Select Answers: WWE-Sphere, LFG Show, SRS Thoughts On ECW 2005/2006

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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The LFG show where trainees are playing for the NXT contract seems kind of scammy. Is there a salary differential with an NXT contract versus being a trainee since WWE seems to sign all the guys who don’t win the contract since they perform at their house shows, and at evolve. Can you shed some light on this?

These people are all already under contract. It's a work. It's the natural progression of the Tough Enough show, but in a way that they can control. Between Josh Bredl, Sara Lee, Andy Leavine, Daniel Puder winning the last several iterations of Tough Enough, I understand why they would want a concept change.

When might we expect a WWE show to run the Sphere in Vegas?

I don't think it will happen any time soon. It's expensive for the sake of being expensive, and WWE already have their major shows in Las Vegas planned out. Allegiant Stadium is getting WrestleMania, and then WWE nailed down an exclusive deal with T-Mobile Arena for additional shows. I don't think T-Mobile arena would be keen on making an announcement like that and then having it nixed.

Hey Sean! Seeing the ECW Figure Haul videos made me wonder, what were your takes on both ECW One Night Stand events and the overall relaunch of ECW on the Syfy network? Thanks!

I loved ECW, especially ECW on TNN area once I actually started to get to watch it. I know that period isn't looked upon as fondly as die hards, but I loved it. The ECW One Night Stand show was one of my most anticipated shows of my life, even until this day. I loved the documentary, the Forever Hardcore companion documentary, and even that there were Hardcore Homecoming shows that served as a companion. Masato Tanaka vs. Mike Awesome is one of the best sub-ten minute matches of all time. I did not like that the majority of the card was 7ish minute matches.

The next year was a lot of fun with the WWE vs. ECW approach. I thought it was a great way to launch the brand,, and I was very excited for the show. Boy was I wrong. ECW on Syfy sucked ass. It was terrible. It stripped away almost everything special about ECW. The RVD and Sabu arrest didn't help, but it's like they threw up their hands and said "fuck it, WWECW it is, these guys aren't reliable." The reality is that they had CM Punk, Monty Brown, Elijah Burke and ended up moving Johnny Nitro, Bobby Lashley over. There is no reason it should have failed, but Vince McMahon was creatively bankrupt and wanted to bastardize something he didn't create.