JIMMY VAN QUESTIONS FOR Q&A

What's the best ambulance segment: NWO destroying The Rock after the face to face encounter, Undertaker confiscating an ambulance, attacking Stone Cold and Trips or Austin attacking Trips during his buried alive match with The Big Show?

Charles Harkins

Do you find it amazing how many former ROH champions were also WWE World Champions? Just imagine if WWE got their hands on that library.

Charles Harkins

Who would be your Top ROH wrestlers? I'm going to with Chris Hero, but I don't know which version: heavy set or trimmed.

Charles Harkins

Was Hogan's impact as a heel equal to his face run, at least initially? And who are the other wrestler's to change to companies fortune?

Charles Harkins

Which heel turn was more memorable: Hogan's @ Bash At The Beach or Stone Cold's @ WM X-7 Main Event? The Hogan one does it for me because I always assumed Luger or Macho would be the man to turn because all of Sting's friends tend to turn on him.

Charles Harkins

Should john oliver go to mania

Jonathan Ma

John Carroll and Kevin Kelly brought this up on a recent pod: NJPW’s schedule is to run tours of varying lengths that may include several events, maybe even 4, in a week, then culiminate in a big show before getting weeks off. Fans, talent, staff get sort of concentrated periods of content, then a break to recharge. Would such a schedule ever work for an american promotion? Is the TV schedule that demands a weekly format just too restrictive?

Jonathan Ma

Related: a company like Rev Pro has benefitted tremendously by working with NJPW, and a lesser extent ROH. However, they lately seemed extremely dependent on NJPW talent, with a lack of unique stars. Tanahashi, for example, might well be their champion in a week or so. Is it bad for a UK indie to be, basically, NJPW UK?

Jonathan Ma

EVOLVE, Progress, and OTT have gotten into bed with WWE, with a longstanding expectation that their video content will eventually appear on the network, and apparently a deal in place that WWE can buy them out whenever they want. With WWE eating up talent, is it wise to try to be one of these companies that gets, essentially, swallowed up by WWE? They get some, restricted access to WWE talent, some social media promotion, and the possibility of a cash payout. The progress owners and Gabe Sapulsky even got producer type gigs, i think Smallman/Joseph actuallu run NXT UK. The downside...you are owned by WWE and subject to all of their orders. Would you do it, or try to survive despite talent poaching and conflicting dates?

Jonathan Ma

What's your biggest "mark out" moment? Do you still get mark out moments?

Andy Quigley

What would it take for you to recognize the WWE Hall of Fame as a legitimate hall of fame as opposed to a marketing tool?

Andy Quigley

What's your favorite looking LJN figure? Mine is probably either the white shirt Hulk Hogan or the Honky Tonk Man.

Andy Quigley

Would you for a subscriber goal do the HBK entrance in wrestling gear?

Who can you see in WWE wanting a release from there contract or not wanting to resign in the next year?

With more contracts being handed out, will we see the rise of agents like in traditional sports, or does wwe’s monopoly cap the effectiveness an agent can have?

Jonathan Ma

As ROH/AEW/NJPW/WWE increasingly lock up talent, the pool and level of available wrestlers is inevitably shrinking. Without being able to, for example, throw together a super indy card headined by ospreay/ricochet, anymore, what do you think is the ceiling for a tier 3 (below roh/aew/njpw) promotion? Will this market kill impact and mlw this year? I think indepedent promotions will have to be increasingly regional only, as even PWG has had to dig much deeper to fill out events like bola, which was much more international than ever

Jonathan Ma

a while back, in reference to news that MJF was still contracted to MLW while working for AEW, you said (paraphrasing) you’d never push a guy on tv that was contracted elsewhere. Since then, we’ve learned that AEW has partnered with AAA, OWE, appears to be on amicable terms with MLW and a variety of smaller companies. Do you think it is ultimately advantageous to trade exclusivity for access to a greater range of talents?

Jonathan Ma

If Fightful grew sufficiently, do you think it would be advantageous to move SRS or establish an “office” at a bigger hub of news mma/wrestling , like Socal, vegas, Chicago, or Florida?

Jonathan Ma

What promotions outside of WWE do you follow regularly or wish u could follow regularly

Jonathan Ma

How close were you to buying Pro Wrestling Sheet when it was available a little while back?

Jonathan Ma

Favourite all time angle? Favourite all time match?

How important is Wrestlemania weekend to your site? Is it a good opportunity to get more eyes on the site?

What do you think would happen if the WWE embraced the wrestling media instead of pretending they don’t exist most of the time?

3) Whats your take on Meltzer and his place in the current wrestling landscape? Are his match ratings, particularly for those that involve his favorites, reliable? Is he too heavily biased to be credible? It seems like at minimum, he's far behind as a podcaster, in light of incidents like the Peyton Royce surgery, and our own SRS is beating him to certain scoops. Is he really more of a historian these days?

Jonathan Ma

2) SRS is doing the Lord's work trying to "do" wrestling journalism the right way, but as I'm sure you've seen, the wrestling fanbase is so engrained in the "dirtsheet" mentality that they've been slow to embrace legitimate work. Whats the best way for Fightful to educate people that there's a place for a different kind of wrestling coverage than what they're used to?

Jonathan Ma

1) As a former promoter, and having seen how various current companies handle their schedules . . . what is the schedule for AEW if they get a TV deal? They would need, presumably, as much live weekly TV as possible, but we know that traveling from venue to venue every week takes its toll on talent, and it's not cheap, and it's not easy to fill even modest venues across the country. Is it feasible for them to survive on, say, TNT by taping matches bi-weekly or monthly, and fill weekly TV with a mixture of those pre-taped matches and backstage videos or pre-produced stuff like "Road-To" or BTE the way NXT creates their show?

Jonathan Ma

After being out of the wrestling news game for a while, what was the catalyst to start fightful?

Eric Z