Select Answers: Travel arrangements, ref pay. dirt sheet perception

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 travel arrangements work? Does the company book it all and the talent just pays?

In WWE, they have a travel department that arranges flights, which are paid for by the company. The talent is responsible for paying for their own rental car, bus, ubers, and hotels unless it's a major PPV or they're being sent somewhere for a specific WWE obligation.

In AEW, the company pays for flight, hotel and travel in between. Sometimes talent can get it themselves, and get reimbursed later. That's what was subject of all the controversy regarding CM Punk taking the tube in London. He could have got a taxi, car, limo or Uber and expensed AEW.

On the indies, if you're one of the top people, you'll get a hotel, and gas money. If you're starting out, tough!

How are referees paid? Is it a yearly salary, by show, or some other method? Are they also responsible for their expenses on the road? Lastly, what is the pay range for a referees with WWE or AEW?

In AEW and WWE, they are salaried. AEW referees are in the same hotels as the talent. In WWE, they're often responsible for their own hotel rooms, but can sometimes be reimbursed along the way. I'll follow up and see if I can get more specifics. Refs often work more jobs in the company

Do you believe that the work that you and fightful have done has helped get rid of the stigma that wrestling reporters or "dirt sheets" are bad for the business?

I wanted to normalize talent, staff, execs talking to media, because it's common in sports. Wrestling is way different, but if there's one thing I think Fightful specifically made more acceptable was contract news. It wasn't as common as it is today, and is now a normal and heavy part of news cycles. Wrestlers and reps don't see it as dirty any more.

It will never completely go away. I know my general willingness to respond to bad faith characters isn't something many people like, but that's the position we're able to be in.