Source: NWA expected to cut the budget, talent cuts
Haus of Wrestling reports NWA is expected to make cuts to its roster and budget cuts to various production areas soon. One source spoken with said that Billy Corgan will make cuts “at every corner.”
Corgan has been funding everything out of pocket for the NWA. There has been “little to no sponsorship money coming in,” and he has spent millions on Powerrr and the NWA reality series.
One example they were given on the production side is that the hair and make-up department’s budget will be cut roughly in half.
This weekend’s NWA Powerrr tapings will primarily only have contracted talent appearing and “a bare-bones crew.”
Exceptions to the rule regarding non-contracted talent appearing are Mike Knox and Violent J, who flies himself in and works for free.
Current NWA Tag Team Champion Kratos is also not under contract but holds a title. The two wrestlers playing a masked tag team are also not under contract but are working an NWA-owned gimmick.
NWA talent can no longer fly in the day before shows. By doing so, the NWA no longer has to pay extra hotel costs, which they have been footing the bill for up to now.
This is a further indication of something I’ve been saying for a while. WWE is hot right now but the REST OF THE SPORT is not. AEW had a bit of fire behind it when they launched, maybe the first 16 months, but that has COOLED big time. This era is more akin to the “Golden Age” where the WWF was king and everyone else was fighting for a single seat at the table. Every company not name WWE is struggling right now. WOW, MLW, Impact/TNA, NWA, AEW, you name it. There may be more wrestling on TV since the 1980s, but the result is the same. Most of the “other stuff” in the ’80s was rubbish, like Black Bart versus Vic Steamboat in Dallas. A breaking point is coming. Right now AEW, for instance, is struggling to find new fans. While WWE is expanding like a virus, AEW is struggling to pick off a few disaffected WWE marks who take this thing WAY to seriously. We should NOT make the mistake of ASSUMING that WWE’s success is success for all of wrestling or that it will lift the tide of every other promotion. That is CLEARLY not happening. I, for one, am worried about the longterm growth and viability of wrestling outside of the Walmart of wrestling. It’s not good.
Seems like that TV deal with the CW really could have helped. Too bad they shot themselves in the foot.
@Motorhead Comparing the WWE to a virus was spot on.
That being said, this is where the IWC needs to shoulder 96% of the blame. We’ve had diehards celebrating the demise of WCW and ECW for the last 20 years. They got what they wanted, WWE was the only game in town, so they are fighting to keep it that way. That’s why they go online and troll AEW, TNA, New Japan fans as much as they can. They want people to think that to sit at the cool kids table, you MUST watch WWE and ONLY watch WWE. That everything else is inferior.
Which couldn’t be further from the truth. And what amuses me is that until AEW provided WWE with it’s most formidable competition since WCW, WWE spend it’s time openly mocking and making fun of its fans with the Charles Kane “You’ll like what I tell you to like” method of booking.
I quit watching WWE two, three years ago, and found my love for watching wrestling was actually renewed. Wrestling outright needs AEW. It needs TNA. It needs New Japan. It needs even MLW. It needs CZW. It needs every indie promotion out there. It needs for people to wake up and see they actually spent the last 20 years or so following a promotion in the WWE that didn’t care what the fans wanted. WWE knew the fans had no place to go, so they had to take what they were given,.
Enough of mocking people for liking a company not named WWE. WWE is wrestling’s version of Skynet.