POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Tuesday: POSTmarks – Cody from Maine
Tuesday: upNXT
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Thursday: Pollock & Thurston
Thursday: MCU L8R – Agatha All Along Ep. 3 (POST Wrestling Café)
Friday: Double Shot – Mr. McMahon Ep. 1 [FREE]
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: Double Shot – Mr. McMahon Ep. 2 (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: Collision Course (POST Wrestling Café)
Sunday: Double Shot – Mr. McMahon Ep. 3 (POST Wrestling Café)
Sunday: NJPW Destruction in Kobe (POST Wrestling Café)
**POST Wrestling will have coverage of the Mr. McMahon series all week long. On Thursday, Brandon Thurston and I are doing a live show at 1 p.m. ET to go over the major points from the series and focus on the Janel Grant subject matter. Wai Ting and I will do individual reviews of all six episodes beginning Friday with a free review of Ep. 1. Then, we will do daily editions of The Double Shot beginning Saturday covering Ep. 2-6 for members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**Rewind-A-Raw is live tonight at 11 p.m. ET.
**Jack Wannan has a story coming Tuesday profiling combat sports photographer Ryan Loco and analyzing five of his favorite photos.
**The WWF’s Unforgiven 2001 show occurred on this date featuring Kurt Angle winning the WWF Championship in his hometown and a dreadful match between The Undertaker & Kane with Kronik. Relive this show on Rewind-A-Wai #162.
**Monday’s Audio News Update is available for ALL members of the POST Wrestling Café:
WRESTLING NEWS
We are embarking on a very busy period over the next several weeks with the following:
*Mr. McMahon on Netflix (Sept. 25) – The much-discussed six-part series drops late Tuesday night on the streaming platform with over 200 hours of interviews (many preceding McMahon’s resignation including those with McMahon himself).
*AEW media rights deal – This could be confirmed at any time with John Ourand of Puck suggesting this week as a possibility. Tony Khan’s latest wording is that AEW will be staying on TNT & TBS for a long time, but the questions surround the final dollar value, the pay-per-view component, another broadcaster in the mix, and any reorganization of its weekly programming schedule.
*AEW Grand Slam (Sept. 25) – The promotion’s fourth installment of Grand Slam at Arthur Ashe Stadium has received a major television push but ticket sales have to be disappointing with just over 6,000 distributed as of the latest WrestleTix estimate, although we’ll see what the late push brings the total to. It is a loaded show with Collision being taped the same night.
*NXT to CW Network (Oct. 1) – Next Tuesday’s move sees the show venture on the road with a card at the Allstate Arena featuring CM Punk. They have a healthy advance but are far from sold out. The important number is the viewership, although the first two weeks are loaded up with added star power and it’s the audience NXT settles into that will be a better indicator of an upgrade, downgrade, or status quo with the network move.
*AEW Dynamite’s 5th Anniversary (Oct. 2) – The show is promoted around the first singles meeting between Will Ospreay and Ricochet in eight years and has a giant expectation level among the audience. It is coming on relatively short notice, although it’s been teased since Ricochet’s first TV appearance after All In, and was inevitably going to be a match occurring sooner than later.
*WWE Raw to two hours (Oct. 7) – The flagship program moves back to a two-hour format, at least for 13 weeks as it runs out the clock on the USA Network through a short-term extension until the end of 2024. It will eliminate the 10-11 p.m. ET hour and should automatically enhance the audience, plus the unknown factor of whether this will encourage audiences to watch the show live instead of on DVR or other means. When Nitro reverted to a two-hour format in January 2000 it proved ineffective but occurred as the company was spiraling and presenting a cold product, the antithesis of WWE making the change and airing a hot product.
*NXT vs. AEW Title Tuesday (Oct. 8) – NXT’s second week on CW Network from Chesterfield, Missouri with Randy Orton vs. Je’Von Evans goes against AEW’s Title Tuesday in Spokane, Washington. AEW has multiple television shows to hype, so there is nothing announced for this show, which also serves as the go-home Dynamite before WrestleDream. There are a lot of factors working against AEW on this night and is likely going to be affected by the Vice-Presidential debate more than NXT, which saw zero impact against the Presidential debate several weeks ago.
