On a recent edition of “The Kurt Angle Show,” NWA owner Billy Corgan discussed how he ended up purchasing the National Wrestling Alliance.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On wanting out of wrestling after his past bad experiences: “After ECW folded, and Paul Heyman offered me a piece of ECW — and we could talk about that if you want. But when that didn’t happen, some of the guys from when the company went out of business talked to me about starting a promotion, and I was interested. It didn’t happen. Then Court Bauer of MLW approached me about being an investor. That didn’t happen. Then the whole thing kind of seemed to ebb away and life went on, and I still went to shows. I saw a ton of shows. And I got to know people in the business, including Gabe Sapolsky, who now works for WWE again. And you know, I stay in touch with Gabe. Like, I have those relationships, but I had them only as a fan. And even before Kurt’s time in TNA, I would go down and — you know, when Jarrett started running the fairgrounds in 2002 and they were doing PPVs once a week, I was down there in the crowd hanging out. I just liked being around wrestling, and once I got to make those relationships, I got to know people, okay.
“So one day this. I met these guys here in Chicago. Used car salesmen, you can’t make this up. And they approached me about it, ‘Do you want to start a promotion?’ It’s a longer story, but that’s the simple version. We said, ‘Sure.’ And so I worked in this indie promotion for a while. I didn’t own it, they owned it but I kind of ran it creatively. That went on for a few years. It ended very poorly, and then I walked away. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m done with professional wrestling. Like, leave me alone.’ And then six months goes by and who calls me but Dixie Carter. ‘Do you want to come work in the office and work on the booking committee?’ It was too tempting an offer because I did have those ties with TNA. When I would go to Nashville, I would have lunch with Dixie but only as a friend. And she would ask my advice and ask my advice on other stuff that was outside of wrestling, where maybe my expertise in media or marketing could help TNA. Including my lending songs to TNA and stuff like that. So it was an intriguing thing. I jumped in on that, ultimately ended up being the owner for a hot second. Big lawsuit got out of that and I said, ‘I’m done with wrestling forever. Leave me, please leave me alone.’”
On his decision to buy the NWA: “About a month goes by, somebody calls and says, ‘The NWA is for sale.’ I said, ‘How is that possible? Isn’t the NWA owned by like 400 people?’ He said ‘No, it’s one owner out of Texas, and he’s willing to sell it to you.’ I poked around, I found out that WWE had passed on it. You know, basically, the general consensus in the business is that it didn’t have any value anymore, that its best days were certainly long past it. And so I was like, ‘This is really tempting.’ Because go back to the kid in the basement, if you had gone to time machine and told that kid, ‘Hey, one day you’re going to own this company.’ And you can own it right now if you want. It was like, ‘Oh geez, I thought I was done with professional wrestling.’ So we could talk about any of those moments, but that’s how we got here.”
On Kurt Angle: “As I said when we started, Kurt [is] absolutely the greatest professional wrestler that I’ve ever been around, and was fortunate enough to work with.”
