Select Answers: Mercedes Mone, AAA/WWE, FLORIDA

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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Hey Sean. When is Mercedes deal up with AEW and do you see her signing another. If Bayleys deal is up this year ... she could join Mercedes in AEW. Mercedes seems to have found her true home in AEW in my opinion. Shes grown so much. Thoughts.

Yes, I think she will remain with All Elite Wrestling. She's making more money than she ever has, the schedule seems really good, and she gets a lot of artistic freedom. Everything I've heard is that she seems really happy there. I don't know when her deal is up outside of that there's at least another year left on the deal at minimum. AEW has her factored into plans moving forward, so no time soon!

I’ve been enjoying WWE’s presentation of AAA Lucha Libre and the overall match quality. Looking ahead to 2026, will WWE focus on signing new talent for AAA, or continue utilizing underused WWE main roster talent?

I wouldn't say "focus," but they're always going to bring in new talent. They're also going to see what talent is a better fit in WWE or the Performance Center. AAA is the thing that they really wanted NXT UK to be, but couldn't quite make happen. There will also be a steady stream of WWE talent continuing to appear on AAA. I would expect the method that has been used of late to continue to be the method.

Aside from the performance centre why do so many wrestlers live in Florida?

LOTS of reasons. Weather, for one. That's pretty nice. It also helps avoid weather delays for flights, which being near a bunch of airports also helps. One of the biggest reasons is there's no state income tax, which is very beneficial to independent contractors. However, another reason is simply it's where a lot of these people worked. In the 90s, WCW wrestlers were working at Disney. In the 2000s, TNA wrestlers were working at the IMPACT Zone. In the 2010s, the Performance Center. In 2020, Florida was one of the states that stayed open. Convenience helps!