POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: AEW sells out arena for TNT debut

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**We have the Cafe Hangout available with Wai Ting and I joined by Rich Kraetsch from Voices of Wrestling. The three of us discussed the G1 Climax going into the final week, the standout performers and matches, possible outcomes, the relationship between New Japan and Ring of Honor, Jon Moxley’s performances, SummerSlam week and lots more. Plus, Wai and I discussed the Bill Goldberg vs. Dolph Ziggler match for SummerSlam, the updated card for TakeOver, Drake Maverick’s match with Mike Kanellis on 205, the ‘Road to ALL OUT’ episode and your phone calls.

**We also have a new show up today where I chatted with Rob Bihari about this weekend’s TripleMania card, the debut of Cain Velasquez, his future in wrestling, the Mask vs. Hair match, the commentary team for AAA, the passing of Paco Alonso and its effect on CMLL, SummerSlam week in Toronto, and more.

**Wai Ting and I will be back Saturday with another G1 Climax review to discuss the A Block show from Osaka headlined by Kazuchika Okada and Sanada, as well as the rematch of last year’s final with Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kota Ibushi. This show will be available for members of the POST Wrestling Cafe.

**On Saturday, we will also have a new edition of Cruel Summer as WH Park welcomes Mike Murray to review the 2009 G1 final between Shinsuke Nakamura and Togi Makabe. Sunday’s show features the return of STRIGGA to review the 2010 final between Hiroshi Tanahashi and Satoshi Kojima.

WRESTLING NEWS

**At 3:15 pm Eastern, Matt Jackson announced they had sold out the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C for their TNT premiere. A company official confirmed the sell out to POST Wrestling and noted that they will look to release additional seats when the production is finalized.

This is the latest accomplishment from the upstart promotion ahead of their television debut on Wednesday, October 2^nd. There were questions going into Friday regarding the ability to sell out for a mid-week show but they did it on the first day and is an incredible achievement. They are playing with a hot hand and have a level of demand that is hard to fathom. There were issues throughout the on-sale with Ticketmaster and led to speculation they immediately sold out, the issues were corrected and they announced the sell-out just after the three-hour mark of tickets going public.

Ahead of the on-sale, they announced three matches with Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks vs. Chris Jericho & Two mystery partners, Cody vs. Sammy Guevara, the crowning of the first AEW women’s champion, and an appearance by Jon Moxley.

**AAA presents their biggest card of the year with TripleMania XXVII from Arena Ciudad on Saturday night in Mexico City. The show is streaming live on Twitch with the pre-show at 8 pm Eastern and the main card at 9 pm.

From the coverage this week, Cain Velasquez seems to be a huge deal on the show as he makes his pro wrestling debut at the age of 37 in the same arena where he lost the UFC heavyweight title to Fabricio Werdum in 2015. Velasquez has been training at the Pro Wrestling Revolution Training Academy in San Jose, California and it’s something he has been thinking about for a while. Velasquez went to the extent of having an exemption written into his last UFC contract allowing him to do professional wrestling. After attending the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view in February 2018, Velasquez went down to the WWE’s Performance Center and worked out with the talent and attended an NXT taping. If everything goes well on Saturday, I have no doubt the WWE will be aggressively pursued Velasquez, although I can’t imagine his UFC deal would allow working for WWE that is a much closer competitor to UFC in the market than AAA.

Velasquez has indicated this will not be a one-and-done and it would be a big coup for AAA to get him booked at Madison Square Garden in September, which is a card that needs a major shot in the arm. Velasquez wouldn’t be enough to fill an arena that size, but it would draw from an audience that isn’t familiar with AAA. In an interview with SI.com, he was asked about his future with AAA and said:

My UFC contract allows me to do both. I can keep wrestling as long as I want, and I can keep fighting as long as I want. As far as the wrestling goes, there are two more events that I am for sure doing after TripleMania.