**WWE Raw is at the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California with a sold-out show. There are two Monday Night Football games tonight to contend with as the Buffalo Bills vs. Jacksonville Jaguars airs on ESPN & ESPN Deportes and the Washington Commanders vs. Cincinnati Bengals are on ABC & ESPN+. The following matches are set for Raw:
*Intercontinental Championship: Bron Breakker © vs. Jey Uso
*Sami Zayn vs. Ludwig Kaiser
*Drew McIntyre returns
**Oliver Brown from The Telegraph in the U.K. wrote about being banned from covering the Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois event this past weekend after writing about aspects of sportswashing by the government of Saudi Arabia. The boxing fight took place at Wembley Stadium with a crowd announced at 96,000. This is a very unsettling story and will be noteworthy to see whether Darcy is supported by his colleagues in the industry or whether this is going to become the norm and dissuade reporters from covering this aspect of the industry, which extends beyond boxing as UFC gets further involved with Saudi Arabia and WWE already has its existing deal.
**Tony Khan spoke on WFAN on Monday about the potential of AEW content streaming on the Max service:
The plan is to, I think, do a lot of things potentially with Max and that could involve a variety of things. But we have the shows on TBS and TNT and that’s how they’re available now, but I think as far as Dynamite, Collision, Rampage, pay-per-views, everything’s on the table. The pay-per-views, for sure, we’ve had great conversations about streaming. We’ve been doing it on Bleacher Report, but they are sunsetting Bleacher Report. From now on we’re going to be doing our pay-per-views on other apps. You can get the pay-per-views at other places for now but we’re working on some exciting announcements on where to get those and what’s to come with Max but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I can promise you, I’m 100 percent confident that you’re going to have AEW on TBS and TNT for a long time to come. (Transcribed by Ian Carey at Wrestling Observer)
**Friday Night SmackDown’s viewership in Canada this past weekend was 266,700 viewers and 88,500 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360. It was ranked #4 among sports that night behind the Toronto Blue Jays vs. Tampa Bay Rays and two CFL games. WWE Main Event averaged 51,900 and 7,800 in the demo immediately following SmackDown and ranked #10.
**While everyone should reserve judgment until seeing the Mr. McMahon series. One of the major omissions is Jim Ross, who disclosed several weeks ago that he was not interviewed for the series. Ross stated on Grilling JR that he was willing to be interviewed but there was no outreach and explained that as McMahon’s right-hand man for many years, he knew all the secrets. While there is a long list of people you may want to interview about McMahon, it is hard to justify Ross not being near the top of that list. Ross was a trusted advisor, who worked as closely with McMahon as almost anyone. McMahon and Ross have had a tumultuous relationship with highs and lows over the past thirty years. McMahon rolled out the red carpet for Ross in 1993 when he was done at WCW and treated it as a major coup to secure Ross from the competitor. He was fired multiple times in the ‘90s but by the end of the decade, was the lead voice of the company and its Vice President of Talent Relations. McMahon constantly went through phases of wanting to replace Ross as the voice of the show. Ross had to go through several humiliating angles from the Kiss My Ass club in his hometown, a mockery of his 2005 surgery on television with a re-enactment, and being drafted to SmackDown without his knowledge in 2008 among them. Ross’ second autobiography, Under the Black Hat, heavily focused on the relationship with McMahon and what he was put through while also maintaining his respect for McMahon.
