POST IT NOTES
**Wai Ting and I are back tonight with a new edition of Rewind-A-Raw to review tonight’s show from New Orleans. We will go through the entire show, plus the major news story from today, and take your feedback at the end of the show.
**I have a UFC 228 POST Show up on the site with a complete review of Saturday’s UFC 228 card, which was a strong card with a lot of great performances, including a tremendous fight between Irene Aldana and Lucie Pudilova on the Fight Pass prelims. I also chatted about the decision to strip Nicco Montano of her flyweight title, a look ahead to next month’s UFC 229 card with Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Conor McGregor and other notes from Saturday’s card.
**On Sunday night, Wai Ting and I will be doing our WWE Hell in a Cell POST Show live on a video stream for “Double Double”, “Iced Capp”, and “Espresso” members of the POST Wrestling Café. If you are a member at those levels, you will receive a video stream to watch us do the show and the podcast of the show will be uploaded immediately afterward and available to everyone else for free as usual.
**We will also be bringing back our match re-watch that we did last month for Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi. Each month, Wai and I will go back and watch an old match and post it on the Café for “Double Double” and above members with our commentary. This month we are going to watch The Undertaker vs. Mankind Hell in a Cell match from 1998 and that video will be posted at the end of the week.
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POST WRESTLING SCHEDULE THIS WEEK:
*Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
*Tuesday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with Pollock & Wai
*Wednesday: The Double Shot feat. Lucha Underground, Jay Lethal vs. Jonathan Gresham from ROH, Being the Elite (Patreon)
*Wednesday: POST Puroresu with John Pollock & WH Park
*Thursday: upNXT/Forever Young with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
*Friday: Rewind-A-Wai on UFC 194 featuring Robin Black stopping by and Espresso Executive Producer Joshua Martin
*Saturday: EGGSHELLS Podcast Companion – Chris Charlton is joined by Voices of Wrestling’s Rich Kraetsch to chat the year 2001 at the Tokyo Dome
*Saturday: NJPW Destruction in Hiroshima POST Show (Patreon)
*Sunday: WWE Hell in a Cell POST Show with John Pollock & Wai Ting (Live video stream for “Double Double” & above Café members, the podcast will be uploaded immediately after for free)
WRESTLING NEWS
**The WWE announced Monday that Renee Young is permanently replacing Jonathan Coachman on Raw’s commentary team. Young will become a permanent fixture on the desk alongside Michael Cole and Corey Graves with the change taking effect immediately. Jonathan Coachman will continue to work with the company and will host the monthly pay-per-view kickoff shows, beginning this Sunday at Hell in a Cell. Coachman returned to the WWE this past January and replaced Booker T. on the Raw team. The team of Cole, Graves, and Coachman has not received a lot of praise with Coachman often the target of ridicule for his comments with the recent use of Young a breath of fresh air that has elevated the team. It is the first time the WWE will have a female as a permanent member of the commentary team on Raw and I believe the first to do it regularly on WWE programming since Stephanie Wiand was part of the syndicated programming in 1994. Young had previously done commentary for NXT several years ago before being utilized full-time on the main roster as a backstage interviewer and host of the pay-per-view panels.
**Frank Andersson, who represented his country of Sweden in the 1984 Summer Olympics prior becoming a professional wrestler, passed away on Sunday at the age of 62. Andersson was a tremendous Greco-Roman wrestler, whose amateur career culminated with a bronze medal win at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and was a three-time world champion at 90 kg. His professional wrestling career was not long as he didn’t enter the industry until he was 34-years old, being trained by Brad Rheingans and started with the AWA at the tail end of the promotion’s run in 1991. He worked for New Japan Pro Wrestling for several months at the end of 1991, often teaming with Rheingans along with select singles matches. In 1994, he went to World Championship Wrestling and worked sporadically for a year on various syndicated programming such as WCW Pro, Worldwide and Main Event. He came back in 2014 for a pair of matches in Sweden, including a tag match with partner Jim Duggan for an SWS Legends event. Andersson had been experiencing heart issues and underwent surgery last Thursday where he experienced complications and subsequently passed away with family and friends by his side in the hospital.
**Tonight’s episode of Raw features the WWE’s return to the host city of WrestleMania at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is the final Raw before this Sunday’s Hell in a Cell card and will feature Ronda Rousey’s second televised match. The show has been beefed up to combat the return of Monday Night Football with a doubleheader as the New York Jets take on the Detroit Lions followed by the Oakland Raiders vs. LA Rams, which will go up against the final 45 minutes of Raw. The following has been announced for tonight’s show:
*Ronda Rousey & Natalya vs. Alexa Bliss & Alicia Fox
*Mick Foley’s first WWE appearance since April 2017
*Triple H appears to address The Undertaker
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**Mick Foley will be promoting a special on the WWE Network that will air Sunday after Hell in a Cell. The special is one of Foley’s one-man shows discussing the 20th anniversary of his Hell in a Cell match with The Undertaker from June 1998 at the King of the Ring pay-per-view in Pittsburgh.
