POST IT NOTES
**Our team is off to Chicago for “All In” weekend so we will update the site when possible. We have several shows planned for this weekend, including our review of “All In” late Saturday night with Wai Ting, Braden Herrington, Davie Portman and myself. We are also going to be documenting our road trip on the POST Wrestling Café for our members. It is $6 (U.S.) to sign up and includes access to the back library of shows, several shows per week including The Double Shot as well as Friday’s edition of Rewind-A-Wai.
**If you are going to Starrcast this weekend, Wai Ting and I will be hosting a LIVE edition of ASK-A-WAI on Saturday at 10 am in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency in Schaumberg. The show is free regardless if you have a ticket to Starrcast or not. We will be doing a 90-minute show and taking questions from those in attendance and from the POST Wrestling Forum (time permitting). Wai and I will also be at Starrcast that day with a booth including POST Wrestling t-shirts available. We hope to meet as many of you as possible this weekend if you are attending.
**A new edition of upNXT with Braden Herrington and Davie Portman will be up later today. You can subscribe to upNXT on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher etc.
**Friday’s edition of Rewind-A-Wai for members of the POST Wrestling Café will feature a review of New Japan’s card from Long Beach on July 2nd, 2017. This was New Japan’s second night at Long Beach where they crowned the first IWGP United States champion as Kenny Omega took on Tomohiro Ishii. This show was chosen by Espresso Executive Producer Michael Darcy, who will join us on the show to chat about the show, which he attended live last year.
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WRESTLING NEWS
**The WWE has adjusted several European dates from the first weekend of November and moved the shows to October. It is widely believed this will clear their calendar for their second card in Saudi Arabia that weekend, with PWinsider.com reporting the event, is scheduled for Friday, November 2nd. Earlier this year, the WWE entered a ten-year deal with the General Sports Authority of Saudi Arabia that launched with an event in April in Jeddah. While some attempted to divorce the WWE from the politics of the region, it became impossible with so many concessions made by the WWE with regards to who could work the show and amplified by a public service announcement on the broadcast to promote the changes within the country. The event is expected to take place one week after the all women’s pay-per-view.
**As I stated on Rewind-A-SmackDown, the portrayal of Becky Lynch has been slightly adjusted coming off last week’s reaction to her turn. The new idea is for Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair to have less of a babyface and heel dynamic and instead, they are two ex-friends that each have valid reasoning for their actions. It is not designed to be a double turn. The thinking behind turning Becky initially was to freshen her character and have her in a bigger spotlight, which they feel they can still achieve this way. While they are many examples of the WWE fighting the audience on specific characters, this is one where they seem to have realized immediately that there is a better option to achieving the same objective. Ultimately, I feel Charlotte is a better heel, but this story can work very well without a defined heel in the program and to me, makes it more relatable and believable than having Becky turn on the fans out of the blue. It was apparent at the close of this week’s episode that this is the direction, given how Becky attacked Charlotte and called her a “bitch”, which was going to receive a positive reaction and it did.
**AAW is running back-to-back nights in Chicago to coincide with “All In” weekend. They begin tonight with their first show at the Logan Auditorium at 7:30 pm and will stream on the Highspots Wrestling Network. The following matches have been announced for tonight’s show:
*Penta El Zero M & Fenix vs. Bandido & Flamita
*Sami Callihan & Jessicka Havok vs. Jimmy Jacobs & Brody King
*Trevor Lee vs. Ace Romero for the AAW Heritage title
*David Starr & Eddie Kingston vs. Davey Vega & Mat Fitchett
*Curt Stallion & Jake Something vs. oVe
*DJ Z vs. Myron Reed vs. Laredo Kid
*Colt Cabana vs. MJF
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**Impact Wrestling is promoting tonight’s episode as a special called “Redefined” from the recent Toronto tapings. The viewership for Impact has dropped drastically this month with the last four episodes the least watched of 2018. The following matches are scheduled tonight at 8 pm Eastern on POP TV and Fight Network in Canada:
*Austin Aries & Killer Kross vs. Moose & Eddie Edwards
*Brian Cage vs. Fenix for the X Division title
*Su Yung vs. Allie vs. Tessa Blanchard for the Knockout’s title
*Rich Swann vs. Petey Williams
**Tuesday’s episode of SmackDown Live from Toronto averaged 2,350,000 viewers on the USA Network. While the figure was a drop from last week it was still on the higher end of SmackDown’s viewership figures since May. The show was promoted around Carmella’s rematch with Charlotte Flair for the women’s title and closed the show.
**The Miz & Mrs ended their first season on Tuesday night with a season-low of 1,161,000 viewers. The average of the six-episode season on the USA Network was 1,260,000 viewers. Earlier in the season, they announced that USA had renewed the series for a second season with 14 episodes slated.
**Freesports in the UK has announced a television deal with Revolution Pro Wrestling to begin in September. The promotion will be holding a television taping on September 5th and 6th at York Hall with the show set to launch several weeks later.
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**ESPN was the first to report that Golden Boy Promotions inaugural MMA event is going to take place on Saturday, November 24th, from The Forum in Inglewood, California. The card will be headlined by the third fight between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, who are both expected to share in the revenue generated by the card and will air live on pay-per-view. The two first fought in April 2004 after more than a year of attempts to book the fight in the UFC. Liddell stopped Ortiz in the second round that night and went on to become the UFC’s light heavyweight champion in April 2005. Ortiz would receive a rematch against Liddell as he challenged for the title in December 2006 in one of the UFC’s biggest pay-per-views to date that yielded the same result with Liddell having his arm raised after a third-round stoppage. They were scheduled to fight a third time in June 2010 after a coaching stint on the Ultimate Fighter, but an injury to Ortiz led to a change with Rich Franklin stepping in and defeating Liddell. The fight with Franklin was the last of Liddell’s career, who took a position within the UFC but was a victim of cutbacks following the sale of the promotion to WME IMG in the summer of 2016. Ortiz last fought in January 2017, defeating Chael Sonnen at Bellator 170 in the same venue where his return fight will take place this November.
