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Select Answers: Option Years, Liv Morgan, Austin Theory

Added 2025-08-29 16:00:11 +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, noting that it was in the Q&A format to avoid confusion.

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For AEW contracts, why would talent sign contracts that have options for AEW to pick up? Also are there contracts out there where the talent has the option to opt in or out?

This is nothing controversial whatsoever. This is very commonplace in sports, with player, team and mutual options being a thing. It almost exclusively is an AEW option in those contracts, but there were certainly some people in the past who believed they held the option. It's also been a thing in TNA as well, notably with Josh Alexander and Deonna Purrazzo. Both of which wanted out of their option years, but TNA exercised them to keep them under deals.

Any updates on Austin Theory?

Not beyond what is publicly known. He sustained an undisclosed injury and won't be around for a while. He's on the company's internal injury list, despite reports that he was off the internal roster. The decision was made to move Grayson Waller into a program with New Day and to utilize him with them. Theory hasn't been brought up creatively lately.

Is there still a chance that WWE brings back Liv to TV in a non wrestling role?

Yeah, there's always a chance something like that happens, but I'll tell you why it usually doesn't. WWE is able to freeze deals due to injury when talent are out of the ring. However, if they're on screen performing in any capacity, the time ticks on that deal. They don't have to be wrestling to be performing, and Liv Morgan would likely be utilized in an on screen capacity in a big way. Also, WWE is big on using the physically cleared return pops as a big moment for them on screen.