POLLOCK’S NEWS UPDATE: News and notes from UFC 232

News and notes coming out of UFC 132, an update on Cat Zingano, Rizin's New Year's card featuring Floyd Mayweather Jr., matches taped for SmackDown, Mick Foley attends UFC and more.

POST IT NOTES

**We have a special Sunday edition of Rewind-A-Wai out for members of the POST Wrestling Café. Because of the holiday schedule, we had to move some shows around, so our review of ECW’s One Night Stand 2005 show is up now for members of the Café. This show was a fun one with Wai and I reviewing the card, going over all the circumstances heading into the event, who pitched the idea, why certain performers were not on the show, Shane Douglas’ Hardcore Homecoming that same weekend, the JBL incident with Blue Meanie, and the fallout from the event. If you sign up today, you will get this show immediately along with our entire archive of bonus shows.

**There is also a UFC 232 POST Show with Phil Chertok and Ziggy Cao joining me for a big review of the Saturday’s card from Inglewood, California. We went over all the issues of the past week with the card moving, the latest on Jon Jones and how the UFC and USADA handled the story. Then, we went through all the fights with Jon Jones once again becoming light heavyweight champion and an incredible 51-second fight between Amanda Nunes and Cris Cyborg.

**There will not be a Rewind-A-Raw or Rewind-A-SmackDown the next two nights because of New Year’s, but Wai and I will have a show Wednesday reviewing both shows and catching up on the week’s news. We will also have a Wrestle Kingdom 13 Primer show with WH Park joining Wai Ting and me for a complete preview of Friday’s show at the Tokyo Dome.

POST WRESTLING SCHEDULE (Wrestle Kingdom Week)
*Today: Rewind-A-Wai #26 on ECW One Night Stand 2005 (Patreon)
*Monday: EGGSHELLS Podcast Companion: Wrestle Kingdom 11 from 2017 with guest Michelle Cain
*Tuesday: Wrestle Kingdom 13 Primer Show with John Pollock, Wai Ting, and WH Park
*Wednesday:
Rewind-A-Raw & SD with John Pollock and Wai Ting
*Thursday: upNXT with Braden Herrington and Davie Portman with their Best and Worst of NXT
*Thursday:
EGGSHELLS Podcast Companion Finale: Wrestle Kingdom 12 from 2018 with guest Kevin Kelly
*Friday:
NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 13 POST Show with John Pollock and Wai Ting (Patreon)
*Saturday:
NJPW New Year’s Dash POST Show with John Pollock and Wai Ting
*Sunday:
Rewind-A-Wai #27 on ECW’s Massacre on 34th Street from Dec. 2000 (Patreon)
*Sunday:
Impact Wrestling’s Homecoming POST Show with John Pollock & Nate Milton

WRESTLING NEWS

**The Raw crew is in Buffalo, New York tonight for a show at the KeyBank Center with Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins in a steel cage match for the Intercontinental title in the main event. The SmackDown crew is in Tampa, Florida at the Amalie Arena with Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles in a steel cage match and John Cena advertised for a segment with The Miz on Miz TV. The crews get a break for the remainder of the week with the Raw crew off until Friday and SmackDown resumes Saturday with house shows.

**Here are the matches that were taped Saturday in Pittsburgh for this Tuesday’s episode of SmackDown on New Year’s Day:
*Naomi vs. Sonya Deville
*Becky Lynch and John Cena vs. Andrade Cien Almas and Zelina Vega
*Jeff Hardy vs. Samoa Joe
match for the WWE title match at the Royal Rumble

**EVOLVE has announced that NXT performer Johnny Gargano will team with AR Fox against Austin Theory and Josh Briggs at the EVOLVE 119 card on Friday, January 18th in Brooklyn, New York. Gargano will work the following night against Austin Theory in a non-title match in Queens, New York. Both events will be streamed on the WWN Live service and will include Gargano’s matches.

**Pro Wrestling Guerrilla has announced that Flamita is off their January 18th card and will be replaced by Laredo Kid. The new match will see Laredo Kid teaming with Rey Horus against Santana and Ortiz of LAX.

**Game Changer Wrestling will be running a card on February 16th at the Showboat in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The card will feature the deathmatch star Jun Kasai with tickets going on sale today.

**Minoru Suzuki sings Kaze Ni Nare.

**Absolute Intense Wrestling has announced a match between Scott Steiner and Swoggle for their WrestleMania Week card on Thursday, April 4th at the White Eagle Hall in Jersey City at Midnight.

**Pat McAfee, who has been part of several NXT Takeover pre-show panels has announced that he has accepted a multi-year deal from the WWE. He stated on his podcast that he has been asked to come to make content and that it was a dream come true to work for the company.

**Mick Foley was shown on camera at the UFC 232 card Saturday. He is good friends with Cris Cyborg Justino and tweeted a nice message after her loss to Amanda Nunes. Saturday also marked the 20th-anniversary of Foley’s first WWF title win over The Rock on December 29th, 1998 in Worcester, Massachusetts. This was back when Raw was only live bi-weekly and it was a taped show to air the following Monday. The taped Raw went against a big episode of Monday Nitro from the Georgia Doom featuring the “Finger Poke of Doom” match between Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan and Tony Schiavone’s infamous line knocking Foley’s title win, per the orders of Eric Bischoff.

