Wrestling, like rock and roll, is a strange and murky business. There have been times when the two genres have mixed, often with varying results. No one understands this better than Billy Corgan, frontman of The Smashing Pumpkins and owner of the National Wrestling Alliance.
Lately, the NWA has made certain shifts in its business model, presentation, and titleholders since the beginning of 2023. SlamWrestling.net caught up with Corgan a few weeks after NWA 75, and just before he was getting married. To begin, an interview conducted with Aron Stevens at NWA 73 was brought up, and at the time, Stevens said of the NWA:
I equate NWA, and I said this the first set of [TV] tapings [to] what ECW was in the mid-’90s, because all ECW was… was an alternative, right? It was the people that never really fit in anywhere else, or the people that were wanting to kind of revitalize their careers. It was… it was a pirate ship. It was kind of this hodgepodge of great talent that, you know, like, “Oh, wait a minute! What’re these guys doing?
And it was when you watched it, it wasn’t like RAW or it wasn’t like [WCW Monday Night] Nitro; it was its own thing. What we’re doing is: we are the alternative, but at the same time we are all extremely proud of the tradition that goes along with those three letters.
Corgan had spent time in ECW near the promotion’s end and was curious about hearing it for the first time. “It’s a sweet comparison I take from someone who’s a great worker. His perspective means a lot to me,” Corgan told SlamWrestling.net. “He and I have had private conversations along those lines and I’ve heard similar things from different people in the business.
“I think we’re very different companies in terms of the wrestling product,” Corgan continued. “But there is a similarity in that you have a charismatic figure headed with a particular vision. Not everyone agrees with that vision, and that charismatic person, in this case, me, is trying to rally people around the idea in over six years. Now, I have been able to rally people around that idea.”
Corgan shared a story of when he first went to an ECW show after his interest waned for so long. “I’m standing backstage, I’m literally there for five minutes. Paul [Heyman] comes up to me and cuts a five-minute promo to me explaining how my band and the grunge music movement had inspired ECW,” he recalled, “and basically to become like the grunge of wrestling. You know, this outcast who said, ‘We don’t have to act like everyone else. We don’t have to make our videos like everyone else. We can just be who we are.’ And so, there is a parallel in the spirit of the thing.”
If ever you talk to Corgan, you’ll notice that rock and wrestling sometimes get intermingled in conversation, which was apparent when we first spoke to him at last year’s Crockett Cup. That blending of styles was more apparent than over the summer as he toured with The Smashing Pumpkins on The World is a Vampire tour, and he brought the NWA to certain places across the globe like Mexico, Australia, and a loop of the southern United States.
Doing rock and wrestling does sound revolutionary until Corgan mentioned he’s had the idea for some time. “Well, honestly, you have to go back to Dixie Carter pitching me probably even before I was in TNA if there was something we could do with music and wrestling; obviously, from her position, to create a greater draw,” he remembered. “They wanted to be able to go into bigger buildings, but they were trying to figure out how to sell tickets and so at some point she reached out to me, ‘Is this something you would be interested?’”
Corgan declined at the time. “I’ve seen enough to know that the way it usually got booked in the wrestling world was the music artists always came across as second-class citizens because of the way that the wrestlers needed to be portrayed,” he explained. “When I was in the TNA office, the idea came up many more times and there was tremendous pressure put on me to help them sell tickets like, ‘Hey, aren’t you part of the team?’ kind of thing. And I was like, ‘Yeah, but I know you guys aren’t going to do it right, and if you’re not going to do it right, I’m not going to do it.’ So that never crossed that bridge.”
But the idea never left his head and he played around with the idea over the years on how to balance rock and wrestling for an event like that. “I understand what wrestlers need from my world on the music side to feel good about appearing as part of a day like that,” Corgan said, “and what I also understand all the questions that come up from the music side and trust me, I got a lot of pressure from the music side about how is this going to work and what’s going to happen and how do we know something, you know, weird is not going to happen.”
“I won’t bore everybody with the answer of it all,” Corgan laughed, “but you can imagine I got pressure from both sides [and] because I work both sides of the business, I know how to answer those questions.”
