Tony Khan has reached out to NWA talent and owner Billy Corgan about the controversy surrounding AEW creating a National Championship.
On an X live stream, Khan said: “There’s been a lot of talk about the National title and the National title match and there’s been talk from people in and outside of AEW. It’s been really interesting and of course the National Championship will be decided at AEW Full Gear but when I recently announced it I saw a lot of talk online and there was chatter from even wrestlers from other promotions, people all over and wrestlers are gonna talk, wrestlers are gonna say stuff,” he began.
Khan then revealed he spoke with Corgan directly.
“I ended up having a really nice conversation about it with the President of the NWA, Billy Corgan because, of course, the NWA National Championship has a great history of its own and when we created a National Champion I saw NWA wrestlers saying, ‘Hey, we have a National title.’ AEW’s a separate company. We have our own lineage and I’d like to just say that Billy, I have a lot of respect for him. I have a lot of respect for what he’s doing. I really love the traditions of pro wrestling and I had a really nice talk with Billy and we hadn’t talked in a long time so I think it was good for him to hear this,” he continued.
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) November 15, 2025
Khan stated that both he and Corgan are all about history and tradition.
“I respect him and I respect the NWA and we’re trying to do something different here. We brought pro wrestling back to TBS but there are a lot of promotions that have had a great history on TBS before AEW and one of them is the NWA. I think it’s great that Billy’s trying to keep that tradition alive and revive it. So, we had a really nice talk about this. So, to any of the wrestlers anywhere in the world and particularly some of you in the NWA, you’ll be happy to hear Billy and I had a very nice talk about this and I’m sure he would say the same,” said Khan.
Khan didn’t reveal or detail the actual conversation or what Corgan’s reactions or thoughts were.
The frontman for The Smashing Pumpkins and NWA President hasn’t commented publicly on the discussion.
