Jim Cornette wasn’t afraid to detail the inner workings of his business with the NWA on the latest episode of his Experience podcast, which according to him, included talks of getting a then in-works NWA studio show on the WWE Network..
After he and Brian Last open up discussion on WWE’s latest financial conference call, Cornette goes into full recount mode of his time working with the NWA and his relationship with the promotion’s president, Dave Lagana.
Cornette said all that he took for his NWA engagements was $2,500 per show, starting off with the 70th Anniversary show in Nashville, which included Lagana coming to his house to film promos and b-roll.
He followed that up with doing The Crockett Cup, again for $2,500 (plus hotel fare this time around). Included, he also did meet and greets, a Q&A with Billy Corgan, helped to facilitate the production meeting, announced the show and produce two of the matches, one of which included The Briscoes vs. The Rock ‘N’ Roll Express.
Cornette then recalled his conversation with NWA President Dave Lagana about plans for an NWA TV show and that Dave claimed he was in talks with the WWE about getting it on the Network:
“And then he started talking about, ‘We’re gonna do a TV show.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, Dave?’ ‘Well, we’re going to start doing TV.’ I said, ‘Well, what would it be on?’ ‘Well we’re not sure yet but we’re think it might be on the WWE Network.’ I said, ‘What?’ And he did have meetings—unless he was bald-face lying to me—he had meetings to talk to them, I said, ‘Do you honestly believe that the WWF is gonna put an NWA television show on their Network?’ ‘Well, they might. Well, we’re talking about it.’ Whatever. I said, ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Let me know if something comes up,’ right?”
“Finally, he called me and said, ‘Well, we’re gonna do it on YouTube.’ ‘Okay!’ But that’s when he told me it was going to be studio show and that it was going to be done in Atlanta and that they were going to shoot six or eight weeks at a time. And that’s how I got involved in that. Because, okay, once every six or eight weeks I can go to Atlanta for a couple days and it’s the NWA and it’s studio and I believe I mentioned to you when we first started plugging it that it was going to happen, I said, ‘I gotta go see a studio wrestling show done again whether it’s great or shits or anything in-between I wanna see what’s gonna fuckin’ happen, alright?'”
Wrestlezone reached out to the NWA for comment on the remarks made by Cornette but have not received a response at this time.
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can listen to the entire episode of The Jim Cornette Experience below (the NWA commentary begins at the 13:10 minute mark):
