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By developing better technologies, we keep moving forward. With each new idea, innovation, and partnership, we're one step closer to fulfilling our purpose every single day. To find out more, visit Parker.com/purpose. Parker, engineering your success. What's next? At Moss Adams, that question inspires us to help people and their businesses strategically define and claim their future. As one of America's leading accounting, consulting, and wealth management firms, our collaborative approach creates solutions for your unique business needs. We leverage industry-focused insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance, uncover opportunity, and move upward at Moss Adams.com. What's up, you guys? Sean Ross Sapp, welcome to Fightful. Here with the name, you know, we've been so lucky to have him here multiple times. Now we have him here as TNA Digital Media Champion. I actually witnessed this in-person, saw it all unfold in Newport, Kentucky, just outside of Cincinnati. AJ Francis, how are you feeling, man? I feel good, man, and anyone who thinks you can't keep a secret, they're a liar, you know what I'm saying? You were there in the flesh, brother. You kept it secret, you kept it under wraps. You could just spilled the beans, you know, you could have posted all your pictures and videos, and you didn't, you know, kudos to you. I kept the gallery off of Fightful Select until the tapings ended. I wanted to make sure that people got as surprised as possible. I try not to post too many spoilers like that. I prefer to talk about people making money, which you're well acquainted with. Absolutely. I want to talk a lot about how this all happened and how you're feeling now, because I mean, you have went back at a lot of haters online, and now you're doing everything that you said that you would do outside the auspices of WWE. How does it feel for you to, for this to happen? Is it a sense of validation, or are you like, no, I still got more to prove? I definitely still got more to prove, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. It's, you know, being able to be the flag bearer for a brand as big as TNA, to win a title on their 20th anniversary show of Impact, like, that says a lot, and to be put in that position because of, you know, what I've already done, you know, in a very short time in TNA feels great. You got to think about it since I joined TNA in January, and since then on TNA, I've been able to show you, BUNB, DJ Who Kid, Shawnee Styles, Alex, I'm Tyrone, Blackboy, JB, Sean Merriman, BDE, like, that I bring the people out, I bring the people that want to have a moment in wrestling into wrestling. I like being that bridge between pop culture and wrestling, because I was known before I ever took my first bump, right? And there's a lot of people like that, like, Logan Paul, you know, Logan Paul is an incredible wrestler. He puts on some really great matches, but when he first started, people gave him shit because he didn't come up through the Indies, you know what I'm saying? And I get shit even though I did come up through the Indies for a year, so it's like, I wonder why, but that's a whole different discussion for a whole 'nother time. And you know, it's just, I'm just very grateful for the people at TNA to be able to give me this opportunity to show what I can do, and I feel like I've earned it, and I still got more to do. And not only that, we've seen you pop up many other places, but it was reported that you signed with TNA through the end of the year. So I mean, it's evident that the relationship is going really well that you both were willing to make that commitment. Absolutely. I love TNA, man. TNA has been nothing but good to me, man. They give me opportunities. They give me the mic. They let me show who I really am. They let me show what I'm capable of. They put me in good positions, and they listen to my ideas. I have a lot of really good ideas. I know you saw all the streamers streaming the 20th anniversary show, right? Yeah. Yeah. I put that whole thing together, like me and signing our friend Wheezy that we took a picture with recently. Wheezy. Wheezy was part of it. I put that whole thing together with Santi, got in contact with Ariel, making sure that all the P's and Q's recovered, you know what I'm saying, and like, we did everything we were supposed to do, and it brought a great, big, new audience to TNA to be able to see TNA for the first time, being able to see Jordan Grace in the flesh, other than when she's on NXT, being able to see, unfortunately, Joe Hendry, being able to see all these other acts that are incredible in TNA from moves in the system and the list goes on and on. Get to see familiar faces they already know, like, I asked my elegance and my stuff, Ali, and, you know what I'm saying, like, these things are very important to me to be able to bring crossover audience. I understand the impact that the internet can play. That's why I'm the digital media champion. You mentioned BDE Brandon, wonderful guy. He had that moment. Very great