Select Answers: New Day And AEW, Social Media Following, Wes Lee

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 indication that Kofi or Woods were seriously considering leaving WWE or signing with AEW prior to re-signing with WWE?

I had heard almost nothing at all regarding Kofi Kingston's negotiations at all, so I'm not sure how those went. I heard that Xavier's came down to the wire, and was a very late situation. From what I was told he wanted to stay, but was also in a position where he didn't have to compromise and was willing to do what was best for him. Ultimately, that was staying with WWE. I heard of no conversations between them and AEW.

does WWE/TKO factor in the social media following of talent when they're doing releases? (ex. wrestler A has good skills but low instagram following vs. wrestler B with progressing/low skills but high instagram followers (over 1M), wrestler A gets released)

I can't speak to social specifically, but I know Killer Kross took a whole lot of metrics to WWE, and that didn't end up mattering when negotiating. I've had people at the WWE Performance Center say that social media metrics can definitely help get people looks, get them hired, tryouts, or opportunities.

Why do you think Wes Lee was released? It seems his heel run was underwhelming.

The story that I've been given was that there were never plans for him on the main roster, and that he had been in NXT for five years. Now, I'm actually surprised he was let go given that NXT seems fine having some people around for long periods of time with their TV deal. He'll be very in demand on the indies and the Rascalz will be a heavily booked team.