Billy Corgan On His Lawsuit Against TNA Wrestling, His Plans For The Company

It was announced at Saturday’s Bound For Glory 2023 pay-per-view event that Impact Wrestling will revert back to TNA Wrestling at Hard to Kill in January 2024, and several talents reacted to the news on social media.

On a recent edition of “The Kurt Angle Show” podcast, Billy Corgan recalled suing TNA Wrestling, what his plans for the promotion would’ve been, and more.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On his plans for TNA Wrestling: “What’s interesting about our time in TNA together? Look at who was in that locker room. Bobby Lashley, Drew Galloway. Matt Hardy, I mean, that was a really Jeff Hardy really stacked roster. So it’d be hard to sit you down and say, Kurt, I’m going to need you to put over Shark Boy tonight. You know what I mean? And no, no disrespect to Sharkboy. So, my plans were very similar to what I’ve tried to do with the NWA. My harp is a fan. I thought the booking had burnt the fan base one too many times, as we say. And I’ll keep it PG 13 as we say, one too many finishes, one too many run-ins, and somebody getting hit in the head with the pipe or you know what I mean? It’s just I felt the ridiculousness cleaned up. I had done my job to a certain extent in the office on the booking committee. And John Gerberg, who was running the company. Now, back to working with WWE. Jon and I went to battle many, many times about keeping the product as realistic as possible, and I did make some gains there. On top of that, I wanted to open up the company creatively, and I did make some gains there. And I had a lot to do with the deletion series with The Hardys and Shooting Off Grid, and that was very, very successful. So I tried to bring some fresh energy to the company and put more emphasis on characters and storylines, and there was some sense there that that was gaining ground business-wise, you know, without getting too deep into the whole lawsuit thing. The whole lawsuit hinged on, and a quick, cursory lesson. Dixie needed money. I put in a bunch of money to keep the company solvent. Every time I put in money, I owned more and more of the company. I think my maximum. At one point, I owned 26% of the company. So, like Dana White, for example, he is the owner of UFC. He doesn’t own the whole company, but he controls the company. So, I didn’t necessarily need to own 2,100% of TNA to control the company and was trying to figure that out with the various partners. There were mystery money people that Dixie had made deals with that I didn’t even know about that showed up later. It was a mess. On top of that, the whole lawsuit that we eventually fell into hinged on the idea that TNA wasn’t it’s I can’t. It’s a legal thing, but basically. If, if, if I could prove that TNA had more debt than it’s worth. So if Dixie, I think, was of the mind at the time that TNA was worth 8 million. So, if I could prove that they were more than $8 million in debt, the company was supposed to come to me in some sort of default. Dixie swore up and down that the company wasn’t in more debt than 8 million. That turned out not to be true, but I only found that out later. So the whole court case was hinged, hinged on that. It didn’t happen. Len Asper ended up buying Anthem, bought the company and then eventually, we kind of made our peace and everybody moved on. So. I think that gives some sense of the thing.”

On what he thinks of TNA now: “I guess the reason I’m saying all this inside baseball was even if I had bought the company. I think the debt that I would have taken on would have sunk me. So, it worked out the way it did, even though it was a very difficult path. I think the right people ended up owning TNA now. Impact thinks they’ve done a really good job. I’m not sure if D’Amore owns a piece of the company, but he’s done a good job, so it ended up working out like they went in their direction. I went mine, and everybody kind of made their peace over time.”

On being okay with how things worked out: “Yeah. It’s funny sometimes because this is a self-serving comment, but. I don’t mind heat and wrestling like I’m talking about fan heat. Like we don’t like what you’re doing. That’s all good. You know, we all hear it if you work in the business. What I always find kind of strange when people are dogpiling on a promotion, running down the book or whatever is like, is the goal to run the company out of business because that puts the boys out of work? And there’s nothing that I would want for the business, even if I’m not in the business where the boys don’t have work. I’m happy to provide jobs, but I’m also happy to see other people provide jobs. I don’t see how that’s ever a bad thing. And back to what I was saying before, I think. You know, there are many comparisons: movies, music, food, and wrestling is better when there is a greater diversity of styles. Booking champions, gifted people. I always point out, talking about the AWA, that when I was a kid, I loved Jerry Blackwell, who was certainly not in shape. Adrian Adonis, at least in my time when I remember, was certainly not in shape. Both men were great.”

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