POST IT NOTES
**The newest edition of the British Wrestling Experience is out with Martin Bushby, Oli Court & Benno tackling tons of news and shows. The three discuss the recent Progress Chapter 75 card featuring Will Ospreay vs. Jimmy Havoc, OTT’s Wrestlerama 2 card with the Walter vs. Jordan Devlin that has received lots of praise, as well as Defiant’s recent Stacked ’18 card with Ospreay vs. Walter. Plus, they catch everyone up on the latest World of Sport episodes, Rev Pro’s TV deal with Freesports and this weekend’s Wrestling MediaCon with tickets being given out on the show.
**We have two shows out today with Rewind-A-SmackDown and The Double Shot. On Rewind-A-Smackdown, we have an extensive review of Tuesday’s show in Detroit featuring the continuation of the buildup for Hell in a Cell, a rematch between Daniel Bryan and Andrade Cien Almas, a series of videos with Jeff Hardy and Randy Orton, a show long story with The Miz & Maryse avoiding Daniel Bryan & Brie Bella and more. We also went over the major news items from Tuesday with the return of the Mixed Match Challenge, the “All In” attendance figure, WWE’s stock price continues to grow and answer your questions and feedback.
On the Double Shot, I reviewed Shinsuke Nakamura’s book, “King of Strong Style: 1980-2014” that was recently translated into English and released. The book features Nakamura’s unique insight into the presentation of pro wrestling, his own philosophies, rising through the New Japan Dojo, his MMA fights with the likes of Daniel Gracie and Alexey Ignashov from 2002-2004, New Japan’s L.A. Dojo, his relationship with Antonio Inoki, resentment from other young lions as he rose up the ranks of New Japan in rapid fashion and lots of other notes from the book. Plus, I present a “mystery review” for Wai, featuring a recent interview he was a part of. The Double Shot comes out each Wednesday with bonus reviews and is exclusive to members of the POST Wrestling Café.
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**On Sunday, September 16th, Wai Ting and I will be going live immediately after the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view with a video review. This will be available to “Double Double” and above members of the POST Wrestling Café. The podcast version of the Hell in a Cell POST Show will be available for free as usual for those that are not members. The “Double Double” tier is $12 (U.S.) per month and contains our video content on the POST Wrestling Café with a weekly POST Production video produced by Wai and I.
**Our monthly POSTmortem report is out with a look at the content we produced over the past month. Wai Ting puts together this report and you can read about the shows we produced, news and notes about POST Wrestling, future plans and links to our major shows from the past month.
**Braden Herrington & Davie Portman are back in Toronto from their trip to Chicago and will have a new edition of upNXT coming out Thursday. Braden & Davie will be adding the Mae Young Classic to their weekly NXT reviews covering all the episodes of the MYC beginning with this week’s show.
**The live edition of ASK-A-WAI that we did at Starrcast will be available for members of the POST Wrestling Café this Friday with the Q&A show we hosted.
**On Saturday, Chris Charlton will be joined by Joe Gagne for the latest EGGSHELLS podcast as they review the year 2000 at the Tokyo Dome.
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WRESTLING NEWS
**This past Saturday’s “All In” event was preceded by a one-hour slot on WGN America in the United States with the “Zero Hour” pre-show from the Sears Centre.
The one-hour show designed to both push the pay-per-view and get an idea of what type of television audience they could draw based off promotion centered around YouTube and online distribution.
A deal was struck with WGN America several weeks ago, details of which are unknown and POST Wrestling has reached out to WGN America regarding the nature of this deal and if it was a one-off deal. WGN America is available in just over 76 million homes in the United States.
“Zero Hour” featured the Over Budget Battle Royal, which was won by a masked Flip Gordon, who revealed himself as the cousin of Chico El Luchador (a gag that was set up on the last “Being the Elite” with Chico El Luchador pitching his cousins to Cody for roles on the show) and led to Gordon challenging Jay Lethal for the ROH title on the pay-per-view. “Zero Hour” opened with a tag match with Scorpio Sky & Frankie Kazarian defeating ROH tag champions The Briscoe Brothers in a non-title match.
