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Leonard Asper and his brother David long ago used to mimic the bombastic matches of the American Wrestling Association, the Midwestern predecessor of today’s giant World Wrestling Entertainment enterprise.

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The former chief executive of Canwest Global Communications Corp. would pretend to be Baron Van Raschke (also known as The Clawmaster), while David would be The Crusher.

“He was six years older than me, and he used to sit on me and crush me, literally,” Asper said.

Yet those vivid childhood memories weren’t the motivation behind Asper’s recent legal tussle (with Smashing Pumpkins’ frontman Billy Corgan, no less) over control of a wrestling promotion company, Tennessee-based Impact Ventures LLC, and its wholly owned subsidiary wrestling network, TNA Entertainment.

Instead, he said it was just about numbers. TNA’s wrestling programming was the second-highest rated show on the Fight Network, a combat-sports network owned by his Anthem Sports and Entertainment Corp.

It was also Asper’s latest move as he pushes to grow privately held Anthem into another media empire, though he is reluctant to use the word empire.

“I like sports. But I’m not doing this because I’m a wrestling fanatic. It’s a business decision,” he said. “We want to own content as a company.”