POST IT NOTES
**This week’s Rewind-A-Wai is posted on the POST Wrestling Café for our members and features a review of the WCW SuperBrawl III card. This selection was made by our Espresso Executive Producer, Ryan Charkow, who also joined the show to share his thoughts on watching this event in 1993 and looking back at it 25 years later. On this show, we chat the White Castle of Fear production, the behind-the-scenes of WCW, Bill Watts leaving WCW, the return of Ric Flair, Jim Ross removed from programming, the beginning of Eric Bischoff’s ascension within the organization and a well-received event from Asheville, North Carolina.
If you sign up for the POST Wrestling Café, all members receive this show as well all of our backlog of Patreon shows, which include the four previous Rewind-A-Wai shows, special bonus reviews of New Japan cards, the WWF’s Battle at Royal Albert Hall ’91 show and for those that subscribe at the “Double Double” level and above we have weekly POST Production video blogs with news and updates regarding POST Wrestling.
**Our latest POST Production video is a video blog with Wai and I at Thursday night’s NXT event in Mississauga with our thoughts on the show, notes on who was backstage, the attendance figure going around, and who stood out on the show.
**Wai Ting and I will be back late Sunday night with a review of the WWE Elimination Chamber show and will also be taking your questions and feedback from the show as the WrestleMania build-up starts to take off. That show will be available for everyone on the site and through the POST Wrestling iTunes feed or whatever podcast app you use.
**This week, Wai Ting and I were guests on “The MMA Complex” show with our friends Josh and Jaymz to chat about creating POST Wrestling, Ronda Rousey’s role in the WWE, the future of CM Punk, Jack Swagger joining Bellator and more. The whole is available below and our portion begins at the 22-minute mark:
WRESTLING NEWS
**New Japan Pro Wrestling and Ring of Honor have their second Honor Rising event early Saturday morning at 4:30am Eastern from Korakuen Hall in Tokyo. Below is the lineup for Saturday’s show:
*Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi vs. Cody and Marty Scurll
*Dalton Castle vs. Beretta for the ROH title
*Jay White, Chuck Taylor, and Yoshi-Hashi vs. The Young Bucks and Hangman Page
*Guerillas of Destiny and Bad Luck Fale vs. Jushin Thunder Liger, Cheeseburger, and Delirious for the NEVER six-man tag titles
*Hiromu Takahashi and Bushi vs. Ryusuke Taguchi and Flip Gordon
*Jay Lethal, Juice Robinson, and David Finlay vs. Yujiro, Chase Owens, and Hikuleo
*Toa Henare vs. Beer City Bruiser
**The WWE’s Raw crew starts their weekend tour in Vancouver, British Columbia tonight at the Rogers Arena and then head to Everett, Washington on Saturday and have Elimination Chamber Sunday night.
The SmackDown Live crew begins Saturday night with a show at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.
The NXT crew continues their Canadian swing with a show in St. Catharines on Friday night, Peterborough on Saturday, and Barrie, Ontario on Sunday. The other NXT crew in Florida has a show in Bartow on Saturday night.
**Metro has a lengthy interview posted with Ed Nordholm, Scott D’Amore, and Don Callis discussing a lot of the history of Impact Wrestling and problems associated with former management that the three are tasked with overcoming in 2018 and beyond. Nordholm cited a figure of $20 million in lost revenue over the course of 24 months for the company, which included losses from losing Spike TV in the U.S, and later Destination America as well, below is the full quote from Nordholm:
They lost their Spike deal and a ton of revenue as associated with that. They then lost Destination America, lost even more revenue moving to Pop TV, and when you lose that much revenue in that short a period of time, there is bound to be all kind of challenges that even the most brilliant of business teams would not be able to manage. To lose 20 million dollars in revenue in less than 24 months and not think there is going to be challenges as to how you manage your company through that crisis… I don’t think the former management deserves all the beating up they took, but you can’t avoid the fact that the company went through a massive negative shift. They lost a lot of people, credibility, plus there was talent and management disruption and unhappiness. We came into that, came through the bedlam of 2016 where they were borrowing money from Anthem, Billy Corgan, Jason Brown and that whole mess with the litigation. We started 2017 wondering if there was any way to put it all back together.