The result was an average viewership of 196,000 viewers for the broadcast that ran from 6-7 pm Eastern.
Sometimes in professional wrestling, it is a total fluke and the right executive sees something and is sold on it. If I were an emerging streaming platform or a television executive looking for something that is growing with a strong foundation, and I saw Saturday’s show, it’s a product I would be gambling on.
It’s a common practice within wrestling to keep business numbers private, for Cody & The Young Bucks in attempting to create as much leverage as possible for next year, I would be trumpeting every statistic imaginable from this show – pay-per-view numbers, merchandise figures, and screaming about the success of this event that will gain the attention of major media executives with look at what WWE is earning on their next television deal and look at this product as a steal in comparison. Their lives changed prior to this show on Saturday, but it’s going to be more pronounced in the wake of this event and everyone wanting a piece of them. The biggest decisions of their lives will be made over the next several months and will set the table for either an enormous 2019, or we could look back at this show as the peak of a unique time where the WWE buckled down and contained this growth by acquiring the key figures. It’s tough to imagine those guys walking away from this after Saturday night and cashing out with such a hot hand they’re playing with.
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**Marty Scurll addressed the timing issue on Sean Mooney’s podcast this week and stated that he and Kazuchika Okada only went one minute long and that the show as a whole was 14 minutes long, also adding that he was told by Nick Jackson not to cut anything out of the match “even if we go dark tonight”. If you go with Scurll’s version, if the show was running that heavy, it would only make sense that the final two matches would have to cut down their time with both allotted 25-26 minutes to avoid the catastrophe of going off the air before the end of the show and that the semi-main event would be the match to cut more time off of.
**Monday’s Labor Day edition of Raw held up well on the holiday with the added competition of college football on ESPN. The three-hour edition of Raw averaged 2,870,000 viewers, which was up 1% overall from last week. The show went against the Virginia Tech vs. Florida State University game on ESPN that did 5,576,000 viewers. Raw opened with 2,945,000 viewers for the opening hour and was virtually untouched in the second hour with 2,933,000 viewers before dropping 6.5% in the third hour to 2,740,000 viewers. If you exclude the night after SummerSlam, it beat out the remaining episodes of Raw in August. Next week, features the return of Monday Night Football and they are beefing up next week’s show with Ronda Rousey’s second match on television along with promoted appearances by Mick Foley and Triple H.
**Here are the matches for tonight’s episode of NXT at 8 pm Eastern on the WWE Network:
*Kassius Ohno vs. Kona Reeves
*Street Profits vs. Steve Cutler & Wesley Blake
*Kairi Sane vs. Trish Adora in a non-title match
*Velveteen Dream vs. Johnny Gargano
**The Mae Young Classic premieres tonight at 9 pm Eastern on the WWE Network. Unlike last year, they are releasing the episodes on a weekly basis leading into the finals at the Evolution event on October 28th. The 32-woman tournament was taped August 8th and 9th at Full Sail University with the following matches scheduled for tonight’s premiere and will be called by Michael Cole, Renee Young & Beth Phoenix:
*Meiko Satomura vs. Killer Kelly
*Zatara vs. Tegan Nox
*Lacey Lane vs. Vanessa Kraven
*MJ Jenkins vs. Rhea Ripley
**Deadline reports that Dave Bautista has signed with the CAA talent agency.
**Women of Wrestling (WOW) announced Wednesday that they have signed Impact Wrestling performer Tessa Blanchard. In the release, Blanchard thanked Impact Wrestling and WOW’s executives for working out a deal to allow her to work with WOW, which will hold their television tapings October 10th and 11th in Los Angeles. The WOW series has been picked up by AXS TV for 2019. The tapings will take place right before the Bound for Glory pay-per-view on October 14th in Queens, New York.
**The Little Caesars Arena in Detroit has announced that there will be a Friday night taping of Raw on Friday, December 28th for the episode that will air on New Year’s Eve this year. The venue will be putting tickets on sale on September 15th.