Below is the lineup for TripleMania and we will have live coverage on the site Saturday night:
*Blue Demon Jr. vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. in a Mask vs. Hair match
*Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks vs. Pentagon Jr., Rey Fenix & Laredo Kid
*Cain Velasquez, Cody & Pyscho Clown vs. Black Taurus, Texano Jr. & TBA
*Keyra vs. Tessa Blanchard vs. Taya Valkyrie vs. Lady Shani vs. La Hiedra vs. Chik Tormenta vs, Faby Apache in a TLC match for the Reina de Reinas title
*El Hijo del Vikingo, Myzteziz Jr. & Golden Magic vs. Carta Brava Jr., Mocho Cota Jr. & Tito Santana vs. Mamba, Maximo & Pimpinela Escarlata
*Nino Hamburguesa & Big Mami vs. Sammy Guevara & Scarlett Bordeaux vs. Villano III Jr. & Lady Maravilla vs. Australian Suicide & Vanilla for the AAA mixed tag titles
*Copa TripleMania match feat. La Parka, Pagano, Aerostar, Averno, Puma King, Chessman, Super Fly, Monster Clown, Daga, Electroshock, and TBA
*Llave a la Gloria match

**The English commentary for TripleMania is expected to feature Matt Striker and a new announcer. Rob Bihari was on our show this week and said he could confirm that. Vampiro has said publicly that he is calling the show but on his podcast this week, Konnan hinted that might not be the case.

**WWE is only sending out the Raw crew this weekend after the SmackDown live events were canceled. SmackDown was scheduled for shows in Bowling Green, Kentucky on Saturday, Danville, Illinois on Sunday, and Kalamazoo, Michigan on Monday, which have all been taken off the schedule. While it’s not uncommon for the company to pull the Monday night house show of late, I cannot remember the last time they scrapped the entire weekend of shows for one brand. They return Tuesday night for the SmackDown and 205 Live tapings in Detroit.

**The Raw crew will start tonight in Fort Wayne, Indiana with Seth Rollins vs. Baron Corbin and Becky Lynch vs. Lacey Evans advertised. On Saturday, they will be in Toledo, Ohio, and Sunday in Erie, Pennsylvania.

**The G1 Climax heads into Osaka this weekend with back-to-back nights at the Edion Arena beginning Saturday with a show at 4 am Eastern with an A Block show with the following card:
*Juice Robinson & Toa Henare vs. Ren Narita & Yota Tsuji
*Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto & Yoshi-Hashi vs. Jeff Cobb, Toru Yano & Tomoaki Honma
*Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi & Bushi vs. Taichi, Minoru Suzuki & Yoshinobu Kanemaru
*Jon Moxley & Shota Umino vs. Jay White & Chase Owens
*KENTA (4-2) vs. Bad Luck Fale (1-5)
*Lance Archer (2-4) vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (2-4)
*Will Ospreay (2-4) vs. EVIL (3-3)
*Hiroshi Tanahashi (4-2) vs. Kota Ibushi (4-2)
*Kazuchika Okada (6-0) vs. Sanada (2-4)

**For the A Block, it’s must-win for EVIL to stay alive and would also be eliminated if Okada defeated Sanada. If Okada wins, it would eliminate EVIL, Tanahashi, and KENTA with the latter two losing their tiebreakers even if they could tie Okada at the end. If Okada wins and Ibushi loses, Ibushi would be out.

**The B Block show takes place late Saturday night/early Sunday morning at 2 am Eastern and will feature the following lineup:
*Toa Henare & Yuya Uemura vs. Shota Umino & Ren Narita
*EVIL, Sanada & Bushi vs. Lance Archer, Zack Sabre Jr. & Minoru Suzuki
*Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi & Tomoaki Honma vs. Bad Luck Fale, Chase Owens & Yujiro
*Kazuchika Okada, Will Ospreay & Yoshi-Hashi vs. KENTA, Clark Connors & Karl Fredericks
*Tomohiro Ishii (3-3) vs. Toru Yano (3-3)
*Juice Robinson (3-3) vs. Taichi (2-4)
*Jeff Cobb (3-3) vs. Hirooki Goto (3-3)
*Jon Moxley (5-1) vs. Jay White (3-3)
*Tetsuya Naito (3-3) vs. Shingo Takagi (2-4)

The block is led by Moxley with ten points and then there is a seven-way tie for second-place with that logjam of six points. The only ones eliminated from the B Block are Shingo Takagi and Taichi. If Moxley beats White, it would eliminate Tomohiro Ishii, Jeff Cobb, Jay White, and Tetsuya Naito. That seems an unlikely scenario as it would leave the block down to Moxley, Goto, and Yano.

