Select Answers: David Finlay, NJPW, SIDE JOBS! (Patreon)

Welcome to Select Answers, a 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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do you have any insight into how bushiroad might be effecting backstage malarkey? i know it's a little tricky to source njpw scoops but there seems to be some disatisfaction between the gaijin exodus and tsujis comments and subsequent apology.

I mean, nobody knows where their money is going for one. They have lost a lot of their top earners over the last few years. Will Ospreay, Kazuchika Okada, Hiromu Takahashi, EVIL, Tama Tonga, Tonga Loa, Clark Connors, Switchblade Jay White, Testuya Naito, Hikuleo, and a ton of their Strong contracted talent, and I'm not sure what they've done to replace that outside of Aaron Wolf. They have certainly been more frugal with money when it comes to talent and that leads to many leaving.

Hey Sean! I've always been curious, when wrestlers are brought in to shows and not used on TV or in a match, do they get other types of "side jobs" to do? Like assisting with production or backstage set-up, anything where the company gets some kind of value from them traveling there?

So if they're under contract it depends. Sometimes they'll do something extra, like interviews, or documentary work, or they'll take it upon themselves to learn things. When it comes to extras, yes, they are often tasked with other things. It might be something like running a USB drive across the arena, or helping out with a task backstage. By and large, wrestlers are contracted just to be wrestlers though.

Any truth to the reports that AEW isn’t interested in David Finlay?

I wouldn't go as far as to say that. Generally if AEW or Tony Khan are completely uninterested in someone, they won't ever appear on Forbidden Door, or on AEW TV. However, Finlay was there before he improved significantly. I can't say that he'll sign with AEW, because I know New Japan wants to keep him. But it's not quite an EVIL or Toru Yano situation where AEW is completely opposed as best I know.