Billy Corgan is attempting to clarify his comments when it comes to wrestling fans’ feelings on Tyrus.
National Wrestling Alliance owner Billy Corgan was a recent guest on The Ten Count with Steve Fall to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about his recent comments on Tyrus where he said if you’re not going to watch him, you’re not a wrestling fan, Corgan said he wanted to provide some clarification on that.
“If I did say it, let me put it this way, it was a longer quote, and of course, as happens with interviews, sometimes they excise what you’re saying out of a larger thing. So I’ll give clarification to what I said. I’m not gonna say I didn’t say what I said, but the quote I saw being bandied about was something along the lines of, ‘If you don’t like Tyrus, you don’t like wrestling.’ I believe that was bastardized, or that actually came out of my mouth, but it was in relation to something. So I’ll clarify what I was trying to say.
“What I was saying was, if you don’t like Tyrus in a wrestling ring because of his politics, and because he brings heat into wrestling, then I don’t understand what wrestling that you’re after. I went on to say, and I don’t think it was quoted, are we only booking friends in a wrestling ring? Is this just like patty cakes, and then everybody pretends these guys hate each other, and then they hug at the afterparty, and everything’s cool? I’m like, I believe, like all good promoters, that the heat of the outside world coming to a wrestling ring isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Remember when there was all the crazy heat with Edge, Matt Hardy, and Lita? That was a real-life thing that was ultimately taken advantage of in a wrestling ring, and obviously, all the parties agreed. Whether that was comfortable, uncomfortable to them, I can’t really say, even though I know Matt pretty well, and I know Edge pretty well, but I don’t think I’ve ever sat down to really ask them how they felt personally about it.
“But obviously, that was a moment of real heat, and people had opinions about how the whole situation played out on a personal level. So if your argument would be, ‘That should not have been a wrestling angle,’ well, that’s a viable argument to make. If your thing would have been, ‘I was uncomfortable with then being put in that spot,’ that’s a viable argument to make. But it did happen, and it has happened in wrestling where real heat in real life comes into the ring.
“So that was my point. It wasn’t saying, I’m gonna pick this one person in Tyrus, and if you don’t like the as a wrestling talent or you don’t like them as a person, you don’t like wrestling. Because that’s where it gets bastardized. It made for very good clickbait, and some of my friends actually encouraged me to go out and clarify. I said, ‘No. I’m gonna play this stupid game.’ I’ve been around for too long for people to sort of cherrypick my quotes and try to make a thing.
“So that’s why I like what you’re saying, which is that at the end of the day, I think I’m an intelligent person. You can argue that point, but look, I’ve picked the NWA up out of the ashes, I’ve turned it into a successful business. We have a lot of good news coming, which I can’t quite share yet. But I think we’re going into about our sixth year of me owning the company. The roster’s never been stronger.
“There are people who have noticed the quality of the NWA wrestling product, week in, week out. People who are not denizens of the dirt sheets, people who actually care about the quality of professional wrestling, not the meta-narrative of each company and whether it’s rising and falling. We’ve seen in recent times where one company’s been really built up now to be torn down. Is that fair? I can’t particularly say, but it’s certainly good business for the dirt sheets.
“So right now, there’s more money on the NWA being about me as a controversial figure or the NWA possibly failing than there is the NWA succeeding. When we succeed, and we will, then it will turn into some other different quasi-argument. So if you want to make it about one talent, you kind of miss the point of what the point of a professional wrestling company is. It’s a collective vision. Obviously, I’ve done the math on everybody in the company, and I’ve made my decisions. I’m fine to argue those points along the way.
“Plenty of writers and plenty of dirt sheet writers and people such as yourself have asked for clarification about why this or why not this. That’s completely fine. But if you miss the point about how one talent or a collective set of talents make a statement about the NWA, then you don’t really understand what it is I’m trying to do. I’m trying to build a company built around specific talents at a specific time. These are athletes, and they have a shelf life.
“So what the NWA looks like ten years from now will be far different than what it looks like today, and that is if we survive, and I believe we will. Getting ground down into every talent and whether or not somebody approves, and I don’t need to go off on the laundry list, but there are talents working at plenty of other companies that are plenty controversial that people don’t seem to have a problem with because they work for a company that gets favorable press, so nobody wants to be the bad guy and point out that this talent shouldn’t be working at such-and-such company.
“When you get into the political stuff, I just think that’s laughable. Political stuff in 2023 is laughable. Look, we were just talking about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Their politics, at least as it appears in the public sphere right now, are completely different. What are people talking about? They’re talking about the fight. Why are they talking about q the fight? Because the fight’s more interesting than whether or not we care about their politics. Is Elon Musk disqualified from the fight because he’s possibly a vaccine skeptic or something, or you didn’t like the fact that he let some right-winger back on the platform now that he owns Twitter?
“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t like the sliding rules of engagement. So that’s all fine and good. Hopefully, in this meta-clarification, I’ve sort of delineated what is and isn’t important. Again, as I like to say, I’m fine with criticism. Just be smart about it, and don’t be clickbaity about it because you’re dealing with somebody who’s dealt with clickbait for over 30 years. You’re just not gonna knock me off my block.”
The full interview is available here:
READ MORE: Billy Corgan Explains His Reluctance To Run NWA Shows During WrestleMania Weekend
What do you make of Billy Corgan’s comments? Do you enjoy watching Tyrus wrestle in the National Wrestling Alliance? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit The Ten Count with a link back to this article for the transcription.