**Tuesday’s episode of SmackDown Live averaged 1,911,000 viewers going against the Democratic debate on CNN, which attracted 8,643,000 viewers.

**Impact Wrestling is holding three events in California this weekend beginning with the Unbreakable event tonight at 9 pm Eastern on Impact+. Tonight’s show takes place from the Esports Arena in Santa Ana with Tessa Blanchard vs. Sami Callihan in a #1 contender’s match for a future Impact title shot. They have also announced Rhino vs. Moose, Taya Valkyrie vs. Jessicka Havok for the Knockout’s title, The North vs. Reno Scum for the tag titles, Eddie Edwards vs. Michael Elgin, Jake Crist defending the X division title in a multi-person match that will include Ace Austin and Trey, as well as Madison Rayne in action.

**Tessa Blanchard and Taya Valkyrie will be on tonight’s Impact show and then TripleMania on Saturday night. Impact continues Saturday with a card from the Florentine Gardens in Hollywood that streams on Twitch, and a show on Sunday from Port Hueneme.

**David Starr and Rey Horus have been added to the Battle of Los Angeles tournament in September by PWG.

**Jim Smallman has revealed he will be leaving Progress Wrestling at the end of 2019. He will finish with the company on December 30^th at their Chapter 100 card. Smallman already works full-time on NXT UK and will be focusing solely on that position when he steps away after this year. Smallman launched Progress alongside Jon Briley in 2012 with Glen Robinson joining the three. Smallman was also the front-facing representative for the group as its ring announcer and was excellent in that role that was closer to an MC than strictly ring announcing. The promotion held its first card in March 2012 and grew to become a highly influential promotion contributing to a renaissance of the UK wrestling scene. The promotion will continue to operate under Briley and Robinson.

**Rachael Ellering confirmed the news that she suffered a torn ACL during a match this past Saturday in Fort Pierce, Florida. Reporter Jim Varsallone was in attendance and reported it was an injury to the left leg during a match with Lacey Lane, which was waved off after the injury occurred. Ellering stated that she will be undergoing surgery on her knee this Tuesday.

**There will be an improv comedy show in Toronto next Friday night called The Sam Jam Comedy Hour. The show will feature Sami Zayn doing improv with James McGee with Renee Young also scheduled to appear. The event is raising money for Sami for Syria and takes place at the Bad Dog Theatre (875 Bloor Street West) next Friday at 8 pm.

**Defiant Wrestling, which was previously known as WhatCulture Pro Wrestling (WCPW) announced it is shutting its doors. The promotion launched in 2016 as a vehicle of the WhatCulture website with the personalities from the site being utilized on-screen. After that group left the company and formed Cultaholic, it re-branded to Defiant Wrestling in 2017. David Starr was the group’s final champion and had just won it in June from Rampage.

**Justin Barrasso at SI.com has a great piece on the passing of Harley Race and spoke with Paul Levesque, Ric Flair, Terry Funk, and Jim Ross with their memories of the eight-time NWA champion.

**Trish Stratus will be holding an autograph signing at the Aviva Centre in North York, Ontario this Sunday at 2 pm as part of the Rogers Cup tennis tournament.

**Here are the matches advertised for tonight’s episode of Impact Wrestling at 10 pm Eastern:
*Tessa Blanchard vs. Madman Fulton
*Josh Alexander & Ethan Page vs. Dezmond Xavier & Trey Miguel for the tag titles

**The WWE stock closed at $69.37 on Friday, so it appears the Q2 report led to a short-term bump for the stock that lasted one week and has almost returned to the same level it was before the quarterly report was released.