guy. Great guy. And honestly, all his friends, that whole team, great guy. Sound out loud, guys. Yeah, they're wonderful dudes. But you had a little moment with him during the match before you won the title. How does something like that get pitched, brought up, executed, or do you just do it? I've been trying to film content. Me and Brandon have been trying to film content together for, like, almost a year now, and just schedules didn't work. You know, he lives in Dayton, which is not the most accessible city if you don't live in Ohio. Like, so the Dayton and Times were just not matching, and then we had the show in Newport, Kentucky, which is an hour and a half from where he lives, basically. And I was like, hit him up. I was like, yo, are you free on these days? He's like, yeah, I was like, yo, I'd love for you and your guys to come out to the TNA tapings, and I'll find something for us to do. At the time, I had no idea I was going to be in a digital media title match, right? I had no idea what it was. But once I found out I was in a digital media title match, and then I found out I was winning, I was like, oh, I got to involve Brandon in this, for sure. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, we have a mutual respect, and then, you know, we planned it out the next day, I went to his house and filmed content with him, you know what I'm saying, in his ring, which he has this chokesland video that he posted that has, like, 500,000 views. And it's just literally us playing rock, paper, scissors, let me give him a chokesland. So it's like, you know, it's like crazy how, like, everything came together the way that it did, because I reached out to Brandon way before I know I'm doing the digital media thing, right? Before I know that I'm going to be the champion for any of that. And he decides to come, and then I come up with the idea to involve the streamers in it, but I don't tell any of them that Brandon's going to be there because I know they all love Brandon, right? Yeah. So then when they're watching the show and they see him, they all pop, like, they pop just as big as what I want the title, like, if not bigger when they saw Beatty, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, it was a really cool moment to be able to put together. You've had some great ideas. You've also had some really terrible ones, like, dragging me to a Super Bowl party at, like, and you at the time of your life, man, it was, it was a very good time. It was the food was great. It wasn't good time. I got about an hour and a half of sleep that night, but we also rolled a roller, a row to roller coaster. I believe you had to check and make sure that you could ride it because you're tall, though. Yeah. It's not just tall. I'm big, man. I'm both those things. You never know with those kinds of rides, but there's not, I can't ride all the rides, you know, saying they, they tell you to grow up and be tall. They don't tell you to go to tall. You know what I'm saying? Like it's, it's tough sometimes. I will say that trip did change my mind on Las Vegas because after being in Dallas, Los Angeles, places at Chicago for big wrestling events, the way that I say is Las Vegas is 15 minutes from everything. Like you, you, you, you're not going to be gone too long. But if it's LA and somebody says, come to my thing, well, an hour later, maybe you'll be there, you know, maybe an hour. That's the thing is that this is the perfect place for WrestleMania. That's why I'm glad they did it because, because real, like tourist areas, people with that areas that people actually go, you got the strip, like just off the strip and then you got Fremont Street and like, yeah, that's all you need, whether for WrestleMania, you get some wild characters in those two areas and you get to go like in other areas. I don't know, not quite sure like I've done, I was, I did the WrestleMania in LA and everything was forever apart. But I've done the WrestleMania in New York, everything's forever apart. The best WrestleMania location in my opinion is New Orleans. I wish they could do it every year, you know what I'm saying, but Vegas is a very close second. Yeah. And I mean, now we're at the point where TNA goes there regularly, I mean, WWE like everybody's going there regularly and TNA just announced, well, they had previously announced Chicago, Philly, Montreal, Tampa, and then they got Louisville and Cleveland as well. But listen, you're practically just staying in the Kentucky, Ohio area. Hey, man, you got your, your, your baseball fans, bet MGM is giving you the chance to win a prize every day during the baseball season. Step into the batter's box for bet MGM swing for the fences free to play game, pick any area of the strike zone and take your best swing. If you get a single, double, triple or home run, you'll receive a prize, smash a home run to collect a bonus bet on us. Log into your bet MGM sports account to get started, then visit your promotion section to access the swing for the fences free to play game. You'll score a prize if you hit a single, double, triple or home