POST IT NOTES
**This past weekend, Wai Ting and I did two bonus shows for members of the POST Wrestling Café. For members, you have access to both reviews of The Greatest Royal Rumble and the latest Rewind-A-Wai show covering WWF Backlash 2000. Our next set of bonus shows are coming out later this week with a new ASK-A-WAI taking questions from the mailbag thread and we will have a Friday bonus show reviewing both New Japan Dontaku cards from Fukuoka. If you sign up for $6, you will have access to the full archive of audio shows dating back to December.
**Wai Ting and I will be back tonight with a new Rewind-A-Raw discussing Raw from Montreal and the quick turnaround as they prepare for Backlash this Sunday in Newark, New Jersey. I will also have a quick rundown of Sunday’s New Japan card from Kumamoto.
**If you would like to submit questions for this month’s Ask-A-Wai Patreon bonus show, you can submit questions on the POST Wrestling Forum thread.
SCHEDULE THIS WEEK AT POST WRESTLING:
*Monday: Rewind-A-Raw
*Tuesday: Rewind-A-SmackDown
*Wednesday: POST Puroresu with John Pollock & WH Park
*Wednesday: British Wrestling Experience with Martin Bushby, Oli Court, and Benno
*Thursday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
*Friday: New Japan Dontaku reviews with Pollock & Wai Ting (Patreon)
*Sunday: WWE Backlash Post-Show with Pollock & Wai
WRESTLING NEWS
**The WWE will be at the Bell Centre in Montreal tonight and tomorrow for the Raw and SmackDown tapings. Kevin Owens is all over Montreal media with a big profile on Owens in Sunday’s edition of Le Journal de Montreal along with several talk show appearances promoting Raw. It is not emphasized enough how much Owens, and to a degree, Sami Zayn, matter to Quebec media and seen as major stars when they come to town. The WWE has emphasized the desire to tap into international markets with native stars and Owens and Zayn’s importance to Canada is underplayed.
They have not announced anything for Raw, but the major push is on Backlash this Sunday. It was a tough act to balance with two major shows on the horizon with the Greatest Royal Rumble and left Backlash as the minor show in comparison. Ronda Rousey is being advertised tonight and if she is doing a match at Backlash, that will be the biggest part of the show and could even headline the show given Rousey’s star power that tops a singles match between Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe.
**In the Kevin Owens piece in Le Journal, he briefly addressed the issue involving Sami Zayn and himself being sent home from last November’s European tour. The following is an excerpt from the story with Owens’ response (which has been translated from the original French version, so some of the wording is lost in translation):
Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn made a mistake in a fight in London. They apologized after the evening in the locker room, citing a misunderstanding. No pardon, the two Quebecers were sent home, where they dried for a week: “When I met Mr. McMahon a week later, I wanted to explain myself. He gave me his hand saying it was forgotten and continue my good work. He is not resentful, I had the proof.
**The SmackDown crew has a live event tonight in Ottawa, Ontario and then head to Montreal for the television on Tuesday night.
**Showtime will be airing a documentary on Mauro Ranallo on May 25th at 9 pm Eastern and have released a trailer. This has been in the works for years and I was interviewed for the documentary several years ago. Below is the trailer:
**Naomichi Marufuji defeated Triple Crown champion Kento Miyahara in the finals of this year’s Champion Carnival tournament on Monday at Korakuen Hall. Marufuji won with the Emerald Flowsion in 24:50 and will likely set up a future title challenge for Marufuji’s Triple Crown. Marufuji was trained in All Japan’s system and joined the mass exodus of talent that left All Japan in 2000 under Mitsuharu Misawa to form Pro Wrestling NOAH with Marufuji remaining with NOAH since then.
**Ring of Honor has announced an IWGP U.S. title match between Jay White and Punishment Martinez for Friday, May 11th at the Ted Reeve Arena in Toronto for War of the Worlds.
**The opening weekend for “Avengers: Infinity War” set new records for North American and worldwide revenue. The film, which features Dave Bautista reprising his role as Drax the Destroyer, is estimated at a $258 million gross in North America and $640.9 million worldwide. The North American figure tops the previous record held by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and the worldwide record that was held by “The Fate of the Furious” (which does still hold the record for highest international opening weekend gross when you exclude North America). The next Avengers film, which is the second part of “Infinity War”, is scheduled to be released in May 2019 and will also feature Bautista playing Drax.
**In other movie news, “Fighting with My Family”, the film adaptation of the British documentary on Paige’s family, has been pushed back to a 2019 release. The film, which is being produced by MGM in association with WWE Studios and Dwayne Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions, was originally scheduled for a September 2018 release and will now be released March 1st, 2019. Florence Pugh plays the lead role of Paige.
**The WWE has announced that they will be running a live event in Taipei on Sunday, July 1st at the Taipei Arena. It is scheduled to be a SmackDown event with AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Asuka, The Miz, and The Bar all advertised for the show. It will be the WWE’s first show in Taipei since 2013.
