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Select Answers: Shida, Kiana James, AEW residencies

Added 2025-07-17 16:00:12 +0000 UTC

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.

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Any update on Shida? I was surprised she wasn’t in the casino gauntlet.

She has been battling visa issues for quite some time. I don't know if they ever ended up getting rectified, but she's been back in Japan pretty much all year from what I understand. Kenny Omega was actually taking care of her cat. She hasn't wrestled in AEW since November, and people were surprised she wasn't at World's End since she lives in Orlando.

Any update on Kiana James?

I heard she was either cleared or nearing clearance over a month ago. She was backstage at the Lexington Smackdown show, and also backstage at Evolution. It would appear they have at least something planned for her since they didn't include her in the battle royal.

Do you think AEW will start moving away from PPV “residencies” (ie All in Wembley, All Out Chicago, DoN Vegas) and try to branch out more?

I just think that they'll do them when it makes financial sense. However, all the ones you mentioned have already been moved away from, so that's already in motion. I think they needed to do that because fans would just assume they could catch the next one.