**Thursday night’s episode of Impact Wrestling averaged 262,000 viewers on POP TV and was their lowest number since December 14th. The number was a drop of 12.6% from last week’s number. One could look at the Olympics as a factor as NBC’s coverage from 8-10 pm Eastern did 14,904,000 viewers, however, last week’s Olympic coverage did 16,196,000 viewers and Impact’s number was up from the week before.
**The WWE has officially added the following two matches to Sunday’s Elimination Chamber card in Las Vegas, Nevada at the T-Mobile Arena:
*Sheamus and Cesaro vs. Apollo and Titus O’Neil for the Raw tag titles
*Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows vs. Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas on the Kickoff show
**Ricochet had his first house show match with NXT on Thursday night in Mississauga, Ontario (he did wrestle at the recent Center Stage tapings in Atlanta). He was a surprise on the show, defeating Buddy Murphy in the opener and both had a very good match together with Ricochet winning with the 630 splash. He was introduced just as “Ricochet” without mentioning his real name as he was identified at Takeover in January.
**The number we were told for attendance was around 2,000 at the Hershey Centre, although that seemed high to me. There was a messed up finish with Ember Moon and Bianca Belair. Moon hit the Eclipse and it appeared that Belair got her shoulder up by mistake and the referee still counted three and ended the match. The audience was confused and assumed she had kicked out and Belair remained in the middle of the ring until rolling to the floor and the referee checking on her as she walked to the back.
**It was announced on this week’s episode of NXT that the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic is returning. The tournament is taking place on television over the next month. The winning team will face the NXT tag champions at Takeover on Saturday, April 7th in New Orleans at the Smoothie King Center. Below are the brackets for the tournament:
*Street Profits vs. Heavy Machinery
*TM61 vs. Authors of Pain
*Tino Sabbatelli and Riddick Moss vs. Eric Young and Alexander Wolfe
*Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch vs. Tyler Bate and Trent Seven
**A match between WALTER and “Filthy” Tom Lawlor has been added to “Matt Riddle’s Bloodsport” show during WrestleMania Week in New Orleans. The card is presented by Game Changer Wrestling and takes place Thursday, April 5th at 3 pm local time at The Pontchartrain Center. The card will also feature Matt Riddle vs Low Ki and Nick Gage vs. Timothy Thatcher.
**Jeremy Borash was backstage at the NXT card in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday night and was said to be filming material. The agents for the show were Steve Corino and Scott Taylor (Scotty 2 Hotty).
**As fans were leaving the NXT show in Mississauga, representatives from Smash Wrestling were handing out free DVDs to fans.
**Maryland Championship Wrestling has a card on Saturday night in Hollywood, Maryland at the Hollywood Volunteer Fire Company (24801 Three Notch Road) with Jim Duggan, Sunny, Hornswoggle, Adam Rose, Joey Mercury and others advertised. Tickets and information are available at www.MCWprowrestling.com.
**Smash Wrestling has announced that Allie will be part of their April 15th “It’s All Fun & Games (Until Someone Gets Hurt)” card in Toronto at The Rec Room. The card takes place at 5 pm that day and doors open at 4. You can get more information at www.smash-wrestling.com.
**The WWE stock closed at $37.00 on Friday.
MMA NEWS
**UFC lightweight champion (for the time being) Conor McGregor issued a statement through Instagram stating that he offered to step in and replace Max Holloway and fight Frankie Edgar in the main event of UFC 222 on Saturday, March 3rd. McGregor stated that he was told by the UFC that they didn’t have enough time to generate the money that the UFC would require for a fight that magnitude involving McGregor. This would have been McGregor’s first fight at featherweight since defeating Jose Aldo at UFC 194 in December 2015 and his first UFC since defeating Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 in November 2016 to capture the lightweight championship.
