Select Answers: What Vince Thinks Now, Bozilla, AEW Japan

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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What do you think Vince McMahon thinks about WWE's changes since he was removed? Namely the increase in ad placement, acquiring/working with other promotions and the counter programming of AEW events

I think he hates them. People close to him tell me that he still keeps up with what is going on, but don't really elaborate on it. The reality is that if Vince McMahon wanted any of these changes, he would have made them happen long ago. Vince McMahon's reputation wasn't as much prioritizing money over everything like TKO is doing. Vince McMahon's reputation was more about prioritizing literally whatever he wanted, which many times came at the expense of his own reputation, finances, and the stockholder interest. He made a lot of great decisions in the 80s, 90s, and even into the 2000s, but the reality is that his inability to adjust cultivated the environment for a solid number 2 in America to emerge.

Vince used to be heavy on counter programming in the 80s, but he didn't want to "sell" for AEW when he was there. He didn't want the world to know if anything like that bothered him.

Persephone and Bozilla are both excellent young wrestlers. With being featured at Forbidden Door, do you think there is any apprehension from CMLL/AEW/Stardom that they could be showcasing these talents, especially Persephone, for WWE to poach again like what happened with Vaquer? Or did they just consider Vaquer leaving right after, a unique/one-off situation? Thanks.

After the Stephanie Vaquer situation took place, sources in All Elite Wrestling and New Japan Pro Wrestling told me that they figured that in the future, the companies would take measures to ensure that they didn't heavily feature someone who would just get immediately poached by WWE. I'm not sure if that goes to short-term contracts, or how that would work. Last year, CMLL's contract with Stephanie had expired and NJPW had a short term one on her. I think that moving forward, the companies will be more careful of who they featured. They presented Vaquer with the best audition possible. AEW wanted to sign her, but she had her mind made up.

Any interest in AEW running a big show in Japan one day?

It will almost completely depend on the relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling. AEW has been very respectful of their partnerships of NJPW and CMLL as it relates to running shows in Japan and Mexico. Contracts are more fair game, as offering someone significantly more money to wrestle for a living is different than running shows in that area with that talent. AEW has had hugely successful cross promotional efforts with NJPW in Japan and with CMLL in Mexico this year. If it's something that will benefit all of the companies, I believe it will happen.