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After months of speculation as to what was going to happen with the company, its ownership and its finances, TNA President Billy Corgan filed a lawsuit against TNA Impact Wrestling, its parent company Impact Ventures LLC, TNA Chairman Dixie Carter, TNA Chief Financial Officer Dean Broadhead and Carter's husband Serg Salinas on 10/12 in the Chancery Court of Nashville, TN.
PWInsider.com is currently working on acquiring details of the lawsuit.
Requests for comment from Corgan's attorney and TNA's Public Relations were not returned as of this writing.
Corgan, the frontman for Smashing Pumpkins and a long-time fan of professional wrestling, began investing in TNA this past June, helping to finance the TNA Slammiversary PPV and subsequent TV tapings as part of a deal that saw him purchase a minority share in the company. Additional investments in the company led to Corgan acquiring a larger share in the company and on 8/12, TNA issued a press release announcing that Corgan had replaced Dixie Carter as the President of the company and would be handling the day to day operations of the company while Carter would "focus on long-term planning, strategic partnerships and global growth."
In the press release touting Corgan being named President of the company, Carter stated, "Billy is a visionary, an iconic artist and savvy businessman with an incredibly gifted creative mind. He has built a decades-long successful global brand, and also has a deep passion and understanding for professional wrestling. In working with Billy over the last 16 months, he has impressed me to the point that I’ve been in discussions with him to take an elevated strategic leadership role within the company. The more we discussed our vision for the organization, the clearer it became that position needed to match his commitment."
Shortly after being named President, Corgan announced his intentions to purchase the company and potentially change its name from TNA. During promotional appearances to push the Bound for Glory PPV, Corgan admitted that he had financed the three previous rounds of TNA Impact Wrestling tapings, describing those deals as last minute agreements where the "ink was drying" as talents were heading to the ring.
Corgan had been in negotiations to purchase the company, but had been unable to close a complicated deal that would see Corgan not only buy the company from Dixie Carter, but other minority owners including Aroluxe and The Fight Network.
Corgan made it clear he would not be financing the Bound for Glory PPV tapings and subsequent TV tapings, noting on a SiriusXM interview that he had done everything in his power to make sure that Bound for Glory took place from a personal and financial level - noting that he was using money from "his own pile" to attempt to purchase the "majority ownership" of TNA - and that he had put everything in place on his end.
In that interview with "Busted Open", Corgan said that funding the PPV and tapings were part of the negotiations and the question was what are the people funding the show getting for their money? Corgan said that where it got complicated was that it was one thing to fund the company, but it's another to set the company up to be solvent and successful. At the time Corgan said he didn't want to be having the same conversation three months after the PPV because what would be the point. At that time, Cogan also stated that in conversations with TNA talents he had spoken with, they were all on board with him taking over the company and that they were hopeful he would "win" and steer the ship from that point on.
"Enough air has gone out of the balloon," Corgan said last month. "It's time to put air back in the balloon and let this thing be what it can be."
In the end, Bound for Glory and the October TV tapings indeed took place, but questions that were left (which we had been raised here on PWInsider.com) included who funded the tapings and what deal did Dixie Carter make in order for the tapings to take place.
In a locker room meeting with TNA talents on 10/4 in Orlando, Carter told her roster that the PPV was never in danger of not taking place but did admit the company had to do some "scrambling" in order for everything to fall into place. What that "scrambling" was has never been explained or revealed publicly. During PWInsider.com's reporting of the locker room meeting, we noted that Corgan declined to be in the meeting despite being invited to do so.
A number of TNA personalities noted over the course of the BFG PPV and October TV tapings that there was obvious tension between Corgan and Carter and wondered how it might be resolved, especially if Corgan is supposed to be overseeing the day to day business of the company.
What the resolution will be remains to be seen, it appears that it will get uglier before it gets better and that that resolution may very well take place inside a Nashville courtroom.
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