Select Answers: WWE India, Wrestlers protecting themselves, UpUpDownDown, Belts (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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Is there any way wrestlers can protect themselves from shady practices from companies that seems to always have the upper hand?

All they can really do is form a union, which won't happen, or have better negotiation. A few years ago, wrestlers were told that WWE doesn't do no-cut contracts. Well, there's a lot of things WWE didn't used to do, and then they had to as wrestlers got more leverage. This situation didn't just affect the wrestlers, it affected the agents and reps that negotiated the deals, and I can't imagine they're happy. Most of these deals have escalators, and that will likely change for a lot of them moving forward.

Any idea what happens to UpUpDownDown now? Does WWE own it, or does Creed/Woods?

WWE owns it. Creed sold it to them a while back. Nothing substantial will ever occur with that channel without Austin Creed on it. The people were there because of him, the people on it, and not a WWE or TKO logo. They might as well just give it back to him because it's completely worthless without him.

Has there been any talk of consolidating belts in AEW ? I agree with you it’s too many. They should do a belt collector storyline with their men’s championships

Nope, not that I've heard of, even though plenty of people there I've talked to are in favor of it, or like tweets I put out about consolidating titles. If wrestler egos are so fragile that they can't be in a program without a title belt, they should come up with more creative ways to develop feuds. There's just very little cohesiveness to what justifies a title shot anymore. It's very frustrating to see.

Nick Khan once said WWE was looking to bring a PLE to India in early 2027. Have there been any updates on that that you’ve heard?

They will say whatever they can to kick up some buzz at any given time. I've never heard of any real plan to go to India for a PLE. If the money was there, then they would go. That is the decision maker at any time these days.