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**The WWE has added two additional matches to the Super Show-Down event on Saturday, October 6th in Melbourne, Australia. Peyton Royce & Billie Kay will team against Asuka & Naomi, which was set up on SmackDown this week. Royce & Kay are from Sydney, Australia and join Buddy Murphy as the Australian representatives on the card. They have also announced the New Day taking on Sheamus & Cesaro for the SmackDown tag titles. Here is the updated card for the show that will stream that morning on the WWE Network:
*Triple H vs. The Undertaker
*Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose & Seth Rollins vs. Braun Strowman, Dolph Ziggler & Drew McIntyre
*AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe for the WWE title
*Ronda Rousey & The Bella Twins vs. The Riott Squad
*John Cena & Bobby Lashley vs. Kevin Owens & Elias
*The Miz vs. Daniel Bryan
*New Day vs. Sheamus & Cesaro for the SmackDown tag titles
*Peyton Royce & Billie Kay vs. Naomi & Asuka
*Cedric Alexander vs. Buddy Murphy for the Cruiserweight title
**After trading at a 52 week high on Tuesday, the WWE stock dropped 3% on Wednesday and closed at $86.06.
**The Bunny Ears podcast, hosted by Macaulay Culkin and Matt Cohen, has posted their most recent show from Starrcast this past weekend interviewing Kenny Omega and Cody the day after “All In”.
**The next season of “Survivor” featuring John Hennigan as a contestant, will premiere on Wednesday, September 26th with a 90-minute special at 8 pm Eastern on CBS.
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**Below is the latest “Being the Elite” covering all the events from this past weekend in Chicago:
**Below is the second episode of UFC Embedded going into UFC 228 this weekend:
*****
BRITISH WRESTLING EXPERIENCE 9/5/18: Progress Chapter 75, OTT Wrestlerama 2, Defiant Stacked ’18, WOS, Wrestling MediaCon
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/05/bwe-9-5-18-progress-ch-75-ott-wrestlerama-2-defiant-stacked-18-world-of-sport-wrestling-mediacon/
*****
THE DOUBLE SHOT 9/5/18: “King of Strong Style” by Shinsuke Nakamura & John’s “Mystery Review”
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/05/double-shot-9-6-18-king-of-strong-style-by-shinsuke-nakamura-johns-mystery-review/
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 9/4/18: Bryan & Brie chase Miz & Maryse, MMC returns
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/05/rewind-a-smackdown-9-4-18-bryan-brie-chase-miz-maryse-mmc-returns/
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 9/3/18: The Shield arrested, Shawn Michaels promotes a match
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/iw7x77/180903_RAR.mp3
*****
ALL IN Road Trip Epilogue (Patreon audio & video)
John Pollock & Wai Ting review their trip to Chicago with highlights from Starrcast and All In, extra notes, their tour of the Pro Wrestling Tees store, deep dish pizza & more
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/03/all-in-road-trip-epilogue-starrcast-pro-wrestling-tees/
*****
ALL IN POST Show
John Pollock, Wai Ting, Braden Herrington & Davie Portman review the “All In” card they attended live at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates with tons of notes from the show
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/02/all-in-post-show-w-john-pollock-wai-ting-braden-herrington-davie-portman/
*****
EGGSHELLS PODCAST COMPANION: 1999 with Dan “The Mouth” Lovranski
Chris Charlton is joined by Dan “The Mouth” Lovranski to chat the major Tokyo Dome events of 1999, including the Shinya Hashimoto vs. Naoya Ogawa feud, All Japan running the Dome & the passing of Giant Baba
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/01/eggshells-podcast-companion-1999-w-dan-lovranski/
*****
ALL IN ROAD TRIP & PREVIEW
John Pollock, Wai Ting, Braden Herrington & Davie Portman are live inside the car during their long drive to Chicago to chat their trip so far, a preview of the “All In” card and more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/01/all-in-road-trip-preview-w-john-pollock-wai-ting-braden-herrington-davie-portman
*****
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