Billy Corgan: No plans for NWA Empowerrr ‘until we can provide a world class event with some of the best professional wrestlers’

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan sat down with NBC Sports’ Steve Fall to talk about NWA Hard Times 3 which takes place on November 12.

Corgan talked about the backlash he’s received for not doing another Empowerrr:

“I’m really intrigued by the interest in Empowerrr. We continue to want to do it. We continue to have discussions with other companies about working together to create a fresh Empowerrr event. The last time I talked about it, I created some headlines because people took umbrage with the fact, in fact, I had Maria Kanellis, and 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 and da, da, da.:

Corgan continued, “I think every company has the right to decide their level of standard. When you create a world class event like in Empowerrr, 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 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, females 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 so weird to me.”

“By the way, we put in Empowerrr 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.”

Click below to watch the entire interview.

If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Steve Fall at NBC Sports Boston with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.