As noted before, AEW official announced the debut of a new championship called the AEW National Championship. This title was announced to be inspired and paying tribute to the National Wrestling Alliance’s championship belt of the same name. Following the announcement, current NWA National Champion Mike Mondo criticized the announcement and claimed that he was the only real National Champion. Besides Mondo, other NWA wrestlers also were vocal online about AEW’s announcement and the NWA’s title already exists and has the lineage that AEW referenced in their announcement.
AEW CEO Tony Khan held a livestream on Friday on Twitter. One of the topics discussed included Khan addressing the controversy over the AEW National title announcement and stated that he had a recent conversation with NWA owner Billy Corgan about it. Khan also clarified AEW’s announcement of their new National title and the respect he has for both Corgan and the NWA.
“When I recently announced it, I saw a lot of talk online and there was chatter from people from other promotions and people all over. Wrestlers are going to talk and say stuff, that’s totally cool. I ended up having a nice conversation about it with the President of the NWA, Billy Corgan. The NWA National Championship has a great history of its own. When we created a National Championship, I saw NWA wrestlers saying, ‘We have a National Title.’ AEW is a separate company and we have our own lineage. Blly, I have a lot of respect for him and what he’s doing. I love the traditions of pro wrestling and I had a nice talk with Billy. We haven’t talked in a long time and it was good for him to do this. I respect him and the NWA. We’re trying to do something different here. We brought pro wrestling back to TBS, but there are a lot of promotions that had history on TBS before, one of them being the NWA. I think it’s great that Billy is trying to keep that tradition alive and revive it. We had a really nice talk about this. To any wrestlers anywhere in the world, particularly you in the NWA, you might be happy to hear Billy and I had a nice talk about this. I’m sure he would say the same.”
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) November 15, 2025
Transcript h/t: Fightful.com
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