Select Answers: Skydance/AEW/WWE, Charlette Renegade, WWE contracts, Jim Crockett (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 think AEW might get cut by Skydance and it might be like WCW being acquired by WWE all over again?

These are categorically different situations. WCW was outright owned by AOL Time Warner, fully. We've long assumed WBD owns a small percentage of AEW, so that will carry over to Skydance. But the amount of which Skydance owns AEW is a negligible number as it relates to the particulars of this merger. WCW's TV deal was just whatever AOL Time Warner wanted because they owned the company and the channels. AEW's is a rights fee deal, and they're aiming for an option year to get picked up for 2028.

I would be shocked if AEW gets acquired by WWE, because AEW deems what they consider a success. They answer to themselves, and whatever minority owners exist, as opposed to shareholders and a duty to maximize profits.

I know Robyn is regularly on ROH, but whatever happened to Charlotte Renegade?

She was injured almost three years ago, and has only wrestled one indie match since. There have been tentative plans to bring her back to AEW/ROH TV, but they never panned out. I know that there were talks to have the Renegades involved with Mercedes, but it never happened. She got married to fellow wrestler Hunter Knott recently, and at one point in recent years was apprenticing at a barber shop owned by her grandfather, because she wanted to extend the barbershop's life to three generations of their family.

When there are releases or “not renewing a contract,” neither for disciplinary reasons, who would you say actually approved the release? TKO or WWE? Basically, does HHH or anyone in WWE get to object or put up a fight to keep someone?

WWE ultimately makes the decision. However, sometimes directives are given by TKO to cut a certain amount of salary. That's what happened with a lot of the major cuts earlier this year. There's honestly probably a pretty good chance that more people would have needed to be cut if New Day accepted the pay cut instead of leaving WWE. I can't say that for certain, but it was intimated to me.

Another “ What if question” this one is going date me.. If Jim Crockett would’ve stopped trying to expand and cut back on his excess spending , and just stuck to the Mid Atlantic territory . Would it still be around today?

Well, it sort of depends on what you mean. In its specific scale, no. In some capacity? Possibly. I think WWE would have eventually bought up the library in the 2000s regardless. But Ted Turner was probably going to get into wrestling anyway, and the number two company would have been whatever it is he bankrolled.