Billy Corgan On How NWA Competes With WWE & AEW, Tyrus As World Champion, Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Corgan On How NWA Competes With WWE & AEW, Tyrus As World Champion, Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Corgan (@billy) is the lead singer of The Smashing Pumpkins and also the owner and promoter of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). He sits down with Chris Van Vliet the Blue Wire Studios in Las Vegas to talk about NWA 75 on August 26 & 27 in St Louis. He also discusses the growth of NWA, the decision to make Tyrus the NWA World's Heavyweight Champion, what he learned from working in TNA, becoming the subject of a Family Guy joke, will there ever be a "Rat in a Cage" match, working with Eli Drake (LA Knight) in NWA, balancing Smashing Pumpkins and wrestling, finding a media partner for NWA and much more
On NWA’s not being nostalgia but a revival:
“I hear it all the time. Not just in regards to the NWA. I hear it all the time. Not everybody I talked to is like an NWA fan. They might be old school, WWF fan or whatever. They just don't get it. And yeah, so my whole point of the NWA at this point, going about six years into owning the company, is trying to figure out that formula where you can take really good mainstream professional wrestling, and bring it to the people and once again, sort of bring back those greater numbers.”
Where does NWA fit right now in the wrestling world:
“I think we're properly positioned to be the next big company. I know people will kind of go, how does that work? I think it has to do with my access to mainstream media. I think it has access has to do with my access to every network in the world who's interested in what I'm doing, and I'm just trying to find the right business models with them. And I think it has to do with presenting a mainstream wrestling product that the average person if presented on television will respond to. I think, once the NWA can get in that position if we can get in that position, and you could argue that's a big if, but if we get in that position, I think we will run side by side with the biggest companies in the world. Because wrestling by large is a cheap product to make. That's always been its great attraction to television. And it has a consistent audience, they'll show up week after week. So getting from let's call it the bottom of the pile, to the top of the pile. Now that's a vast distance. But if you can cross that desert and get to the other side, well, it's pretty wide open. In terms of product, I think the NWA fits quite comfortably between AEW and WWE. WWE has a very hardcore fan base, but they do business in a very particular way. Of course, that's much debated through the years, Vince, of course, is the only promoter that's ever made money in wrestling. So we always have to pay tribute to that. AEW, of course, is running a very brand-specific product. Tony has found business where people didn't think business could be found and all credit to him on that. But again, that mainstream up-the-middle position of professional wrestling is sorely lacking. Many people would argue that WWE is that mainstream thing. I would argue it's its own version of niche.”
On figuring out the algorithm:
“I don't mean this disrespectfully. And I don't mean it disrespectfully to Mr. Beast. Look, I signed with the record label in 1990. And as an artist, content creator, you know, I had all the pride and ego of somebody like, hey, you need me and I could never understand why the labels treated us so poorly. And they paid for that over time. But the essential idea is it's still the networks that are the thing because they're the people that have to make those decisions. Most talents rise and fall meteorically in windows. Some stick around, which is why down the street we have a bunch of Gordon Ramsay restaurants every time you turn around, right? He's built his brand off of what became his television personality, right? Where I'm going with this is I understand the pride of a content creator, I understand the pride of an NWA to make 100 plus hours of television a year now, like, that's a big deal for me, right? Yeah. Not to mention the expense that's involved in the logistics that are involved. But if your YouTube if your Paramount Plus, Peacock, whatever, they have to figure out who's hot in the market, and that's ultimately what it's about. So what I'm trying to say to you is, I think we're already there. If you look at the losses that are going on, I think it was it was a Peacock, that just came out $635 million loss in three months. But why are they willing to endure that loss? Me speculating? It's because what's coming is the business. So what I'm saying is, we're already there, they just haven't figured out the math yet.”
On wanting to take the NWA live in the future:
“Yeah, I think everybody knows that you know, again, you have a smart audience, you know, when you run live event stuff, that's a lot more expensive than say putting stuff on TV. So you know, just like, look at the respect that you must give something like Raw that's which is run, how many years. It's like running a live show on time, delivering, you know, main events and stuff that really matters. Keep an audience coming back. I mean, that is quite an accomplishment. You look at the infrastructure and stuff like that. So when you look at why an Endeavour would pay $9 billion for WWE, one person would sit there who doesn't understand say, well, you're just buying wrestlers and a ring. No, you're buying a whole culture that knows how to make that work, week after week after week, in their case, multiple times a week.”