There were shows in different countries like Mexico’s AAA and Australia. “We ran the one show in Mexico, which was fantastic. They were great to work with; no issues there,” Corgan mentioned. “We only had one small issue in Australia where a wrestler [on the Australian side] didn’t like the way they were winning.”
They didn’t like the way they were winning?
“Yes, I’m going to leave it there,” Corgan laughed. “But yeah, I’m saying it because it’s funny, you know what I mean? My point is… very little issues and a lot of cooperation. A lot of appreciation from the local talent for the opportunity to work in front of a bigger crowd. Many of the wrestlers in Australia pulled me aside and said, ‘This is the biggest crowd I’ve ever worked in front of.’”
Corgan noted the show was also a success in front of very finicky crowds. “We’re talking about very mainstream professional wrestling in front of fans of people with bands like Interpol and [Amyl and] the Snifters and this is very much an alternative music crowd. So as somebody who works in alternative music, let me tell you, those are very opinionated people,” he chuckled. “They’re the more of the ‘smart mark’ version on the music side, right? So, the fact that the NWA can appear in front of people like that who’ve grown up in DIY punk culture and they can appreciate the DIY punk spirit of an NWA in a situation like that, that’s really telling you something that we’ve been very successful to put those pieces together.”
“I’m looking forward to doing not only more of it with The Pumpkins,” he added. “I’m hoping to see if I can convince other bands to take wrestling out as part of the package because I think, ultimately, we can be part of the ticket selling package and also be an attractive thing for fans.”
That led to the NWA 75 show that unfolded over two nights at The Chase Park Plaza in St. Louis, MO. After the pay-per-view ended, Corgan added this as he had time to reflect on the product on both nights, starting with Night One.
“Kamille versus Markova,” he started, and gave his take on why. “I do believe in terms of matching up as talents. Markova is an optimal opponent for Kamille, and I think you saw in that match NWA women’s wrestling at its highest level; physical, tough, and electric in a way that no person who has set eyes could diminish in any way saying, ‘Oh, it’s not this.’ or ‘It should be that.’ I think that’s what makes the NWA women’s division very strong at this time is two women in their prime willing to go out there and really lay it on the line and put on a signature main event.”
As for night two, it was Tyrus versus EC3 for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
“Tyrus, he’s the champ versus EC3. Their history, of course, even going back to TNA but even further back to WWE developmental,” Corgan said. “Sometimes when you put people in a ring who are very tight as people, they’re going to tell a very different story because the heart is there and there’s real love and deep affection between the two men and they wanted to go out and tell a good story.”
“Tyrus wanted to tell a story where he went out in his shield and he did for people that complain that it wasn’t a five-star Meltzer jerk-off match, right?” Corgan continued. “To me, it told a very compelling story.”
“So, I think in that nutshell, you hear two things coming out of my mouth but, and they almost sound like they’re different things, but they’re not. Kamille and Markova told the best story on Night One that they could tell and they delivered, and EC3 and Tyrus told the story that they wanted to tell, and I thought it was a good story. and that’s what makes the NWA different,” Corgan concluded. “We’re not wrestling to impress anybody. We do professional wrestling in a way that has gotten lost over the last few years, and I’m not the one running around saying that everybody should be wrestling the way we’re wrestling. All I’m saying is this is the way we’re going to wrestle. We’re going to wrestle in a somewhat traditional frame and that doesn’t mean ‘throwback.’ That means those people wrestled for 100 years for a reason in certain ways because it drew money and it drew the general public in because the public appreciated the storytelling, and if people wanna go back and look at Dusty versus somebody in a match in 1976 you’ll see all those matches were not match classics, but they told good stories and they drew big houses.
“So, I’m of the belief very publicly that the NWA will become the best proponent at telling those stories again,” Corgan added, “without being driven by the trendiness of the public, telling us who we have to be every five seconds and us worrying every five seconds what the public thinks we’re a professional wrestling company. It’s a rugged physical business and we’re going to present it that way. And as far as I’m concerned, if it’s not for the faint-hearted or you want a zillion high spots, there’s, there’s great competition out there that’s worth watching.”
As for the overall direction after NWA 75, Corgan where things are heading with the talent.
