While the two companies have not done business since last year, a new report from Fightful Select notes that the working relationship between the NWA and AEW is just fine.
AEW President Tony Khan made it known last year how he paid for the AEW wrestlers that ended up working the all-women’s NWA EmPowerrr pay-per-view, after the NWA did not cover the costs. NWA President Billy Corgan recently spoke with Fightful Select and noted that the pay-per-view didn’t emerge as commercially successful as he had hoped, but that he didn’t want to grovel.
When asked about the situation, Corgan said the following:
“It wasn’t a miscommunication. Tony has my number and honestly, I wish he had reached out privately on that if he had any issue with that. The fact that he went public with something and the other part of the equation was he talked about stuff without giving the other end of the equation. The other end of the equation I’ve never talked about publicly. So it would be like if you went—let’s pretend me and you were having a little bit of an issue—and you went public and said, ‘Billy should thank me for driving that car that he’s driving because I paid for the tires,’ right? So people might go, ‘Oh, yeah, Billy should thank him.’ If I don’t tell you the other end of the deal that was made, well, that does sound like it was kind of a one way street. But that’s not the deal. I’ve never talked about the other end of the deal. “I don’t think I should talk about the other end of the deal, but let’s put it this way—there was another end of the deal that he conveniently didn’t mentioned. I don’t have any issue with Tony. I think Tony’s done a tremendous job. Tony’s made it easier for me to operate in wrestling. When I go into business meetings with networks and talk to them, they look at AEW’s success as an indication that the market is shifting, that WWE doesn’t control the market like they did for twenty years. So I can only thank Tony [for making it easier] for me.”
Word is that Khan and Corgan are on good terms right now, and neither man seems to take issue with what the other has said.
