Billy Corgan vividly remembers the rush he got when he first listened to the Beatles as a preteen in his Chicago basement. It’s a feeling that eventually propelled him to rock superstardom as lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins.
But Corgan said he also recalls getting a similar rush watching Dick the Bruiser, Harley Race and his other favorite pro-wrestling stars in that same basement. It’s that emotional reaction that led to an unlikely turn as a wrestling producer and promoter in 2011.
Today, as owner of the National Wrestling Alliance, Corgan leads a promotion with a high national profile and a decadeslong history. The tradition continues this weekend with NWA 74, presented live on Saturday and Sunday nights from St. Louis and available on FITE.tv internet pay-per-view.
If you’ve only been a casual follower of Corgan’s career, which includes 30 million albums sold and two Grammy Awards, it would be easy to dismiss pro wrestling as a sidelight or a celebrity ego project. But in an interview with the Sentinel this week, his passion for wrestling was obvious.
“There’s a magic you feel when wrestling is right,” Corgan said. “It’s the feeling I used to get when I first listened to the Beatles in my basement when I was 11 or 12 — the same feeling when a concert is rocking. It takes over your body. As someone in my position, who has been on stage at Madison Square Garden while they’re singing your song, it’s just a dream. It felt like watching Harley Race or Ric Flair as a kid.”
Corgan said there wasn’t a revelatory moment when he decided to become a wrestling promoter, just a “very slow creep” toward the realization. He formed his own small promotion in Chicago in 2011, then joined TNA Wrestling in 2015, eventually becoming its president.
“I treated it as something interesting to dabble in at first,” Corgan said. “I had a sense: If I liked this as a fan, maybe I’ll like it a little bit better this other way, and I got successful at it. When it came time to join up with something bigger (such as TNA), as I found out, if you have money or fame, there will always be interest.”
He found his stride as a member of the writing team at TNA, which had a weekly national cable TV show sometimes recorded at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. He said most of his creative efforts were as part of the group, but he takes pride in creating a trio called Decay (Abyss, Crazzy Steve and Rosemary), a faction that exists to this day.
“At first, it was a weird mix of, ‘Do they really like what I’m doing, or is it because of my fame?’” Corgan said of booking TNA programs. “A lot of my stuff was part of a committee, but the Decay faction was singularly mine. I worked with the talent, produced vignettes, had a hand in how they were presented and established the modality for the team that’s still going.”
After he left the company over a pay dispute, he purchased the NWA — whose past champions include Flair, Race, Dusty Rhodes, A.J. Styles and Cody Rhodes.
He soon settled on its mission, to honor the past while offering a hard-hitting style of wrestling that present fans could enjoy.
“If you look at most wrestling companies running now besides WWE, we probably represent the style that was predominant in America for most of the 20th century, a toughness and a sense of appealing to the working class,” Corgan said. “There’s something about that that rings past the pretty stuff. When I look at my champions, those are the last guys standing in the bar fight.”
That certainly applies to the two combatants in this weekend’s main event. Champion Trevor Murdoch is a 6-foot-4 widebody who trained under Harley Race and has a wide set of skills. Corgan summarizes his style as, “I may not be the prettiest, but I’ll beat you up.”
Tyrus’ is a familiar face on several fronts — he is a longtime WWE veteran under the name Brodus Clay and is a frequent contributor to Fox News, largely as co-host of the late-night show “Gutfeld!” Corgan calls him a main-event attraction and an American success story.
“He’s an interesting case,” Corgan said. “Because of his past characters and the talk show, people focus on his personality, but they forget he’s 6-foot-7 and 375 pounds.”
The NWA is on solid ground with Corgan at the helm as he has patiently built a struggling brand into a viable player on the U.S. wrestling scene. But ultimately, the real success comes when the stories and matches develop into something that elicits real emotion, like the kind Corgan feels on stage or watching his favorites as a preteen.
“In a business where much is manufactured, there are moments that can’t be,” Corgan said. “... I believe in the magic of pro wrestling, and I believe the NWA is the best place for me to show that magic.”
Outtakes
—When Corgan first pitched the Decay idea to the TNA writing team, he said he got some pushback. But he knew exactly what he wanted that faction to represent. “They said, ‘There are other spooky factions, so how can we make this different?” Corgan said. “These are the guys and gals who are full-on cosplay people, but they’re not just doing this at Wizard World. They live this way, living in a spooky graveyard world all the time. I know this, because a lot of them are my fans.”
—Corgan points to All In, a 2018 independent supercard, as an example of real emotion — specifically Cody Rhodes’ NWA championship win over Nick Aldis, capturing the title (and the iconic championship belt) that his father Dusty Rhodes had held before him: “We helped create that. People underestimate what Nick and Cody did, the story they told, and what that belt meant on the card. It stole the show.”
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