Select Answers: Company Talent Types, 2026 Deals, AEW absences

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.

***

Hey Sean so if AEW can do contracts for a gate of agony and Kyle Fletcher why won’t they release Britt, Kamille, Deonna Purazzo, Ortiz, Wardlow

I've never heard of any of those people asking for their releases. AEW has never stopped doing new contracts. But I've never heard of any of those talent wanting anything besides featured on television, which I wish they would be. I think Wardlow will be back on TV before long. The others, I'm just wondering why they're benched. For all the talk about injuries preventing the women's tag division, there's a lot of great talent.

Beside Bayley contract expiring in 2026 any WWE contracts set to expire in 2026?

Both The Miz and Dragon Lee had contracts that were reported to have been through 2025. However, I'm not sure if injury time has been added for either one of them. Nick Khan has an employment agreement through 2026.

Hey SRS, when you say something along the lines of “This wrestler is perfect for This company” what checks those boxes for you specifically? I think the last one I heard you say was Ace Austin in reference to NXT.

Ace Austin to me is a television star. Beyond him looking like one, and being a fantastic wrestler, I think he has a promo style, presentation and delivery that has been a proven success formula for something like NXT.

For WWE main roster, it's mainly if they can work from a presentation and charisma standpoint, and a character connecting. They feel like everything else is replaceable

With AEW, they have a million great wrestlers, so I think it needs to be someone with a huge upside long term to bring in a new talent.

With NJPW, it's always tough to tell, but they're not spending big money. Now that they've ended their US wing, there's less opportunities for English speaking talent.

TNA is largely looking for familiar faces, or people they can cultivate into stars of the future for a lower price to stay competitive.