Billy Corgan has a long-term plan for his NWA, which doesn’t include the ‘carny’ stuff that ‘plagued’ TNA

Billy Corgan’s purchase of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) became official on October 1. The former President of Impact has a plan that he thinks will allow the almost 70 year old brand to thrive and eventually compete with bigger names in the wrestling/sports entertainment field, but don’t expect big splashy moves right away.

Corgan tells SI.com that he and his business partner, former TNA writer and producer Dave Lagana, have a 20 year plan for their new company:

“We’re not going to just come in and throw money around for two years. We’ve learned from the past mistakes of TNA, which we have intimate knowledge of.”

In addition to discussing some general aspects of that plan - working with David Marquez’s Championship Wrestling from Hollywood as it heads into syndication on a hundred CW stations nationwide, focusing on a younger audience with digital content, being more concerned with overall awareness than subscriber base - Corgan spoke a lot about what he learned not to do from his time in TNA:

“I was very, very frustrated by the obstacles I faced internally, both culturally and fiscally, at TNA. I dealt with a lot of backstabbing and lies.

I was able to push through some things that ended up being successful at TNA, and I was very frustrated because you would think the success would have led to more leverage and further opportunities. But it was exactly the opposite. People were out to get me because I had power. At least now, in this situation, I am my own boss.

You have to build your own infrastructure from the bottom up and work with people you really trust. The traditional ‘carny’ aspect of the wrestling business that plagues a lot of companies, and has plagued a company like TNA, are problems that hold the business back. You can’t run an effective business if it’s like Game of Thrones every week.”

Interestingly, that hasn’t kept Corgan from forging a relationship with the company and the man who now own Impact. Mentioning how he tried to help Anthem executive Ed Nordholm resolve the ‘Broken Brilliance’ intellectual property battle with Matt Hardy, Billy revealed he talks to Nordholm “at least once, if not twice, a week”. He even pitched a partnership between Impact and the NWA:

“We’ve made various overtures to Anthem along the way and they’ve made various overtures to me. We haven’t found anything that is ideal, and I’m a firm believer that if a deal doesn’t go both ways, then it’s not a good deal to make. If the NWA was going to be involved in some level with Anthem, we’d want it to be a good way all the way around.

We made a very aggressive offer in the last month to go in and help reboot the company. We’d have helped Impact stay more in the lane of the traditional Impact brand, and then set up the NWA as a natural rival, a la Raw versus SmackDown. Unfortunately, we didn’t get where we wanted with that offer.”

Seems like that would have jump-started that 20 year plan in a big way. Perhaps Anthem has learned from their experience with Jeff Jarrett and Global Force Wrestling to not build around partnerships which can quickly go away. Either way, that’s an interesting “what if?” we can always look back on.

Will the Corgan/Lagana NWA turn into a player, or just another of the “what if?”s scattered around the pro wrestling landscape?

Stay tuned, and check out the whole article at SI.com for more on Corgan’s past, present and future in wrestling.