**CMLL’s card at Arena Mexico on Friday night came one week after its anniversary show. The main event was focused on the participants in the Mask vs. Mask match the previous week. The unmasked Euforia gained a measure of revenge by tearing off the mask of Hechicero and causing a disqualification as Hechicero, Bárbaro Cavernario & Valiente prevailed against Euforia, Esfinge & Soberano Jr. The match only lasted approximately twelve minutes but included some terrific dives including a tornillo by Soberano Jr. Místico came back from an underwhelming main event the previous week with Chris Jericho and had an excellent performance with Averno, which was super-heated and Místico was on fire during a mid-match sequence including a flying ‘rana to the floor, one-man Spanish Fly, and winning with La Mistica. The other match to highlight was Atlantis Jr., Templario & Titán defeating Último Guerrero, Gran Guerrero & Stuka Jr. They split the first two falls and included a spot where mini Kemalito was placed on the edge of the apron and sent flying by a baseball slide dropkick by Último. The end occurred when splashes were delivered to Último, and Stuka Jr. and they piled on top to win the deciding fall. It looked like a very healthy crowd and the usual enthusiasm you would expect.
**CMLL aired its Sunday show from Arena Mexico for free on YouTube featuring Místico, Soberano Jr. & Euforia against Volador Jr., Esfinge & Valiente in the main event.
**This Friday’s show at Arena Mexico is the promotion’s Noche de Campeones (Night of Champions) event airing at 10:30 p.m. ET.
**Titán is the latest CMLL addition to MLW’s Lucha Apocalypto show on November 9 at Cicero Stadium in Illinois.
**Dustin Rhodes is launching the Rhodes Wrestling Association with its first show scheduled for November 21. Texas Fall Fury will take place at the RWA Bullpen in Leander, Texas with more details to follow.
**NXT on Tuesday will include Kelani Jordan vs. Wren Sinclair for the North American Championship, Ridge Holland vs. Riley Osborne, Oro Mensah vs. Lexis King, and Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows vs. Hank Walker & Tank Ledger. There will be a press conference to promote the debut on CW featuring Ethan Page, Trick Williams, Roxanne Perez, Giulia, Wes Lee, and Zachary Wentz.
**On the latest edition of The Weighing In podcast with John McCarthy and Josh Thomson, the topic of the ill-fated boxing fight between Dana White and Tito Ortiz was brought up. In 2007, Ortiz and White had agreed to do a boxing fight (consisting of three 3:00 rounds) behind closed doors with the agreement placed into Ortiz’s most recent contract with the promotion. McCarthy explained that he was initially set to referee the bout but once it became a sanctioned boxing fight, they were going to have another Nevada-based boxing referee utilized. McCarthy said the reason it didn’t happen was due to money as it was originally to be a private boxing fight behind the closed doors but once Spike TV learned of it, they wanted to produce and air it. McCarthy explains that the UFC wasn’t going to cut Ortiz into the licensing fee they were receiving for the broadcast and Ortiz wasn’t going to do it for free if the UFC was making money from Spike and it would air. So, in one of the more bizarre promotional tactics, UFC and Spike produced a one-hour special called Bad Blood in the style of a countdown special for the fight with Ortiz failing to show up for the weigh-in, and the fight is canceled. There was no mention of the financial disagreement with White stating it was a “lose-lose” situation for Ortiz, who either destroys someone he is supposed to beat or White looks competitive and it’s bad for Ortiz. Well, the special buried Ortiz as presented him as scared of fighting White. It made no sense for the UFC to produce a hit piece on one of its marquee stars following a year where Ortiz did two gigantic numbers on pay-per-view with Ken Shamrock and Chuck Liddell and a major television audience for the third fight with Shamrock, so this occurred at the peak of Ortiz’s drawing power.
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COLLISION COURSE
Join John Siino & Kate From MTL as they hold forth on this week’s edition of AEW Collision featuring a 10-man match.
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REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN [FREE]
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown from Sacramento with LA Knight defending the U.S. Championship against Andrade.
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MCU L8R: Agatha All Along Ep. 1 & 2
The MCU L8R universe is right again, as Rich Fann and WH Park are back to talk about Agatha All Along, Marvel’s sequel to WandaVision.
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REWIND-A-WAI #165: WWE Raw (Dec. 6, 2004)
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE Raw from December 6, 2004 main evented by Trish Stratus vs. Lita for the Women’s Championship.
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