Select Answers: Joe Doering, Rhio, Booking The VIsion, AAA/WWE

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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Is Joe Doering still recovering from cancer surgery? If he had surgery, that is. Can't recall if he did or didn't.

As best I know, yes. There hasn't been discussion of him wrestling again. He has really been struggling with his cancer battle, and requires some heavy assistance. He had surgery to fix his eye, and is still using a wheelchair. I know that he had a heavy physical therapy schedule as well.

After seeing the new CMLL/Pokemon partnership it reminded me of the AAA/Marvel partnership. Is WWE able to use the characters created for that after purchasing AAA or was that just a short term licensing agreement?

Yes. WWE will be able to use those characters. They acquired that ability in the deal, as best I know.

Any update on rhio?

Assuming you mean Rhio, not Riho, here's an article I had drafted:

UK talent Rhio has long been discussed as a top prospect and earlier this year, many were speculating on her future. There were a number of talent within PROGRESS speculating that she’d already signed with an American company, though we can confirm she’s not on WWE’s internal rosters as of yet. 

When Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp inquired about Rhio’s status with WWE, we were told they’ve had their eye on her for quite a while and is well liked within those that are familiar with her. Rhio did a recent WWE tryout, and also participated in extra work on an episode of WWE Raw.

How would you book Raw so the Vision isn't just 2023 Judgment Day all over again?

I think it should resemble Evolution more than anything, especially since it's been over 20 years since that happened. There's not a lot that would keep Bronson Reed and Bron Breakker branching out on their own. Bronson Reed already was very successful in feuding with the leader of the Vision on his own. Before the stable started, people expected Bron Breakker to be the next guy to ascend to the top. I think that Bron Breakker needs to be the Batista of 2025 and have a slow build leading to him winning the Rumble. Him not being clued in "kayfabe" on Rollins' injury is a nice wrinkle. I'd love to see Rollins laugh at the idea of Breakker thinking he was the leader and that sets the tone. This does not need to be a multi-year stable. WWE needs a lot of formidable top talent. We've seen too many stables at the top of wrestling in the last few years between Judgment Day, Death Riders, and Bloodline.