MMA NEWS

**The UFC 232 card drew 15,862 to the Forum in Inglewood, California and produced a gate of $2,066,604, which are phenomenal figures given tickets for the show were on sale for four days. Here are the results from the card:
*Montel Jackson def. Brian Kelleher by D’arce choke at 1:40 of Round 1
*Curtis Millender def. Siyar Bahadurzada by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)
*Uriah Hall def. Bevon Lewis by knockout at 1:32 of Round 3
*Nathaniel Wood def. Andre Ewell by rear-naked choke at 4:12 of Round 3
*Ryan Hall def. BJ Penn by heel hook at 2:46 of Round 1
*Petr Yan def. Douglas Silva de Andrade by TKO at 5:00 of Round 2
*Megan Anderson def. Cat Zingano by TKO at 1:01 of Round 1
*Walt Harris def. Andrei Arlovski by split decision (29-28, 27-30, 29-28)
*Alexander Volkanovski def. Chad Mendes by TKO at 4:14 of Round 2
*Corey Anderson def. Ilir Latifi by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Michael Chiesa def. Carlos Condit by kimura at 0:56 of Round 2
*Amanda Nunes def. Cris Cyborg Justino by knockout at 0:51 of Round 1 to win the UFC women’s featherweight title
*Jon Jones def. Alexander Gustafsson by KO at 2:02 of Round 3 to become the UFC light heavyweight champion

**The Fight of the Night bonus was awarded to Alexander Volkanovski and Chad Mendes and the Performance of the Night bonuses went to Amanda Nunes and Ryan Hall with each receiving a $50,000 bonus.

**At the post-fight press conference, Jon Jones took a moment to apologize to reporter Izabelle Kostic for being rude to her at this past week’s press conference and being disrespectful to her line of questioning.

**Rizin presents their New Year’s Eve card tonight from the Saitama Super Arena and will be streaming at 1 am Eastern. The event is available for $19.99 on Fite.tv, but certain regions will not have access to the main event boxing exhibition between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Tenshin Nasukawa. Below is the fight card:
*Rena Kubota vs. Samantha Jean-Francois – this fight is in jeopardy after Kubota didn’t weigh in. According to her teammate, she collapsed attempting to make weight. There should not even be a discussion of the fight taking place if that is accurate.
*Tofik Musaev vs. Nobumitsu Osawa
*Justyna Haba vs. Shinju Nozawa Auclair
*Manel Kape vs. Ulka Sasaki
*Yuki Motoya vs. Justin Scoggins
*Johnny Case vs. Yusuke Yachi
*Kazuyuki Miyata vs. Erson Yamamoto
*Mika Nagano vs. Miyuu Yamamoto
*Damien Brown vs. Daron Cruickshank
*Gabi Garcia vs. Barbara Nepomuceno
*Jiri Prochazka vs. Brandon Halsey
*Kanna Asakura vs. Ayaka Hamasaki for the Rizin super atomweight title
*Kyoji Horiguchi vs. Darrion Caldwell for the Rizin bantamweight title

**The PFL will wrap up their season Monday night with a card at the Hulu Theatre adjacent to Madison Square Garden. The tournament finals will take place in all the weight classes with the winner of each receiving $1 million in prize money. Below is the card, which begins at 7 pm Eastern on NBCSN:
*Ray Cooper III vs. Magomed Magomedkerimov in the welterweight final
*Josh Copeland vs. Philipe Lins in the heavyweight final
*Vinny Magalhaes vs. Sean O’Connell in the light heavyweight final
*Kayla Harrison vs. Moriel Charneski
*Natan Schulte vs. Rashid Magomedov in the lightweight final
*Steven Siler vs. Lance Palmer in the featherweight final
*Louis Taylor vs. Abusupiyan Magomedov in the middleweight final

**Cat Zingano suffered a scary injury during her fight with Megan Anderson at UFC 232. Anderson threw a head kick and her toe caught Zingano in the right eye and led to Zingano turning her back and unable to open the eye. Anderson went to follow up and referee Marc Goddard stopped the fight. Zingano’s eye was still shut minutes later, but it was reported later in the night that she suffered an eyelid laceration and was treated at the arena.

**Michael Chiesa was 188 pounds on fight night for his welterweight bout with Carlos Condit on Saturday. To compare, his last two fights at lightweight saw Chiesa weight 186 pounds the night of his fight against Kevin Lee in June 2017 and weighed 185 pounds against Anthony Pettis this past July.

**Saturday’s card marked the end of the UFC’s seven-year relationship with Fox as the deal with ESPN goes into effect January 1st. The first show on ESPN will be Saturday, January 19th from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York with the flyweight championship fight between Henry Cejudo and T.J. Dillashaw headlining the show. In the listing of the fights, Greg Hardy’s fight with Allen Crowder is listed second from the top, which is only going to draw more criticism given Hardy is in such a prominent spot on the show.

