POST IT NOTES
**We have today’s edition of Rewind-A-Raw up on the site as Wai Ting and I reviewed Monday’s show and the treatment of the latest NXT call ups. Plus, we chatted about the announcement that DX is going into the WWE Hall of Fame, a discussion on Paige’s recent comments regarding the portrayal of female talent in the WWE in the past, WrestleMania week announcements, and lots of feedback to end the show.
**We will have Rewind-A-SmackDown coming up late tonight with a review of the show from New Orleans and the direction for Fastlane in three weeks. On the Double Shot, Wai and I will be discussing the WWE Network’s recent documentary on Mark Henry, Wai chats about this week’s Total Bellas covering Liv Morgan’s injury from last fall, and more. The Double Shot comes out each week for members at all levels of the POST Wrestling Café. This also includes access to our full archive dating to December 2017.
**Martin Bushby and Benno return on Wednesday with the British Wrestling Experience. The two will chat about Rev Pro’s High Stakes card from this past weekend at York Hall with Will Ospreay vs. PAC, Benno’s trip to Preston City Wrestling, the lineup for wXw’s 16 Carat Gold tournament, and the latest involving NXT UK.
**Wai Ting will be joining Braden Herrington this Thursday on upNXT while Davie Portman is on vacation.
POST WRESTLING SCHEDULE
*Tonight: Rewind-A-SmackDown with John Pollock & Wai Ting
*Tonight: The Double Shot (Patreon)
*Wednesday: British Wrestling Experience with Martin Bushby & Benno
*Thursday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Wai Ting
*Thursday: Café Hangout LIVE at 3 pm Eastern (Double Double + members)
*Friday: ASK-A-WAI (Patreon)
WRESTLING NEWS
**The SmackDown and 205 Live tapings will take place from New Orleans, Louisiana tonight with the announcement of Daniel Bryan’s challenger at Fastlane on March 10th. We were told that it was a “hectic day” on Monday prior to Raw and by the end, there was a new plan for Bryan’s opponent at Fastlane. As of Tuesday morning, it was scheduled to be Kofi Kingston receiving the match with Bryan in Cleveland at Fastlane.
**The current plan is to have Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Aleister Black and Ricochet working on both Raw and SmackDown, as well as on NXT for the time being. As of Tuesday morning, the four were scheduled to be at the SmackDown tapings tonight in New Orleans and are not exclusive to Raw.
**There is also an announcement scheduled for 205 Live tonight regarding WrestleMania that the company is promoting ahead of time.
**Both Elimination Chamber and Raw were being re-written right up until the shows went to air.
**NXT will be holding television tapings Wednesday night at Full Sail University and then have another set of tapings March 13th, which will take them into TakeOver in Brooklyn. The first set of tapings after WrestleMania weekend are scheduled for April 10th.
**The Young Bucks were interviewed by Brian Fritz for the Sporting News website and discussed a lot of interesting topics, among the highlights:
*One of the big selling points of AEW was that they have creative freedom and were told by Tony Khan they could hire whomever they want and no dollar figure could compete with that freedom
*They want to present “slow-burn, long-term storytelling” that doesn’t have plot holes believing their audience is watching their show the same as they do a series on HBO, Showtime and Netflix. Matt stressed the fact that on Being the Elite, every scene has a purpose and aim to reward their viewers for watching.
*Nick Jackson was asked about the ideal length of a wrestling show in 2019 and said, “definitely not three hours”. He said that the sweet spot would be 1-2 hours with Matt adding that it’s best to be live.
*Kenny Omega was always part of the AEW concept, in fact, Tony Khan told the Bucks that he needed Omega and the Bucks to be committed to the project. Matt stated that the three of them were on board and then they needed to sell Cody on the idea and eventually he was on board, too.
*On the timing issues at “All In”, they stated that 3-4 matches went long, and it wasn’t just Marty Scurll’s match with Kazuchika Okada. One lesson they learned was to have an exit ramp because all the performers had to walk up the big ramp to the back and that ate up a lot of minutes on the show that added up in the end.
**EC3 was not on Raw because he was on the SmackDown house show in Lake Charles, Louisiana. EC3 defeated Tye Dillinger and then immediately had a match with Shelton Benjamin with Benjamin going over. The card was headlined by AJ Styles and Rey Mysterio defeating Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton.
**The Giant Baba Memorial card took place Tuesday from Sumo Hall with talent sent from various promotions, including New Japan, All Japan, NOAH, Big Japan and Dragon Gate talent. Several legends were brought in for the Abdullah the Butcher retirement ceremony, including Stan Hansen, Mil Mascaras, Dos Caras, Satoru Sayama, Keiji Muto, Dory Funk Jr., and Seiji Sakaguchi. There were also video messages sent in from The Destroyer Dick Beyer, Ric Flair, John Laurinaitis, and Ricky Steamboat. The show was airing on Samurai TV and we will be reviewing the show on the next POST Puroresu with WH Park. Below are the results:
*Mitsuo Momota won the Giant Baba Memorial Battle Royal
*Tomoaki Honma, Naoya Nomura, Yuji Okabayashi and Ren Narita over Daichi Hashimoto, Kazushi Miyamoto, Takuya Nomura, and Tomohiko Hashimoto
*Atsushi Onita, Hideki Suzuki, Hideki Hosaka and Kendo Kashin over The Great Kojika, Shuji Ishikawa, Mitsuya Nagai, and Hikaru Sato
*Taichi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru and Taka Michinoku over Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Masa Fuchi and Yuma Aoyagi
*Sanada and Bushi over Shota Umino & Ayato Yoshida and Koji Iwamoto & Jake Lee
*Naomichi Marufuji and Jinsei Shinzaki over Masaaki Mochizuki and Shun Skywalker
*Jun Akiyama, Takao Omori & Taiyo Kea over Yuji Nagata, Satoshi Kojima & Osamu Nishimura
*Mil Mascaras and Dos Caras over Kaz Hayashi and Nosawa
*Kento Miyahara and Daisuke Sekimoto over Hiroshi Tanahashi and Yoshitatsu with Miyahara pinning Yoshitatsu
**Don Frye and Keiji Muto visited Yoshihiro Takayama in the hospital. Frye and Takayama had one of the legendary fights of all-time in June 2002 at PRIDE 21. The fight completely revived Takayama’s wrestling career and became IWGP heavyweight champion the following year. Takayama would win the IWGP heavyweight title, All Japan’s Triple Crown and NOAH’s GHC title during his career. Takayama was paralyzed after attempting a sunset flip in a May 2017 match and diagnosed with a cervical spinal cord injury.
**Impact Wrestling has announced that there will be an Ultimate X match at “United We Stand”, which takes place Thursday, April 4th in Rahway, New Jersey during WrestleMania week. They have previously announced that the card will feature a tag match with Rob Van Dam and Sabu vs. Pentagon Jr. and Fenix. The card will also be streaming live on Twitch that night at 11 pm Eastern.
**EVOLVE has announced Ricochet’s matches next month when he comes in for two shows with the group. On Friday, March 15th, it will be Ricochet taking on Orange Cassidy following a fan poll where Cassidy beat out Shane Strickland and AR Fox. There were 14,714 votes with Cassidy winning by a landslide with 61%. On Saturday, March 16th, Ricochet will team with the Street Profits against Shane Strickland, Joe Gacy, and Eddie Kingston. Both cards will be streaming on Club WWN, including the matches involving Ricochet.
**The WWE Network has added 34 episodes of WWE Confidential starting with the show’s premiere in May 2002 and posting episodes until March 2003.
**MLW has announced a tag title match for Intimidation Games with Teddy Hart and Davey Boy Smith Jr. defending the titles against MJF and Richard Holliday on Saturday, March 2nd. The company will be holding this show at Cicero Stadium in Chicago and have already announced a return date to the venue for July 6th with another television taping.
**The OTT Homecoming 2 card from Sunday in Dublin is now available on the promotion’s on-demand service. The show was headlined by Walter vs. PAC in a non-title match and Jordan Devlin vs. David Starr.
**DEFY Wrestling has a big card on Friday, March 8th at Washington Hall in Seattle with Ultimo Dragon, Yoshihiro Tajiri and Super Crazy announced for the card. Tajiri and Super Crazy will be having a singles match with Dragon being advertised for a match, too.
**I was chatting about this segment earlier this week and here is the full interview with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows on The Jim Rome Show. Anderson and Gallows came off so great in this interview and it’s stunning that these two haven’t spoken on television in months.
**Here is a rare clip of The Undertaker doing a local interview in North Carolina in 2000 to promote tickets going on sale for SummerSlam that year. In the interview, he mentions the injuries that kept him out of action and considering retirement 19 years ago.
**The WWE stock closed at $86.60 on Tuesday.
MMA NEWS
**Brett Okamoto of ESPN reported Tuesday that an interim middleweight title will be installed with Kelvin Gastelum set to fight Israel Adesanya on April 13th at UFC 236. The pay-per-view does not have a location yet and Okamoto could not confirm if that fight will be the main event. Gastelum was scheduled to fight middleweight champion Robert Whittaker last weekend at UFC 234 but Whittaker was forced to withdraw hours before the fight due to a hernia that required immediate surgery. Adesanya was moved up to the main event of that card and defeated Anderson Silva by unanimous decision while Gastelum was unable to fight. Okamoto added that Whittaker’s management is hopeful the fighter can return this summer.
**Combate Americas has announced that they have signed Dulce Maria Garcia Rivas a.k.a. Sexy Star from Lucha Underground and AAA to a multi-fight deal. She has had five pro boxing fights over the past two years with a 5-0 record. Rivas will make her debut for the promotion on Friday, April 12th in Monterrey, N.L., Mexico during a live television special.
**During Sunday’s Fight Companion podcast, Joe Rogan was speaking guests Brendan Schaub and Eddie Bravo about his status with the UFC. Rogan stated his new schedule is to do ten pay-per-view events per year and that’s it. He indicated he was not approached by ESPN to be involved and he did not have any interest in doing more.
**Nick Diaz posted the following update on Instagram regarding his status and not willing to take a fight unless the financial offer was something he could not turn down:
I’m no role model, I’m 35 years old, but I definitely wouldn’t advise anybody to take a fight for less than their worth or fight for free. Which is practically what I would be doing at this point in taking a fight with some of these guys that are not on my level. Nor would I be within my moral ethics to even do that aside from you not painting me as a role model. If there was an offer I couldn’t refuse, things would be different. Until they are – I’d like to continue to think I’ve been fighting to make the world a better place, but until I can continue to do that: “I don’t want to hurt nobody, I just want to party.
*****
RAR 2/18/19: NXT-Tease, DX into the Hall of Fame, Rousey-Riott rematch
Following Elimination Chamber, Raw featured four big NXT call ups with NXT champion Tommaso Ciampa, North American champion Johnny Gargano, Ricochet and Aleister Black all wrestling on the show. Plus, Ronda Rousey defended her title in a rematch against Ruby Riott, “The Brock Lesnar Story” narrated by Paul Heyman, the first official inductees into the WWE’s Hall of Fame 2019 class & more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/19/rar-2-18-19-nx-tease-dx-into-hall-of-fame-rousey-riott-rematch/
*****
WWE Elimination Chamber POST Show
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE Elimination Chamber 2019 from Houston, Texas featuring another great performance for Kofi Kingston, new WWE tag team women’s champions, and several title changes on a show that exceeded our expectations.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/18/wwe-elimination-chamber-2019-post-show
*****
TRMPS #2: The Rundown (2003) w/ Jay Hunter & Stephen “V1” Roe
On this edition of The Rocky Maivia Picture Show, Nate Milton welcomes Jay Hunter & V1 (OSW Review) into the theater to review 2003’s The Rundown! Is it as bad a film as the box-office would suggest? Was Seann William Scott TOO annoying?? Did Chris Walken even bother reading the script??? Find out the answers to those questions & more!
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/16/trmps-2-the-rundown-2003-w-jay-hunter-stephen-v1-roe/
*****
WWE Elimination Chamber Preview w/ Nate Milton
John Pollock and Wai Ting are joined by Nate Milton (The Rocky Maivia Picture Show, Kings of Sport) to preview WWE Elimination Chamber 2019. We also discuss the arrest of Jimmy Uso following a drunken dispute with a police officer.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/15/wwe-elimination-chamber-preview-w-nate-milton-cafe-hangout-live-2-14-19/
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #30: WWE King of the Ring 2002 (Patreon)
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE King of the Ring 2002 featuring The Undertaker vs. Triple H for the WWE Undisputed Championship and the finals of the King of the Ring tournament.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/24711044
*****
upNXT 2/14/19: Happy Pal-entine’s Day
Braden Herrington is joined by friend of the show Scrump, to review this week’s edition of WWE NXT including Ricochet vs. Adam Cole, Dominik Dijakovic vs. Shane Thorne, Street Profits in action, Ohno “leaving” NXT and more!
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/14/upnxt-2-14-19-happy-pal-entines-day/
*****
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