Below is the full statement from the lightweight champion:
I am fighting again. Period.
I am the best at this.
I put my name forward to step in at UFC 222 to face Frankie Edgar when Max Holloway pulled out, but I was told there wasn’t enough time to generate the money that the UFC would need.
I was excited about bouncing in last minute and taking out the final featherweight, without all the rest of the stuff that comes with this game.
Please respect the insane amount of work outside the fight game that I have put in.
On top of the fighting.
I am here.
It is on them to come and get me. Because I am here.
Yours sincerely,
The Champ Champ™
**On Saturday night, the UFC returns to FOX with a card from the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida. Below is the full card and the results of Friday’s weigh-ins:
MAIN CARD (8 pm Eastern on FOX)
*Jeremy Stephens (146) vs. Josh Emmett (146)
*Tecia Torres (116) vs. Jessica Andrade (116)
*Ilir Latifi (206) vs. Ovince Saint Preux (206)
*Mike Perry (170.5) vs. Max Griffin (170)
PRELIMINARY CARD (6 pm Eastern on FOX)
*Renan Barao (136) vs. Brian Kelleher (136)
*Sara McMann (135.5) vs. Marion Reneau (136)
*Maryna Moroz (114) vs. Angela Hill (116)
*Alan Jouban (171) vs. Ben Saunders (171)
FIGHT PASS CARD (4:15 pm Eastern)
*Sam Alvey (206) vs. Marcin Prachnio (205.5)
*Russell Doane (136) vs. Rani Yahya (136)
*Alex Perez (126.5*) vs. Eric Shelton (126)
*Albert Morales (135) vs. Manny Bermudez (136)
Perez was over the flyweight limit was deducted 20% of his purse as a result of missing weight.
**The UFC has added a middleweight fight between Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Kelvin Gastelum to the UFC 224 event on Saturday, May 12th in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Both fighters are coming off first-round stoppage wins with Gastelum knocking out Michael Bisping last November and Souza recently stopping Derek Brunson in their main event bout in January in Charlotte, North Carolina.
**Ariel Helwani at MMA Fighting is reporting that a lightweight fight between Edson Barboza and Kevin Lee is being worked on for the main event of the UFC’s Fight Night event in Atlantic City, New Jersey on Saturday, April 21st. Barboza saw a three-fight win streak snapped at UFC 219 this past December as he was dominated by Khabib Nurmagomedov. Lee last fought in October at UFC 216, where he was submitted by Tony Ferguson in their interim title bout. Lee has won 9 of his last 11 fights.
**UFC president Dana White spoke to TMZ and stated that he will be stripping Conor McGregor of the lightweight and that there are no active negotiations ongoing with Floyd Mayweather Jr:
**Paul Heyman comments to TMZ regarding a possible return of Brock Lesnar to the UFC:
*****
REWIND-A-WAI – WCW SUPERBRAWL III (Patreon show)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/rewind-wai-5-wcw-17158582
*****
BRITISH WRESTLING EXPERIENCE 2/22/18: OTT Homecoming, ICW Square GO, Progress Chapter 63, Tetsujin
https://britishwrestlingexperience.podbean.com/mf/download/phz4me/180221_BWE.mp3
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 2/20/18: Fast Lane Matches Announced, Buddy Murphy’s 205 Live Debut
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/qcz8km/180220_RASD.mp3
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 2/19/18: The Longest Match in WWE History; Jeff Jarrett Hall of Fame
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/gy3e3q/180219_RAR.mp3
*****
POST ROUNDTABLE #2 (w/ VICE’s Damian Abraham)
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/qfws8k/180218_ROUNDTABLE2.mp3
*****
PATREON BONUS SHOW: WWF “Battle at Royal Albert Hall ‘91” Coliseum Home Video Release
https://www.patreon.com/posts/wwf-coliseum-at-17021263
*****
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