While speaking with the Ten Count, NWA president Billy Corgan gave an update on when the promotion’s all-women’s Empower event may be returning.
Corgan told the Ten Count that the NWA continues to want to do another Empower pay-per-view and is continuing to have discussions with other companies about working together for the event. Corgan said the NWA won’t hold the Empower PPV until it can provide “a world-class event with some of the best professional wrestlers in the world.”
I’m really intrigued by the interest in Empower. We continue to want to do it. We continue to have discussions with other companies about working together to create a fresh Empower event. Last time I talked about it, I created some headlines because people took umbrage with the fact — in fact, I had Maria Kanellis, of course I’ve known Maria for many years, and I love Maria, but even Maria Kanellis is calling me out saying something about, ‘We have women…’
I think every company has the right to decide their level of standard. And when you create a world-class event like Empower, and it was a world-class event, we’ve set a very, very high standard of what you should expect. Of course, there are plenty of great professional women wrestlers in the world. Can they wrestle the NWA style? Can they carry a three-hour pay-per-view? Can they move the case of women’s wrestling, not just in wrestling, but in terms of international media forward? These are my concerns. So everybody has their own version of it. That’s my version of it, and that’s why I’m still on that. Until we can provide a world-class event with some of the best professional wrestlers in the world, of course, in this case, female on the card, then we won’t do it. All this weird howling that goes on around it seems very strange to me because you’re taking a positive, and you’re making a negative out of a positive. That’s just so weird to me.
By the way, we put Empower as the first night of a two-night pay-per-view on an anniversary show and it drew. People cared. What if people didn’t care? What if it did horrible numbers? What if the matches were bad? You create a high watermark. You do something beautiful. You make a big, big statement. And then somehow it turns into some weird negative where somehow now I’m running from it. I’m not running from anything. I’m talking about my reasons for why we haven’t done it again. And I continue to explore those opportunities. That’s it. It’s not more complicated than that.
The first NWA Empower PPV was held in August 2021 as part of the NWA’s 73rd anniversary weekend. But the all-women’s event didn’t take place this year, with Corgan saying there weren’t enough female wrestlers available who could work at the television level.
Corgan received backlash for those comments when he made them back in August. In his new interview with the Ten Count, Corgan addressed potentially creating more controversy with these answers about Empower.
We live in a culture now where we talk about a lot of things that are super important. Diversity, empowerment, equality. It is the most disrespectful thing in the world to treat any class of people, no matter how you want to separate people, and I don’t like to separate people, treat as if they need a leg up or they need like a helping hand. It’s the opposite. The whole concept of empowerment is to create opportunity. Like look, ‘I’m going to give you this opportunity and then you’re going to kill it.’ We’re not here to cheat code anybody forward. Women, I’ve been saying it for 10 years, I said it in Forbes over 10 years ago. I said in Forbes, ‘The future of professional wrestling is women.’ Because the business has too long sort of overlooked one of the biggest marketing aspects of what makes professional wrestling great. So I was Nostradamus over here about that. I called it early. Now you’re bringing a lot of people to the table that traditionally have not been watching professional wrestling for the last 30 or so years. This is all great stuff. So if people want to make controversy out of it, [big] f*cking deal. Because at the end of the day, we’re arguing about something that’s great, not bad. It’s not like we’re over here burying. It’s like no, this is awesome, it has to be awesome to keep making the case. Don’t forget, If you’re a fan — let’s say you’re a very casual fan — and you wander into an event like Empower, if you don’t walk out of there feeling inspired, well then you haven’t done your job to that fan. To make them want to come back. To want them to go out and buy that person’s T-shirt. That’s the responsibility of the business. This is not the 1950s where we could just throw anybody out there to make a spectacle. The women, traditionally, back in the day were treated like spectacles. It wasn’t taken seriously.
Why do you think I bought the Mildred Burke belt? Because I own this talisman of what started as a movement. What Mildred Burke went through — mocked, humiliated, objectified, treated not like a serious professional athlete. And she went on to draw more than most of the men in the business and then they were grumpy about it. I’m a convert. I’m there. I’ve been there. I put my money where my mouth is. So anybody that wants to make hay out of that, that’s fine. They can do that all day. You try to run a world-class event, again and again and again, that’s what we’re here to do. That’s it. It’s not anymore complicated. You want to make it more complicated, have at it.
Corgan’s full interview on the Ten Count is available to watch below:
