Select Answers: Shida's Deal, Ratings, Lance Anoa'i

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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Do you have any more information about Hikaru Shida extending her AEW contract?

Not that it's at least multi-year in length. She's really well liked in AEW and has been missed for a long time. When she wasn't at Worlds End last year, that raised eyebrows, because she lives in the area. But it looks like everything is smooth sailing now and she will be with the company for years.

What is going on with Lance Anoa'i. Haven’t heard a thing about him in months. Is he still signed to NXT?

Lance got signed last year, and pretty quickly had an injury that was going to sideline him until early 2025. From what I understand, he sustained another injury after that, which took him out of action. It was a string of very bad luck.

Have you talked with anyone in WWE and AEW about the recent ratings changes and how it's been affecting wrestling? How concerned is everyone about this? It looks to be a big deal considering how almost every show is way down and could have big effects on rights renewals when contracts are up.

I have. If they're worried, neither side is selling it. There was a lot of education being done backstage (not in a formal sense) at AEW the week the changes came in. I was told that Tony Khan was well adept regarding the changes. I've asked some network contacts, who have all been pretty standard in saying that wrestling is valuable content. Some pretty straight PR answers. I haven't heard any reason for concern from the sources of which I spoke to about things.