Billy Corgan Buys Prestigious Professional Wrestling Company But Can It Compete With WWE or Impact Wrestling?

Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan has always been a huge fan of professional wrestling. He is also rich and has made his desire to own a professional wrestling company well known over the past year. Before ECW went out of business over a decade ago, Corgan tried to buy that company and failed. Now, Billy has finally achieved the dream of owning a professional wrestling company. According to PWInsider, Billy Corgan has finalized a deal to purchase the oldest and most prestigious wrestling organization in the world — the NWA.

This is the second company that Billy Corgan has attempted to purchase in the last 12 months. After failing to buy ECW from Paul Heyman many years ago, Corgan became involved with Revolution Pro Wrestling in Chicago and tried to get them on AMX as a reality series. He then got involved in TNA Impact Wrestling, where a lot of controversies ended his relationship with them.

Billy Corgan loaned Impact Wrestling money to keep them afloat when they almost defaulted on debts. Part of the deal, according to Corgan, was to make him the new President of the company and begin negotiations to purchase the company from Dixie Carter and the other shareholders. It all ended up in court, and Billy Corgan was pushed out of Impact Wrestling just in time for them to sell the company anyway to Anthem Sports.

With that finished, Billy Corgan turned his eyes on the NWA. The purchase of the NWA includes all rights, name, trademarks, and possession of the NWA World Championship belt, which is currently held by Tim Storm of NWA Texoma Wrestling.

For those who aren’t familiar with the NWA, it launched in 1948 and became the governing body of professional wrestling. It had an NWA Board of Directors, which determined who held the world titles and controlled the overall wrestling community while regional promotions were members and operated on their own outside of the world title contenders.

Organizations such as Bill Watts’ Mid-South Wrestling, Fritz Von Erich’s World Class Wrestling, Jim Crockett’s Mid-Atlantic Wrestling (which became WCW), and more were part of this huge organization. When TNA Impact Wrestling launched, they were partners with the NWA and used the NWA title until they broke away a few years later. This is the professional wrestling legacy that Billy Corgan just agreed to purchase.

In 2012, a man named Bruce Tharpe filed a lawsuit against the NWA for insurance fraud and somehow found the leverage to gain ownership of the NWA. A number of independent promotions left the NWA at this time. With Tharpe in control, he changed the NWA from a promotion that had members to a company that just licensed their name out to indies who were willing to pay the price.

Now that Billy Corgan has finalized the deal to purchase NWA, the oldest and most prestigious wrestling organization despite falling on hard times over the last 10 to 20 years, the question is what he plans to do with it. If Corgan tries to turn it into a singular organization to compete with Ring of Honor, Impact Wrestling, and other U.S. based promotions, he might have a fighting chance but will have to land a TV deal.

If Billy Corgan is more interested in the legacy of the NWA, that might be interesting. At the moment, there are 29 independent wrestling promotions that use the NWA name. Some of the bigger promotions include NWA Atlanta, NWA Insanity, NWA Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and NWA Wrestling Revolution.

Billy Corgan has a lot of options once he buys the NWA and the landscape of wrestling might change if his media contacts can help them score some kind of network deal.

[Featured Image by Impact Wrestling]