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Select Answers: WrestleMania retirements, Trish Stratus, Will Ospreay
🕑 Added 2026-01-09 17:00:11 +0000 UTCWelcome 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 the days of big named superstars retiring at a Wrestlemania are over? In the past you had guys like Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, Undertaker, Batista all retire at a Wrestlemania, while this year you had guys like John Cena and Goldberg retire at SNME. Is the belief that since Wrestlemania usually sells itself, WWE/TKO can just use big names retiring to sell more tickets to lesser smaller shows like a SNME? Thoughts?
They're definitely not over. There will still be a lot of wrestlers who have their final match there. But almost none went in as a "definitely my last match" situation like Goldberg and John Cena did. Cena's was obviously bigger, but there are plenty of guys of which the pomp and circumstance of retirement should be on its own show. Michaels' had the potential of retirement. Batista said it would be his last match, but it wasn't treated as such. Austin and Taker's....just was. Ric Flair's -- everyone knew, but still the story was that maybe it wasn't. There will certainly be plenty that still have their last match there. If WWE can make a retirement a standalone draw, they will.
Who do you predict or would like to see Will Ospreay face at ALL IN London?
Whoever the world champion is, would be my guess. He's been in AEW for two years, and people were calling for him to win the world championship in 2024. The neck injury came up and even though he wrestled until late August, it's worth noting that he didn't have a singles match after June 11. He was feeling it for quite some time. All In is later in 2026, so there's a chance he can get back for that.
Since Trish Stratus was expected to wrestle for WWE again in the past year, can we expect her to return sometimes in 2026?
There were a lot of people around her and in WWE that were very surprised she didn't wrestle more throughout the year. The expectation that we'd heard was that WWE would do some sort of "25 Years of Trish Stratus" thing, and it just didn't happen. People that I speak to say she's always pitched things over the years, and has been very easy to deal with and made herself available when needed. I think we'll see her at some point in 2026.
Comments
Jason Carlin
Trish also lost her mom last year and they were pretty close, I have to imagine that impacted her ability to compete last year. Hoping for a better year ahead for her.