run, there's nothing more exciting than going yard. So swing for the fences with the king of sports books, bet MGM and game since remind you to play responsibly. See bet MGM dot com for terms 21 plus only Colorado only existing customer offer subject to eligibility requirements, rewards vary depending on market and expire 24 hours from issuance gambling problem called 1-800-Gambler. At Parker, our purpose is simple. We want to make the world a better place by working more efficiently, by using more sustainable practices, by developing better technologies, we keep moving forward. With each new idea, innovation and partnership, we're one step closer to fulfilling our purpose every single day. To find out more visit Parker dot com slash purpose Parker engineering your success. What's next? At Moss Adams, that question inspires us to help people and their businesses strategically define and claim their future. As one of America's leading accounting consulting and wealth management firms, our collaborative approach creates solutions for your unique business needs. We leverage industry focus insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance, uncover opportunity and move upward at Moss Adams dot com. Good luck, man. I need you to come to all these shows, man. I know. I know. Kentucky and Louisville. Well, Louisville, Louisville is on my birthday. Do you think Gail Kim's going to throw me a party? I will pitch the idea. She's the nicest lady ever. That'll be the last idea you pitch in TNA. She might, in fact, throw you the birthday party. I can see that. Or we could do a bit where I come out with a birthday cake and shove it in your face. It sounds horrible. It sounds horrible. Although that probably wouldn't work because I'm a heel and people are like, "I know." You're having a cake in your face and get a huge pop. It would. It would. So you've been working with Rich Swan, who we haven't really seen do a lot of heel stuff in the past. Like here in the Navy and he's doing great as well and he's a guy who is he's a guy who much like yourself had global television exposure before TNA. How has that been working with him? I love Rich, man. This right here is because of Rich. Rich stood on the table for me and was like, "Yo, we need to do this." Rich, you know what I'm saying? Rich is the person that did that. Rich didn't have to do that. Rich recognizes. He says, "Man, I'm an incredible wrestler." He said, "But you're bringing all these people in. You're bringing these eyes in." He's like, "I'm so happy that I get to do this stuff with you as a heel." He's so good at it. I never saw Rich as a heel. I don't think he ever was a heel before when you joined the first class. I was like, "You and Richard are going to work together," and he's going to get booed because he's standing next to me, but I didn't know what he's able to do as a heel. He's so good and not just in character, but working. Every match he had, he works the eyeball. Nobody's working eyeballs in 2024. That's crazy. He's working the eyeball. It's a crazy man, but he's so good at what he does, and I appreciate him so much, and I'm so thankful. First class has been such a blast, and it's just the beginning. This is just the beginning. We got so much more than we're going to do in first class, so I'm very excited to see where it goes in the future. You mentioned him earlier, Joe Hendry. Uh-huh. Do you believe in him yet? I would never believe in Joe Hendry, okay? Why is that? Never. Because me not believing in Joe Hendry is why everyone else does. Are you saying you made him famous? I'm not saying I made him famous, but I'm saying there's a lot of people that tell me that they found out Joe Hendry, who he was when he did the Cheez-It Champion video, or when he did the Band from Diving video, or when he did the Rock concert in the middle of the ring. Those are the three biggest things that introduced majority of the audience to Joe Hendry. So if there's one common link in all three of those things, I mean, he did the videos before me, he did them with Drew McIntyre, and LA Knight, and Matt Cardona, he did the videos before me. He had the same interest song before me, and it just, it's very suspicious timing. It's very suspicious timing. It's like, it's almost like, if you talk shit about me, people listen. It's almost like any chance that you get to run dirt on my name, people love that. You want to know why? Because I'm the best heel in the business, and I stand on that. And also, on top of that, Joe Hendry himself will tell you he owes me some cigars. So hey, man, it's a two-man dance. We both helped each other in our feud together, but let's be for real. All right, all right, Joe Hendry is a household name right now, okay? That is very new. That's a very new thing that's happened in his life, very new, somewhere around January to June. So let's just be real. So one of the things I love about your offense, you do the knee in the corner, then you do like the flop and land on your feet. I love that. So the funny thing about that is people assume that I've been doing that move for