**Chris Smith, the director of the Netflix documentary “Jim & Andy”, spoke to Deadline about Jim Carrey’s transformation into Andy Kaufman for the 1999 film “Man on the Moon”.
**After allegations were made by a former NBC colleague, longtime anchor Tom Brokaw has stepped down from a scheduled commencement speech he was to make at Sacred Heart University. In his place to deliver the speech will be Sacred Heart alumni, Linda McMahon. The commencement speech will take place on Sunday, May 13th with McMahon also set to receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
**Here is the current card for Backlash this Sunday from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey:
*Roman Reigns vs. Samoa Joe
*AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura for the WWE title
*Daniel Bryan vs. Big Cass
*Carmella vs. Charlotte for the SmackDown women’s title
*Seth Rollins vs. The Miz for the Intercontinental title
*Nia Jax vs. Alexa Bliss for the Raw women’s title
**New Japan Pro Wrestling will present back-to-back Dontaku cards from Fukuoka this Thursday and Friday. Both shows will stream live at 4 am Eastern on New Japan World. Here is the card for Thursday’s event:
*Chase Owens and Yujiro vs. Shota Umino and Yota Tsuji
*Ryusuke Taguchi and Tiger Mask vs. Ren Narita and Tomoyuki Oka
*Killer Elite Squad and Takashi Iizuka vs. Roppongi 3K and Rocky Romero
*Jay White, Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii, Yoshi-Hashi & Toru Yano vs. Juice Robinson, Togi Makabe, Michael Elgin, David Finlay & Toa Henare
*Bad Luck Fale and The Guerrillas of Destiny vs. The Young Bucks and Marty Scurll for the NEVER six-man tag titles
*Tetsuya Naito, EVIL, Sanada, Hiromu Takahashi & Bushi vs. Minoru Suzuki, Zack Sabre Jr., Taichi, El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru
*Kazuchika Okada and Will Ospreay vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi and KUSHIDA
*Kota Ibushi vs. Cody
*Kenny Omega vs. Hangman Page
MMA NEWS
**The UFC has announced a middleweight main event for the TUF Finale on Friday, July 6th in Las Vegas during International Fight Week. Longtime UFC fighter and former TUF winner, Brad Tavares will be fighting Israel Adesanya in the main event. Tavares has won his last four fights, including a recent third-round stoppage of Krzysztof Jotko earlier this month. Adesanya has a 13-0 record since becoming a pro in March 2012 and debuted for the UFC in February, earning victories over Rob Wilkinson and Marvin Vettori in his UFC campaign. The card will take place the night before UFC 226 at the Pearl Theatre at The Palms in Las Vegas.
**UFC welterweight Gunnar Nelson released the following statement regarding his knee injury and pulling out of his bout with Neil Magny later this month in Liverpool, England:
Unfortunately I have to withdraw from my fight against Neil Magny on May 27th in Liverpool. Last weekend I injured my knee. I will undergo an operation right away and I´ll be out for 8-10 weeks. I’m sorry to my family, my opponent, my teammates, the fans and the UFC. This is a huge blow to me and I’m at a loss for words to describe the disappointment I am feeling. I was really feeling up for this fight, the training camp was going great and everything was just perfect until this happened. When all is said and done this is the fight business and injuries are sometimes an unfortunate part of it given the physical rigors us athletes put our bodies through. I will keep on evolving as a fighter while I’m on the sidelines and I’ll be back as soon as I can.
**It was a significant day in Canadian mixed martial arts history on this date in 2011. The UFC held their first card in the province of Ontario with UFC 129 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. This was a result of years of struggle with the wording of Section 83 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which prevented prizefighting outside of boxing. The wording was interpreted differently from province-to-province with some going ahead and running cards for years without any penalties. In Ontario, it was understood that that the Ontario Athletic Commission would not allow MMA and shows that did happen would be on native land. When Tom Wright was brought in by the UFC in 2010 to head their Canadian office, it became his major goal to get the UFC into the province and succeeded in under two years on the job. The first card was headlined by Georges St-Pierre and Jake Shields for the UFC welterweight title and Jose Aldo defending the featherweight title against Mark Hominick. The card was an instant sellout with the belief that they could have put way more than 55,000 into the stadium if it was larger. The card also has the distinction of hosting Randy Couture’s final fight as retired after a rough stoppage by Lyoto Machida.
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #9: WWF Backlash 2000 (Patreon)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18470460/
*****
WWE Greatest Royal Rumble Post Show with John Pollock & Wai Ting (Patreon)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18452162
*****
upNXT 4/26/18: Black Hearts Never Break with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
https://upnxt.podbean.com/mf/download/va5mhk/UPNXTAPR262018.mp3
*****
KEEP IT 2000: Ep. 29 – “Body Positive Mike Awesome” with Kath Barbadoro (July 18, 2000)
https://keepit2000.podbean.com/mf/download/3nzxpu/Keep-It-2000-July-18-2000.mp3
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 4/24/18: Nakamura vs. The Club, Rumble Predictions
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/ff4c3z/180424_RASD.mp3
*****
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