**The UFC released their schedule for the first six months of 2019 with the following dates and locations:
*January 19th – ESPN+ in Brooklyn, New York (Henry Cejudo vs. T.J. Dillashaw)
*February 2nd – ESPN+ in Fortaleza, Brazil (Raphael Assuncao vs. Marlon Moraes)
*February 9th – UFC 234 in Melbourne, Australia (Robert Whittaker vs. Kelvin Gastelum)
*February 17th – ESPN in Phoenix, Arizona (Cain Velasquez vs. Francis Ngannou)
*February 23rd – ESPN+ in Prague, Czech Republic (Jan Blachowicz vs. Thiago Santos)
*March 2nd – UFC 235 in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena
*March 9th – ESPN+ in Wichita, Kansas
*March 16th – ESPN+ in London, England
*March 23rd – ESPN+, location TBA
*March 30th – ESPN
*April 13th – UFC 236
*April 20th – ESPN+
*April 27th – ESPN
*May 4th – ESPN+
*May 11th – UFC 237
*May 18th – ESPN+
*June 1st – ESPN+
*June 8th – UFC 238
*June 22nd – ESPN+
*June 29th – ESPN

**Ariel Helwani will be doing a live Year-End Awards show on ESPN2 on New Year’s Eve from 9 pm to Midnight Eastern.The show will feature awards being handed out and several guests joining him on the special. It will be airing in Canada from 11 pm – 2 am Eastern on TSN2.

*****
REWIND-A-WAI #26: ECW One Night Stand 2005
John Pollock and Wai Ting review ECW One Night Stand, WWE’s one-night-only revival of Extreme Championship Wrestling from the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan, New York. We discuss the stories behind what many consider one of the best PPVs of all time, including its creation, the involvement of the WWE, Eddie Guerrero’s displeasure with his participation, JBL vs. the Blue Meanie and more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/12/30/rewind-a-wai-26-ecw-one-night-stand-2005/
*****
UFC 232 POST Show: Jones vs. Gustafsson, Cyborg vs. Nunes
John Pollock is joined by Phil Chertok and Ziggy Cao to review UFC 232 featuring Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson and Cris Cyborg vs. Amanda Nunes.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/12/30/ufc-232-post-show-jones-vs-gustafsson-cyborg-vs-nunes/
*****
EGGSHELLS Podcast Companion: 2016 with Joe Lanza

Episode 28 sees Chris Charlton and Voices of Wrestling’s Joe Lanza look at 2016. AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura leave NJPW following their match, leading to a sudden elevation for Kenny Omega, and Kazuchika Okada finally vanquishes Hiroshi Tanahashi.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/12/29/eggshells-podcast-companion-2016-w-joe-lanza/
*****
THE WORST OF 2018 SHOW

It’s POST Wrestling’s Worst of 2018 show as the panel of John Pollock, Wai Ting, Braden Herrington, and Davie Portman go through the worst that 2018 had to offer.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/12/28/the-worst-of-2018-show/
*****
upNXT 12/27/18: Wrestling Day
Braden Herrington & Davie Portman chat this week’s episode of WWE NXT featuring Undisputed Era vs. Heavy Machinery for the NXT Tag titles, a number one contender’s fatal four-way for the NXT Women’s title featuring Bianca Bel-Air vs. Mia Yim vs. Io Shirai vs. Lacey Evans, a great Tommaso Ciampa promo and more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/12/27/upnxt-12-27-18-wrestling-day/
*****
RARSD 12/26/18: Xmas Raw & SD, UFC 232, Impact to Pursuit, Jingle Contest Winner

John Pollock and Wai Ting return after a short break for Christmas with condensed reviews of Raw and SmackDown from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Plus, they go through the entire UFC 232 mess involving Jon Jones and Impact Wrestling going to the Pursuit Channel in 2019.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/12/26/rarsd-12-26-18-xmas-raw-sd-ufc-232-impact-to-pursuit-jingle-contest-winner/
*****
BWE 12/26/18: Best of British & European Wrestling 2018

Martin, Oli & Benno are joined by Benno’s co-hosts on the Indy Corner Spotlight podcast, JP Houlihan and Joe Lemon, to talk all the best of British and European wrestling in 2018.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/12/26/bwe-12-26-18-best-of-british-european-wrestling-2018/
*****
The POST Wrestling Christmas Show 2018

In their largest show ever, John and Wai reflect on the launch of POST Wrestling one year ago and do so with their friends while welcoming many surprise guests. Plus, the annual POST Wrestling Christmas Jingle Contest goes down with plenty of controversy coming out of this year’s version.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/12/24/the-post-wrestling-christmas-show-2018/
*****

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About John Pollock 5929 Articles
Born on a Friday, John Pollock is a reporter, editor & podcaster at POST Wrestling. He runs and owns POST Wrestling alongside Wai Ting.