**The NWA’s 70th Anniversary card is scheduled for Sunday, October 21st in Nashville, Tennessee with the main event set to feature the rematch between Cody and Nick Aldis for the NWA championship. Aldis defeated Doug Williams this past weekend at Wrestling MediaCon in the U.K. to set up the rematch from “All In”, which was one of the major highlights of last weekend’s card at the Sears Centre. The NWA’s anniversary show will also feature the re-introduction of the National title and is set to stream on FITE TV.
**The WWE’s SmackDown crew has a house show in Beaumont, Texas tonight with Jeff Hardy, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Jeff Hardy among the top talent advertised.
**According to the WWE Network’s schedule, the Hell in a Cell show is supposed to end by 10:30 pm Eastern but that’s a flexible out and it’s possible they could run long. The kickoff show will begin at 6 pm Eastern with Jonathan Coachman, Booker T., David Otunga, Peter Rosenberg and Sam Roberts on the show and the pay-per-view begins at 7 pm.
**The following matches have been announced for Tuesday’s SmackDown and 205 Live tapings in Lafayette, Louisiana for the final set of shows before Hell in a Cell:
*Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Jeff Hardy
*Charlotte Flair vs. Sonya Deville in a non-title match
*Cesaro & Sheamus vs. Rusev & Aiden English with the winners receiving a tag title match
*Brie Bella vs. Maryse
*R-Truth vs. Andrade Cien Almas
*Buddy Murphy vs. Gran Metalik on 205 Live
*Cedric Alexander & Akira Tozawa vs. Drew Gulak & Jack Gallagher on 205 Live
**New Japan has a Road to Destruction card in Hinagahigashi Tuesday headlined by Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi & Yujiro vs. Will Ospreay, Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano. They have a show in Kyoto on Wednesday and Osaka on Thursday before Saturday’s big Destruction in Hiroshima card, which will stream on New Japan World.
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**This week’s episode of MLW Fusion will feature the War Games match from last Thursday’s taping in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The two-ring War Games match features Sami Callihan, Jimmy Havoc, Abyss, & The Death Machines vs. John Morrison, Tommy Dreamer, Shane Strickland, Kotto Brazil & Barrington Hughes. Fusion airs every Friday at 8 pm Eastern on beIN Sports and uploaded onto their YouTube channel Saturday nights at 6:05 pm.
**I highly recommend this week’s episode of Ring of Honor from the Center Stage tapings in Atlanta. For weeks, they have been promoting a 30-minute Ironman match between Ring of Honor champion Jay Lethal and Jonathan Gresham and their third match in their series. The match was excellent and from a presentation standpoint, among the better wrestling television shows in 2018. I’ll speak more about this match on the “Double Shot” this Wednesday for Café members.
**Here are the results from Saturday’s DEFY card in Seattle at Washington Hall: SCHAFF over Jeff Cobb, Carl Randers over Cody Chhun and Guillermo Rosas, Tommy Dreamer & Ravenous Randy Myers over Tyler Bateman & Brody King, Matt Cross over Puma King, Allie Impact over Danika Della Rouge, Mike Santiago & Ethan HD over Brody King & Tyler Bateman in the finals of the DEFY tag team 8XGP to become the first DEFY tag champions. The promotion had to move around a lot of the card as the car carrying members of the main and co-main event were detained at the Canadian border. DEFY returns to Seattle with a show on Friday, October 27th and will be running Portland, Oregon on Saturday, November 24th.
**The WWE stock closed at $87.64 on Monday.
**Below is Dave Meltzer’s Hall of Fame induction speech from this past weekend’s Wrestling MediaCon event in the UK:
MMA NEWS
**The major news item coming out of UFC 228 was the decision to strip Nicco Montano of the women’s flyweight championship after she was unable to weigh-in and sent to the hospital. On Friday morning, it was feared she could have kidney issues and the decision was made to remove her from her bout with Valentina Shevchenko, which was the co-feature on the card. That night, UFC president Dana White announced she was being stripped of the title with Shevchenko to fight another flyweight to determine the champion. The reaction at first was the hypocrisy when other fighters have been hospitalized leading into weigh-ins and been unable to compete, with recent examples with Max Holloway in July and last year with Amanda Nunes, both champions, that were unable to fight but were not punished much less stripped of their titles. Montano competed on the Ultimate Fighter last year, making weight and winning three fights in six weeks before defeating Roxanne Modafferi in the final in December to become the inaugural champion. She has not fought since December, which is hardly the longest stretch between fights for a champion. The bigger issue I have is what happens the next time a fighter is facing hospitalization during a brutal weight cut and will be deterred from seeking medical assistance because of the precedent being set that a champion could be stripped of their title and non-champions fearful of the consequence of not fighting. It is going to be an issue for fighters going through a bad weight cut as well as their teams that will worry what damage they could be doing to their fighter’s career if they send them to the hospital as their body is shutting down. The smaller issue is the damage this does to the women’s flyweight title where Shevchenko will now fight for a title with the cloud of the previous champion over this next fight and is not fair to either party.