**Ring of Honor has announced that Punishment Martinez will defend the Television title against Chris Sabin at the Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view on Friday, September 28th in Las Vegas. The story going into this match was that Sabin became the number one contender and following Alex Shelley’s farewell speech to Ring of Honor, he was attacked by Martinez.
**Hiroshi Tanahashi has been added to the Ring of Honor television tapings on Saturday, September 29th in Las Vegas. There will be a large contingent of New Japan talent on the tapings as the tapings are one day before New Japan’s next Long Beach card in California.
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TELEVISION REVIEW
WWE NXT (August 29th)
-Results: Dakota Kai over Aliyah, Keith Lee over Luke Menzies, Roderick Strong & Adam Cole over Ricochet & Pete Dunne
-The main event was switched at the last second with Adam Cole taking the spot of Kyle O’Reilly and then scoring the pin on Dunne after Ricochet accidentally took out Dunne with a suicide dive. It was a very good tag match, but not at the top shelf level of some of the other tag matches this division has been on fire with. This was more story focused with Cole’s rebound win after losing the North American title and teasing tension between Ricochet and Dunne from the miscommunication spot.
-There were a series of interrogations conducted by William Regal and this unnamed man whispering into his ear. I found it unintentionally hilarious when the man with no name told Regal when he was ready he would bring in the next suspect, Regal said “ok”, and the man with no name just shouted, “COME IN”. This was the most useless sidekick on a wrestling show I’ve ever seen. The suspects interviewed were the trio of Steve Cutler, Wesley Blake and Jaxson Ryker (formerly Gunner in TNA), who denied they were on the premises and were granted a tag match next week. Nikki Cross was interviewed and acted crazy by crawling around on the desk that led to Bianca Belair interrupting to tell Regal to stop wasting his time and focus on her receiving a title match. Belair is a tremendous character and with her athletic background combined with her personality, she has all the potential to be a huge star.
-Keith Lee had a fun squash match with Luke Menzies and I thought Lee came off much better in this match than his television debut from a few weeks ago. Menzies is a big enough guy that it looked extra impressive what Lee could do with him, which was accentuated by Mauro Ranallo’s commentary to get Lee over. It’s going to be interesting to see how long Lee and Matt Riddle remain in NXT because they seem like two guys that will on the fast track to the main roster.
-We had another attack on the show with Lars Sullivan taking on EC 3 backstage before his match with Raul Mendoza. Sullivan then came out and destroyed Mendoza as well so that appears to be EC 3’s next program and the Velveteen Dream program appears finished.
-The show kicked off with Johnny Gargano coming out on crutches and had half the crowd cheering and the other half booing him. Gargano is beginning to doubt himself after failing to beat Tommaso Ciampa and is slowly going out of his mind. Velveteen Dream interrupted, and a match was set up between the two for next week’s show.
-It was a show putting a lot of pieces in place for the next round of programs. The tag match was easily the best match on the show, but again, it wasn’t the high-end tag matches that this group has routinely been putting out.
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*****
THE DOUBLE SHOT 8/29/18: Being the Elite, Ten Pounds of Gold & Lucha Underground
https://www.patreon.com/posts/21054663
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 8/28/18: Becky attacks Charlotte, Bryan vs. Almas
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/r7t85i/180828_RASD.mp3
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 8/27/18: Braun Strowman cashed in for HIAC, Trish Stratus appears, Kevin Owens “quits”
John Pollock & Wai Ting review Raw from Toronto and discuss the Jason Sensation story, SummerSlam 2019 in Toronto, Ed Cohen passes away, Neville is free from his WWE contract, Smash Wrestling review & more.
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/6td737/REWIND-A-RAW-AUG-27-2018.mp3
*****
THE POST INTERVIEW: Guy Evans, Author of “NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner’s WCW”
John Pollock chats with the author for 45 minutes on the history of WCW, the major executives he interviews for the book, Eric Bischoff’s role in the rise & fall, the creative collapse in 1999 and 2000, the accounting department for WCW, a look at the internal corporate structure and much more.
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/9iiz2d/THE-POST-INTERVIEW-Guy-Evans-Aug-2018.mp3
*****
EGGSHELLS COMPANION PODCAST: 1998 w/ Kim Justice
Chris Charlton is joined by YouTube gaming reviewer Kim Justice to chat about 1998, a year that featured the retirements of Antonio Inoki and Riki Choshu with a discussion on their retirement philosophies, plus All Japan runs the Tokyo Dome, brief talks between AJPW & WWF during the time period & more.
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/fcqwff/EGGSHELLS_Podcast_Companion__1998_w__Kim_Justice.mp3
*****
POST MOVIE REVIEW – “Ironman” (Patreon)
John Pollock & Wai Ting return with their Marvel Cinematic Universe reviews and are going back to the original Marvel film from 2008 with a review of “Ironman” starring Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges and directed by Jon Favreau. We will be doing a movie review once per month for members of the POST Wrestling Café.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/20949856
*****
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