Tyrus reigns supreme.
Tyrus made headlines when he won the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship at NWA Hard Times 3 against Matt Cardona and Trevor Murdoch. It was a very controversial decision that had a lot of people talking in both positive and negative ways. Now, NWA COO Joe Galli recently sat-down with Armbars & Sidebars and spoke about Tyrus winning the championship, where he says that he believes Tyrus should be celebrated.
You know, I have found that, and this might also be because of where I’ve lived in this world, at least in this country, a large portion of dedicated independent wrestling fans, or maybe just wrestling fans in general, tend to be kind of left-leaning when it comes to their politics. And Tyrus obviously isn’t. But with that being said, when he came out for Revolution Rumble in Chalmette Louisiana, which is a working class suburbs of New Orleans, that building erupted. There were a lot of fans there that wanted to see Tyrus and wanted to cheer for Tyrus. On the other hand, there were plenty of people there that probably hate Tyrus. Whether its for, you know, what he did in the WWE or the thoughts that he has and he puts into his book or the things that he says on FOX News. But I think that that’s great, isn’t that what we want in the sport of professional wrestling? I kinda see Tyrus as potentially, really, if you want to take it to wrestling parlance, you could see him as a heel. Well don’t you want to see a heel get beat up? That’s the whole point. So if you want to boo him.. he elicits an emotional reaction and that’s kind of all the job really is. And so, you’ve got this guy who’s worked incredibly hard and comes from this lineage and this family that’ so ingrained in the sport of professional wrestling, and you know, for him to be the Worlds Heavyweight Champion, its one of those “love it or hate it, he’s there”. He’s the top of the mountaintop. You also can’t argue with the fact that, I don’t know what days particularly he’s on Gutfeld!, but when he is, he’s there, and he used to have the Television Championship on his shoulder, he now has the ten pounds of gold, and that’s in front of 10 million people a night. And that’s double AEW’s audience for Dynamite. For their main program. It rivals RAW. So the exposure the company gets, I don’t know.. you couldn’t pay for it. You couldn’t pay for it in advertising. Well, you could, but you would lose a billionaire’s money in that. But I don’t think that that’s why Tyrus is the Worlds Champion. Tyrus is the Worlds Champion because he won the triple threat match and I think that the direction that we’re going to be going in 2023, I think that it suits him to be that guy that people are going to be chasing and attempting to knock off the top of the mountain.
– Joe Galli via Armbars and Sidebars
He continued on.
What’s great is, the NWA is going to end up having, is we’re going to get two things. We’ll get people tuning in who wants to see Tyrus get his ass kicked and they want to see that title be taken away from Tyrus because they hate FOX News and they hate the conservative stance on a lot of stuff. There’s a group of people that are going to do that. On the other side, there’s the two million people that already like him and want to see him succeed and want to see him as champion. So who are we getting? Well, then you get everyone. And that’s the goal, you want to have a place where everyone can come and enjoy pro wrestling. And that’s what we have. And I think that that’s fantastic, it doesn’t just speak to one crowd, we have both. It allows for the deliberation and it allows to have a split crowd too, sometimes those are really fun. I think that puts us in a very interesting place where we are and I’m excited for it. And I think its going to do us quite well. And I think at the end of the day the proof is in the pudding in the fact that we had a lot of people buy pay-per-views. We had a lot of people show up in New Orleans, we’re going to have a lot of people show up in Knoxville. And if it turns out that that’s not true then maybe I was wrong, but I don’t think so. Its one of those things where people try to bring politics into everything. Well at the end of the day, I mean, if you take a look at eastern Tennessee, if you want to break it down just from a political standpoint, I mean, isn’t Kane the mayor of Knox county? I mean, who’s more conservative than Kane? That whole area has similar thoughts to the way Tyrus thinks of politics, so why would you think they wouldn’t show up to cheer for him at the wrestling show?
– Joe Galli via Armbars and Sidebars
The topic of wrestling being a melting pot was brought up and Joe commented on that sediment.
Ken, I’m glad you brought this up, because there’s really not a lot of discussion right now, you know, he’s also the first African American NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion of the Lightning One era, and the last person to hold that championship since R-Truth, you know, Ron Killings was NWA Champion. So it’s really something that should be celebrated to be honest.
– Joe Galli via Armbars and Sidebars
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