NWA owner and former Impact Wrestling executive, Billy Corgan, recently appeared as a guest on Busted Open Radio. Below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On purchasing the rights to NWA and his plans going forward being kept quiet thus far: “We don’t want to do what a lot of people do in wrestling, which is make a bunch of promises that never come true. We really see the NWA as a long-term thing, so we want to build it the right way. So we’ve been very cautious about the information we let out, not because there aren’t things to hype, there’s plenty of things to hype, but if they don’t come true we don’t want that coming back conversely on the NWA.”
On plans to release free shows online and hoping investors and fans will join in on the ride as momentum gets going: “Unless something changes in the near future, we’re on a path to start running shows probably in the spring. We’re gonna originally start with just being a television product, and what I mean by that is we’re gonna probably do shows for free on the internet. We haven’t worked out the specifics yet, but we will be hopefully a weekly show that anybody can watch anywhere in the world for free behind no paywall, and we’ll start signing talent and we’ll start running our own shows. So we want to build up the brand by putting the wrestling first and the product first, and hopefully we’ll create a fan base and some momentum, and then if we make deals it’ll be based off what we’re doing, not what we hope to do.”
On NWA affiliate programs being discontinued under new ownership and the reason why: “When we took over officially in June or July, we reached out to every affiliate that was involved and said, ‘Look, we have a really open mind.’ And unfortunately most of our experiences weren’t positive. People get used to running their little kingdoms, they couldn’t get behind the bigger vision. So we’ve let all the affiliate programs lapse, there’s no more NWA affiliates. So when you hear the NWA, it’s basically whatever we’re gonna do from center out.”
Check out the complete episode of Busted Open Radio featuring the Billy Corgan interview at SoundCloud.com.