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Select Answers: UFC-Staph, WWE-Topps

Added 2025-02-23 17:00:07 +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.

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In the past year, we’ve seen at least 2 obvious cases of main card UFC fighters having staph infection before their fights (Benoit Saint-Denis at UFC 299 and Sean Strickland at UFC 312), and both of them had miserable showings as expected. How can the athletic commission allow fighters to compete with staph, especially when they are on antibiotics?

Those are the two we KNOW about. Imagine how many happened early on the card, and rolled around on the mat. If you're a wrestler, fighter, grappler and you have staph -- DO NOT RISK EVERYONE ELSE!!.

Hi Sean! First timer here. I know they don't typically comment about things of this nature, but have there been any backstage reactions to the recent Topps Chrome WWE release? It seems to be getting rave reviews in the trading card industry, and WWE recently used promotional graphics on Smackdown for it.

I wouldn't say backstage necessarily, but internally for sure. WWE had a contentious relationship with Panini and wanted to be with Topps as the industry for both wrestling and cards exploded. They terminated their Panini deal, and it got to the point where lawsuits were filed and Nick Khan was having zoom meetings directly with Panini. WWE had felt that Panini hadn't lived up to their end of the agreement, but most everyone knew they were headed to Topps, because it's owned by Fanatics.