years, but people just associate it with the fucking guy. Yeah, people associated with that, but I've been doing that since 2019. First time I did it was actually an accident. I was in a match, and I hit the running knee, because I was trying to steal the running knee from Tomaso Champa, this effect, and I did it, and I got too much momentum, and I flipped over, and I landed on my feet, and the crowd was like, "Whoa!" And I was like, "I played it off like I did it on purpose, and I was like, "Well, I'm keeping that." Yeah. I mean, Drew McIntyre told me that he developed the claymore, because he slipped when he was kicking somebody in the head. That's how some of those happen. Are there any other happy accidents that you remember, like maybe in your wrestling career, where maybe something went a little wrong, and you're like, "That worked out." Yeah. You know, when one of the first things is like, when we were doing "Hid Row," and we were doing the bit where we would call everything corny, so like the first time we did it, we were in Iowa, I think, or Indiana, somewhere with Nebraska, maybe? I can't remember. But somewhere where there's a lot of corn, and I came up with the idea because we were driving through the state, and it was just corn everywhere. Yeah. So we came out of the idea, and we were like, I forget where we were, but it was like, that's why, because I'll just say Indiana, that's why, because Indiana's corny, right? And they booed, obviously. And then during the match, they started chanting, "Cormate." We've never done this on TV. Nice. We've never done this on TV. We've never done it. We've never showed this before. This was just a one-off thing, but they were chanting it, and as they're chanting it, we all look around at each other like, "We're going to add this to the arsenal, for sure." Absolutely. Yeah, it's cool. It's funny, because a lot of things happen like that. Booker T was talking about that when I hosted his Q&A at River City WrestleCon this weekend, and he was talking about all the things that happened when he didn't expect it to. The first time he did a spin of Rooney, he just did it. You know what I'm saying? He wasn't like, "I'm going to plan this out." He did it. He loved it so much. Then Jericho named it the spin of Rooney, and he was like, "All right," and he just kept doing it over and over and over. Now if you talk about Booker T, the first thing most people talk about is doing a spin of Rooney. It's so funny. That happens to wrestling all the time. It was cool. This past weekend, I got the host Q&A's with him, Trish Stratus and Lita, and the Hardy Boys. Oh, that's cool. The market, me, was going crazy. It was cool. As we wrap up, who would you like to face within TNA? Who do you want to see challenge for your TNA digital media championship? Within TNA, there's a lot of options. I've never lost a singles match to Joe Hendry because I'm way better than him. He's the longest reigning digital media champion of all time, so it would be really cool to beat his ass again and establish myself as the greatest digital media champion of all time. There's legends in TNA that I've never worked with that I would love to work with like a PCO or going to Montreal anyway. That would be great. We can Rhino, Tommy Dreamer, Frankie Kazarian, EY. There's a bunch of guys that would be really cool and then there's new guys that I haven't had singles matches with like Ace Austin and Chris Bay and we can go title for title with Mustafa Ali, winner gets to be president. It's a whole, you know what I'm saying? Like we could do a whole thing there. It'd be great. AJ Francis, I want to thank you so much for giving me the time, new TNA digital media champion. I was so happy to see that in person. Make sure you guys check him out. He's always doing great things, always doing positive things for all kinds of people that need it as well. So AJ Francis, I want to thank you so much for joining us and I want to thank you because I couldn't have did this without your constant support, you know, Sean, you have in a world of people that shit on me for no reason, you have always been someone that has my back and I appreciate you brother. Well, as somebody that everybody in the world loves, I will just take that and say thank you for the praise. Until next time guys, we're out. Baseball fans, BetMGM is giving you the chance to win a prize every day during the baseball season. Step into the batter's box for BetMGM Swing for the Fences free to play game. Pick any area of the strike zone and take your best swing. If you get a single, double, triple or home run, you'll receive a prize. Smash a home run to collect a bonus bet on us. Just log into your BetMGM Sports account to get started, then visit your promotion section to access the Swing for the Fences free to play game. You'll score a prize if you hit a single, double, triple or home run. There's nothing more exciting than going yard, so Swing for the Fences with the King of Sports Books. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 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