On possibly selling The Smashing Pumpkins back catalogue:
"I don't plan on it. I've had those conversations. You know, my catalogue is valuable. But what I'm saying is, is, you know, I don't think all the math is in yet on what the true value of artists is. I made this argument about 10 years ago at a music symposium. And people kind of rolled their eyes at me, because, it was mostly radio programmers and I was chastising him for saying, do you understand that the Beatles and Queen are far more valuable to your stations than the band that had the one hit? And you really should get in behind the branding of the brands that really have made a difference in your business. Paint a quick picture because it does kind of work back to wrestling. In 1992 I walk into a radio station, my band is just one of 500 bands. It took real visionary people to go no your band means a lot more to this radio station than everybody else we're going to kind of lean into you. When my band hit fallow times in the late 90s, early 2000s. We started getting shoved aside, and I started saying, but you're still playing all my other songs like nine times a day. Don't you want still want me in the room? And they were like, No, we don't need you anymore. So what happened? They all came back around. Why do they come back around? Because of the value of the brand, Nirvana, Pearl Jam is Pumpkins is far more valuable than the band that had like one or two hit songs. So we see the same thing in wrestling. It's like we've seen it with them fan conventions and stuff like that. Let's call that the lower tier of why is WWE now sort of getting very much in the business of documentaries and because the brand of Ultimate Warrior is far more valuable than they would even imagine 10 years ago.”
On LA Knight:
“Yes, one of the great promos of all time. And that's not to take away anything from his wrestling. He has a main event-level ability in the ring. But we all know that if you can walk and talk, that's you hit that other echelon. It's great to see him hitting that now. You know, we booked him, you know, he was being set up to be NWA Heavyweight Champion. And that's right around, I think the time of the pandemic. He was under an NWA contract, and it got to the point where it was like, you know, I can't remember what it was. But me and him always did good business so no heat there. But it was obvious that it was like, he needed to go pursue other opportunities. And where I was standing at the time was just going to hold him back. There was something there. But it was clearly understood that you know, obviously, was built around Aldis for a while. But once Aldis was going to drop the title, it was going to clearly go to him. So it's a shame that it never happened because we would have had a lot of fun. Always great to work with him. And somewhere there's a picture of my 50th birthday. And it's me, Aaron Stephens, Eli Drake, ECE 3 and I can't remember another person from wrestling was there. So yeah, I've always gotten on with him. And I'm very happy for him and he deserves every bit of success that's coming his way because he's fought and clawed his way to get there.”
On TNA and Dixie Carter:
“There are moments of frustration where I wish I'd gotten the TV deal, but seemed like it was there and then you realise it's a little bit of what I went through with the band. The minute you jump into deeper water now you're subservient to a greater set of forces which are beyond your control, put simply to the camera, the minute you take somebody else's money. Now you're in a different negotiation. And they start you know, I remember, just tell a quick funny story. I remember being in a TNA and there was some grousing about Kurt Angle being the champion, which seems strange to me because Kurt Angle was one of the all-time greats and always a great person to do business with behind the scenes. Nothing respect for Kurt. So I was like, why are people complaining? Oh, well, you know, somebody pulls you aside, well, we are on Destination America, Destination America told Dixie Carter, you need someone as a champion who represents America. So Dixie just switched the belts. But the thing was, it was the grousing in the company was it was because it wasn't a wrestling decision based on setting up wrestling characters. It was like the network who's paying us all this money, told us so we're going to do what the network said.”
