Select Answers: Contracts, promo rehearsals, Thanksgiving

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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How do the different types of contracts work? For example, do “per appearance” deals usually guarantee a certain amount of appearances, or is it just “we’ll get you in when we can and we’ll pay you when we do”?

They can work a variety of ways. These days, most WWE and AEW deals are just fully guaranteed, with some reimbursements and extras for some additional work or licensing elements. Mansoor and others have talked about the payout method and how certain things go into your "bucket" in WWE, and how going above that is when you make more money.

For per appearances, many are simply that -- you get paid when you work. There are some "exclusive paid per appearance" deals that don't allow you to sign elsewhere. I am of the belief that anyone who signs these should make sure they have a guaranteed minimum they make per month on those deals. Otherwise they're pointless. Larry D and Ace Romero asked for their TNA releases years ago because they were on exclusive PPA deals and weren't getting used.

How do promo rehearsals work? Is everyone just assuming where the crowd will boo or cheer or is it just about memorizing the lines and adapting to the crowd, when it's live? Follow up: Is it the same in taped interviews/promos (expecting where the crowd will cheer/boo and giving that a few seconds before they continue with it)?

Sometimes they just don't exist. But yes, you have to anticipate the reaction from the crowd. In WWE, almost every promo is meticulously scripted and followed. You need a good balance of how the crowd will react compared to how you want them to react. There are pretapes where they have to anticipate where a pop will happen as well.

What is your best Thanksgiving Wrestling moment?

I hate to say it, but I have absolutely none that come to mind. There's been so many food fights and turkey suits and all that, that none of them stand out or are any different than one another. I'm not old enough to know how good Thanksgiving wrestling was in the 80s. Thanksgiving weekend wrestling, however -- that's always Wrestlecade. One of my favorite weekends of the year.