Select Answers: Matt Sydal-AEW, Who should Reigns face at Mania? WWE termination notices

Welcome to Select Answers, a short 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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Any update on Matt Sydal in AEW?

I've actually not heard a peep regarding him in AEW. I did ask about his status recently, and a rep from the company stated that he's still under contract. He last wrestled in AEW in May 2024, and then got an ankle surgery that quite honestly he's needed done for over a decade. He randomly popped up in some results for a show called "ABC 15eme Festival International De Catch" in France back in July against Ultimo Dragon of all people. I've seen no footage of it and only some photos, but the show featured Mickie James, PJ Black, Eugene and the former Sylvester LeFort. It went completely under everyone's radar.

Who do you see Roman facing in WM42 with Seth being injured?

Well, depending on the severity of the shoulder injury, there's an outside chance it could be Seth Rollins, but it would be really hard to recover in that amount of time from shoulder surgery. I think that Bron Breakker should win the world championship and defend it against Roman Reigns, and then I think Bron Breakker should win. Reigns has actually been around more this year than I expected. He had six matches in all of 2024, down from 11 in 2023. His televised matches have decreased every year since 2015, with the exception of 2020, which you can't really count. I don't think that will go up more from the 6-7 he's worked the last few years, so I would have Breakker go over. That would be a big win. Last year was the first year Reigns didn't win a match at WrestleMania since 2018. He can afford to lose

Since a non-compete in WWE is more so a notice of termination, does that mean during that 90 day period, WWE can walk back the decision to release the talent? Or is even the advanced notice of termination binding?

When I spoke to agents around wrestling, they believed that it was something that WWE could probably do if they wanted to, but it's largely unprecedented. One case may have been Drake Maverick, but at the time we were told he was signed to a completely different deal after his release. It's probably something you're going to eventually see happen one day.