.’ Granted, I know there is a ton of fans out there that can give me a list of 10 or 20 people that they know in their area that can fit on that show. In the same sense, I understand you’re fans of those women, but maybe they haven’t done what they need to do to stand out to get the attention that they need to. There are so many factors in there into what was said in that statement. It’s easy for people to jump on the negative, ‘you guys are assholes,’ there are a lot of factors going into the decision and a lot of factors going into EmPowerrr to make it successful.”
Adds that a lot of female talents weren’t as easy to book since this time around due to the indie circuit picking back up:
“Some of the people who are publicly making comments and are upset and it was part of their decision, privately, they were burying the whole thing. That’s what makes me shake my head. Publicly, people want to say one thing, but privately, they were saying the opposite. I’m not going to air someone’s dirty laundry out. I heard it from the horse’s mouth. There are so many factors that go into it. Not to mention, some of the girls that we booked for the last EmPowerrr, the dates didn’t match up. They were already booked other places or were already with another company where they’re not allowed to wrestle for us. Why think of all that shit? Why put all that into consideration? It’s easy to look at a rich musician and bury him for one single comment and not put any thought in it. So many more dates and women were free and available because there weren’t as many promotions running. Now, we’re back into the thick of it and we’re working in front of crowds. People are trying to get jobs in other places. A lot of factors went into it and a lot were out of our control.”
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)