“[I’m] really happy with it,” he said. “We’re definitely in a youth movement and turning the page from established veteran talent in certain cases and giving those title reins to younger talent is a big leap.”
Some of the people holding the top titles in the NWA are “Thrillbilly” Silas Mason with the NWA National title, Colby Corino with the NWA Junior Heavyweight belt, and in a shocking upset on night two of NWA 75, Kenzie Paige claimed the NWA Women’s World Championship from Kamille after an 813-day title reign.
“We have a lot of faith in our younger talent to get it done,” Corgan said, “and I think an immediate indication of that is that all our social media is almost immediately trending younger in terms of demographics. So that tells me that tells me we’re headed in the right direction.”
That swings the pendulum back to rock and roll, which has always been propelled by youth movements, and when asked on the parallels of both worlds, Corgan offered this.
“It seems to me that whenever a promotion really heats up in a historical way [like] Mid-South Georgia, ECW, it’s always on the back of younger talent. Having a moment that strikes the general public.”
“We’re placing a huge bet on the backs of our younger talent,” he added. “The Paige sisters, Joe Alonzo, Kerry Morton, Mims, Colby Corino, [Thrillbilly], Alex Taylor. Our bet is that people will look back someday and say, ‘Not only was I there before it happened. I was there when it happened.’ I want to say this in a business way because I went through it in my own life; there’s something about when you put a youth movement together that clicks with the younger audience, there’s nothing better.”
So that gives time to the overall production, which is much different from the NWA POWERRR shows on YouTube. As for the recent change, Corgan explained why it took so long. “I think we’ve gotten the wrestling as a whole company/roster kind of where I want it, and now I feel like we can put some of our focus on the production. My drumbeat always was, ‘Let’s get the wrestling right first. Let’s not blow that other money until we feel like we really got something that we can go and show the world how we can be competitive.’”
“As I said 50 times in this interview,” he joked, “I work in rock and roll. I work with big production rigs all the time. High-level production and spending that kind of money is not anathema to my life. I mean, it’s honestly a lot of what I do, but I thought, ‘Look, I wanna get the wrestling straight and then we’ll get there.’ So now we’re getting there on the production side and I think you’re seeing about a third of the way where I wanna be with what’s called our studio wrestling look.”
So, is this the final version? “I think it’s in a sort of a transitional phase,” Corgan admitted. “So how it looks today probably won’t be how it looks six months from now. Hopefully, we’ll improve upon that.”
As for any other changes down the road, a possible merger, or some other windfall, Corgan addressed the hypothetical in this way. “The difficulty when you have a partner, if you have any partner in the marketplace, is then you have to kind of work between their expectations and yours. So, our level of creativity may not fit. Well, if you say had a network partner or if you had a big advertising sponsor and they were uncomfortable with something you were doing storyline-wise.”
“I’ve always deferred to my creativity over anything else,” he added. “I’ve certainly paid those bills. I would be a far richer man if I’d let other people tell me how to do my business, but I don’t think I would still be in the music business. So, my skin in the game for the NWA. I have to feel really passionate about it and I have to wanna do it.”
“I’m about to get married to my partner of 11 years and the mother of our two children, and… let’s just say that she supports me in wrestling,” Corgan laughed. “But it’s more on the level of tolerance. So, I have to justify when I’m away from home or my family, and I have to justify that my time in professional wrestling is something that’s making me happy and I feel good about and I feel excited about the future of.”
Corgan does have a lot to be proud of, especially as the NWA heads to the Samhein pay-per-view on October 28, as well as recently added a couple of television deals and included the Cleveland, OH-based Exodus Pro under the NWA banner
“That’s nobody’s problem other than my own, but I only point it out that, yes, it’s a business and yes, I want the NW A to be successful, but I don’t want it to be something that’s not fun or cool or creative or something I’m proud of,” Corgan concluded. “So, if I ever was in a situation where I was faced with those choices, I think I would probably say ‘no’ because I think I wanna be able to look Aron Stevens in the eye and say, ‘You know, this is the place where we get to dream the biggest dream we can dream and see if we can actually pull it off.”
TOP PHOTO: Kyle Davis and William Patrick Corgan at the NWA podium. Photo courtesy NWA
BILLY CORGAN LINKS
