Select Answers: Saraya, Rumble Memories, Nakamura/Wrestle Kingdom

Welcome to Select Answers, a feature that provides some of the answers to questions that were posed to Sean Ross Sapp in the most recent Fightful Weekly Q&A Podcast. The show drops every week on Fightful Select for subscribers.

When aggregating these posts please refer to it as "Fightful Select Answers Q&A" and tag Fightful, noting that it was in the Q&A format to avoid confusion.

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Saraya has talked about how she mailed it in when she was with AEW. Does anyone in the industry care about this or look at her differently? Would they still want to work with her?

I've not had anyone speak to me directly about it, and this was actually the first I heard of it. Everyone has ups and downs in motivation, and she certainly did. She was emerging from a career-ending injury and was beloved at first, then wasn't, then won the world title, and then was doing nothing, then in a group, then re-signed, and then went off television. Santana and Kazarian have similar experiences, and nobody looks at them different.

hey Sean, I've been rewatching old Rumbles with my 11 year-old starting from the beginning. we're through '98 now and it's been fascinating watching the old eras through a modern child's eyes. do you have any stand out favorite Rumble match moments from your childhood?

Yes, I grew up renting every Royal Rumble on VHS I could find and watching with my cousin. So in 1996 as kids, we were renting the 90-92 Rumbles regularly. Rick Martel's run of over 50 minutes was incredible. The hated, effeminate heel just going out there and having an incredible run was something very cool to see. He wasn't a coward, he was a competitor. I think it really set the stage for what an iron man really was.

"The Diesel spot" is still a thing today.

What’s your best guess as to what Nakamura’s punishment from HHH would’ve been if he’d just said screw it and gone to the Tanahashi match?

Nothing. He would have been off WWE television. Not like that would be much of a change compared to months at a time during his run, anyway. Instead, he had a banger match on the January 9 episode of Smackdown with Carmelo Hayes. They still should have let him. Retirements are more important than silly wrestling wars.