**Montano has released a statement on the decision to strip her of the championship and blasting Shevchenko.
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**The UFC has officially announced the middleweight rematch between former champions Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold for the UFC 230 card on Saturday, November 3rd at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The news of the fight was initially reported by ESPN and announced by the UFC on Saturday’s broadcast of UFC 228. The two fought in December 2015 at UFC 194 where Rockhold stopped Weidman to become the UFC middleweight champion. Both men have faced setbacks since their first fight with Weidman only fighting three times since the UFC 194 bout with losses to Yoel Romero and Gegard Mousasi and last fought in July 2017 where he submitted Kelvin Gastelum. Rockhold dropped the title in his next fight to Michael Bisping at UFC 199 in June 2016 and didn’t return until 15 months later where he defeated David Branch in September 2017 and is coming off a knockout loss to Yoel Romero from this past February at UFC 221.
**The UFC will hold their first event in Russia this Saturday with an afternoon card from Moscow that will stream on Fight Pass. The card is headlined by 44-year old Mark Hunt and 41-year old Aleksei Oleinik, which makes it one of the oldest main events for a UFC card with a combined age of 85. Hunt last fought in February where he was defeated by Curtis Blaydes by decision at UFC 221. Oleinik entered the UFC after 61 professional fights on his record and has had a tremendous late-career run with a 5-2 record inside the organization since 2014. Oleinik has become synonymous with the Ezekiel choke, which is a very tough submission to use at a high level and has pulled it off twice in the UFC and nine times throughout his career that dates to 1996. He is coming off a submission with the choke over Junior Albini at UFC 224 this past May. 26-year old Nikita Krylov returns to the UFC after deciding not to re-sign in 2017 and won four fights outside the UFC in Russia and Ukraine. Krylov would be considered among the top echelon of light heavyweights with a win over Jan Blachowicz as he has won 9 of his last 10 fights going back to July 2014. Below is the full card for this Saturday’s event:
MAIN CARD (2 pm Eastern on Fight Pass)
*Mark Hunt vs. Aleksei Oleinik
*Nikita Krylov vs. Jan Blachowicz
*Andrei Arlovski vs. Shamil Abudurakhimov
*Thiago Alves vs. Alexey Kunchenko
PRELIMINARY CARD (10:30 am Eastern on Fight Pass)
*C.B. Dollaway vs. Khalid Murtazaliev
*Petr Yan vs. Jin Soo Son
*Kajan Johnson vs. Rustam Khabilov
*Desmond Green vs. Mairbek Taisumov
*Marcin Prachnio vs. Magomed Ankalaev
*Jordan Johnson vs. Adam Yandiev
*Stefan Sekulic vs. Ramazan Emeev
*Merab Dvalishvili vs. Terrion Ware
**ESPN’s Ariel Helwani recently reported that former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Holly Holm underwent surgery on her meniscus last Wednesday and will not be able to fight until 2019. After a string of three consecutive losses, Holm has won two of her last three fights and is coming off a dominant decision victory over Megan Anderson at UFC 225 this past June in Holm’s second consecutive fight at 145 pounds.
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*****
UFC 228 POST SHOW
John Pollock reviews Saturday’s UFC 228 card from Dallas featuring Tyron Woodley defending the welterweight title against Darren Till, an excellent fight from Irene Aldana and Lucie Pudilova, big wins for Jim Miller & Diego Sanchez, Nicco Montano stripped of her flyweight title, UFC 229 look ahead & more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/09/ufc-228-post-show-with-john-pollock/
*****
EGGSHELLS Podcast Companion: 2000 w/ Joe Gagne
Chris Charlton is joined by Joe Gagne and travel back to 2000 with the year NOAH was formed, New Japan and All Japan work together, Jushin Liger moves to heavyweight, the circumstances behind Zero-One forming, “DO Judge!!” & more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/08/eggshells-podcast-companion-2000-w-joe-gagne/
*****
ASK-A-WAI: Live at Starrcast (Patreon)
John Pollock & Wai Ting’s live show from Starrcast during “All In” weekend where they spent close to 90 minutes taking questions from the live audience and chatting a wide range of topics.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/07/ask-a-wai-live-at-starrcast-september-2018/
*****
upNXT & Forever Young 9/6/18: Gargano vs. Dream, Mae Young Classic
Braden Herrington & Davie Portman have returned from Chicago with their road trip stories and then chat about this week’s edition of NXT and the premiere episode of the Mae Young Classic
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/06/upnxt-forever-young-9-6-18-gargano-vs-dream-mae-young-classic/
*****
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/
*****
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