On not defending himself:
“So that's what I'm saying is, you know, sometimes you get frustrated, you think I really wish I got the TV deal. But we may be in a worse position now. Because maybe we wouldn't have been able to fulfil the thing that we would have obligated ourselves to if we entered into a deal that we weren't ready to make. Now I feel, so for doing a report card assessment, you know, about six years into me owning the company, I think the wrestling is at the highest quality that it's been in the six years, I'm very, very happy with where the wrestling is, and it is getting better. And we're getting younger, which I think is the key. We have a lot of key young talents under contract. So very happy about that. And so the future looks bright there. And I think moving away from this kind of lazy take of old school and modernising the product. And now we're about ready to flip the switch into a much more modern style of production. So and I think honestly, to be fair, past, past clickbait, I think a lot of the criticisms have been fair, I think the only thing I would say in defence is a lot of the criticisms that are fair, they don't know the whole story. And I'm not a person who's always gonna run out and try to defend myself. When I was getting a lot of heat about Tyrus-related stuff. Let's call it round one and round two of Tyrus-related issues. Some of my friends and some of my friends in wrestling who aren't in the company, let's just say people around the biz, who know me and sort of don't understand why I'm doing what I'm doing would call and say, Why aren't you out there defending yourself more? Because there is this other kind of aspect of these stories, not just Tyrus, other stuff involved. And I'm like, I have a different game I'm playing because the band is very successful. I can't be fencing with Dirt Sheet writer number seven over some point that makes a lot of sense in the wrestling bubble. I got bigger fish to fry and I got a company to run that’s called the NWA. Yeah, so my focus has been getting the NWA culture right. So one of the things I've said through the years is Don't sleep on the NWA. There are a lot of people in the wrestling bubble who sleep on the NWA. Because they don't understand what I'm doing. And because I'm not sort of fellating them every day, and feeding them Dirt Sheet information. They sort of see me as sort of a curiosity in the corner. They don't understand I'm running a real business here that has a real opportunity to succeed.”
On reviving the NWA:
“I took the company, which in about its 68 or 69th year, I've literally picked it up out of the ashes. As we said before, WWE didn't even want to take it off the market. I brought it back to life. I've given a lot of people work. I gave people opportunities when nobody else wanted them. And I don't mean that in a negative way. They didn't see what I saw on them. I've created now, you know, there was a year where we didn't work because of the pandemic but I created about five years worth of content. And I've got matches with Ricky Starks and Eli Drake and Thunder Rosa that people have passed through the doors. And in some cases, people credit, certain talent’s work in the NWA as the best work that those talents have ever done. I'd like to think I have something to do with that, not in their wrestling, but I've certainly put them in a position to succeed or, or thrive. And I've been happy when talents have gone on to bigger and better things out of the NWA. Because I'm not so crazy to think that I can provide them with that same opportunity. Eddie Kingston is a person that comes to mind. Love Eddie, great person to work with. So I created a unique voice in wrestling that has some ties to the past in terms of product, not just historically. And I'm creating another voice in wrestling, how's that a bad thing? It isn't. We have probably the strongest women's division in all of wrestling, I would make that argument. A lot of great female wrestlers in the NWA. Very proud with the way we've run that and we built it and we've invested in that. And, and even, you know, we're able to put on a show, an all-female show. And that, of course, became its own version of controversy after that.”
On not needing outside help:
“Again, I'm going back to the let's call it the more respectful side of the conversation. Tony is worried about Tony, Scott's worried about Scott, Billy's worried about Billy, you know, everybody could do what they want to do. I'm not the little kid in the corner begging, I don't need anybody's help. NWA is completely self-funded. I don't have any partners. I don't need anybody's permission is everything we've talked about is basically NWA being its own ecosystem and its own world. So if that's all we ever that is, it’s fine. I think it's a disservice on a business level and to the fans to not put something together that the Goliath over here. And trust me if you thought WWE was powerful before, you have no idea what's coming now. Yeah, none. Because now you're opening up. You know, and now that we're past some of the political issues with the Saudis and stuff like that, and I'm not saying it's not, it's not dicey. It has its own issues, but I'm saying is, the world is opening up into a global economy. If you're a business person, and you don't sit there and go, Oh, my God. You know, many people don't watch television, the way that we watch television in the West, and they're now coming on board because all you need is a phone. You don't even need a cable box. I mean, that is the stuff of wet dreams of imagining going back in time to Sam Mushnik and saying this is where wrestling can be and what wrestling could reach. They wouldn't even believe it was possible. They were worried about selling tickets at the Kansas City war memorial. You know what I mean? We're in a totally different ballgame because the digital reach which is why these companies are putting together this big piece. So why we're over here worried about all this minutia and clickbait stuff over here. There's big, big business going on over here. And I'm at least somebody who's lived in the other world who can tell you, that's what they're doing. If you want to put your fingers in yours and pretend and say, I like this better, and I, well, there may come a point where your liking of it may not be the difference maker.”
What is Billy Corgan grateful for:
“Family, longevity and living my life the way I want to live it.