Billy Corgan recently addressed the matter of Tyrus being a controversial choice to carry the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship, and the issues fans have with the former WWE Superstar’s public image.
Besides wrestling, Tyrus appears regularly on FOX News and he faced tremendous criticism for the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him by his former co-host Britt McHenry, which was settled out of court in July of 2021.
During a recent appearance on the “Under the Ring” podcast, Corgan discussed his history with Tyrus and the efforts the 50-year-old wrestler has made to help the NWA. As such, Corgan doesn’t hold Tyrus’ political views against him.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On criticism of Tyrus: “Well, let’s separate the wrestling and the personal, which isn’t always easy to do. On the wrestling side, I’ve been very, very happy and very satisfied. I think he’s done everything I’ve asked him to do and he’s been great to work with. As far as Tyrus as a public person, I knew Tyrus when he was working at TNA and basically standing with his arms crossed behind Matt Hardy and holding one of the babies, right? I saw when he first started working for Fox, and we’ve stayed in touch through all these years. We have our own relationship. Like myself, when you’re a public person, you say things that not everybody agrees with, but look, he’s on one of the biggest networks in the world. He knows what he’s doing. For better or for worse, he writes his own checks that way.”
On why he doesn’t hold it against Tyrus: “As far as I’m concerned, he has never crossed the line to the point where it’s been detrimental to the NWA. I know not everyone agrees with that opinion, but I think people have this kind of weird sliding scale because there’s lots of blame to go around. When you look at the professional wrestling landscape, where people look the other way at different things, most of the heat around Tyrus is political. As a person who’s been through some of those things myself, I tend not to pay a lot of attention to that stuff, not because it’s not important, but because I think a lot of that stuff is — there’s a lot of energy behind it, which has other agendas. It”s not really down to the individual as much as this culture war type of thing. As far as I’m concerned, we’re a professional wrestling company. We’re here to wrestle.”