MMA NEWS

**Dana White did a sit-down interview with Laura Sanko for the UFC’s YouTube channel and stated they were releasing Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino from her exclusive negotiating window. This would waive the three-month period the UFC has to negotiate with the former featherweight champion with White stating she is free and clear to sign with another fight organization.

White defended his past comments about Justino, specifically comments made in April 2014 where he mocked her physique accusing her of being on steroids and looking like ‘Wanderlei Silva in a dress and heels’. White defended the comment stating he was asked to react to comments made by Ronda Rousey referring to Justino as an ‘it’ and he was describing her physique. White concluded that Justino did not want to fight Amanda Nunes and can go have ‘easy fights’ with other promotions. Cyborg’s side was obviously not represented in this UFC piece, but her claim was that the UFC had damaged her brand and was upset over White’s comments in 2014 and a tasteless joke from Joe Rogan on his podcast.

**The UFC is holding an afternoon card in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday from the Prudential Center. This card was originally scheduled to take place in Russia, but that card is now scheduled for November. The booked Newark instead but had to commit to the previous slot on ESPN, which means the prelims begin at Noon Eastern and 9 am on the West coast. Below is the full card and results from Friday’s weigh-in:

MAIN CARD (3 pm Eastern on ESPN)
*Colby Covington (171) vs. Robbie Lawler (170)
*Jim Miller (154.75) vs. Clay Guida (154.5)
*Nasrat Haqparast (156) vs. Joaquim Silva (155.25)
*Gerald Meerschaert (185.5) vs. Trevin Giles (185)
*Scott Holtzman (156) vs. Dong Hyun Ma (158*)
*Darko Stosic (206) vs. Kennedy Nzechukwu (205.5)

PRELIMINARY CARD (Noon on ESPN)
*Mickey Gall (169.75) vs. Salim Touahri (170)
*Antonina Shevchenko (125) vs. Lucie Pudilova (125.25)
*Jordan Espinosa (126) vs. Matt Schnell (126)
*Lauren Murphy (126) vs. Mara Romero Borella (125)
*Claudio Silva (170.25) vs. Cole Williams (176)
*Hannah Goldy (125) vs. Miranda Granger (125)

G1 CLIMAX REVIEWS

*****
Cafe Hangout – Aug. 1
On this week’s Café Hangout, John Pollock and Wai Ting are joined by Voices of Wrestling’s Rich Kraetsch to for a catch-up on NJPW’s G1 Climax 29 and a discussion about SummerSlam weekend, AEW on TNT and more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/02/g1-climax-29-catch-up-w-rich-kraetsch-cafe-hangout/
*****
upNXT 8/1/19: Boulevard of Broken Fingers
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman are back with another episode of upNXT! The BDE chat all about the July 31st edition of WWE NXT.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/01/upnxt-8-1-19-boulevard-of-broken-fingers/
*****
ASK-A-WAI (August 2019)
John Pollock and Wai Ting answer their patrons’ questions from the POST Wrestling Forum in the August 2019 edition of Ask-A-Wai.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/28787315
*****
RASD 7/30/19: Heavy Reign Fall, Flair vs. Stratus set
John Pollock and Wai Ting review Tuesday’s WWE SmackDown as Charlotte Flair challenges Trish Stratus to a match at SummerSlam, Roman Reigns is attacked by a mystery man.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/07/31/rasd-7-30-19-heavy-reign-fall-flair-vs-stratus-set/
*****
RAR 7/29/19: The Massacre of Seth Rollins, Becky talks TV romance
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Raw featuring The Massacre of Seth Rollins by Brock Lesnar. Wai speaks with Becky Lynch translating her real-life romance to TV.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/07/30/rar-7-29-19-the-massacre-of-seth-rollins-becky-talks-tv-romance/
*****
Becky Lynch SummerSlam Conference Call (Full Audio)
WWE Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch speaks to members of the media in this conference call ahead of SummerSlam 2019.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/28745967
*****
CRUEL SUMMER #18: Togi Makabe vs. Hirooki Goto (2008)
WH Park and Alan4L of PWTorch’s ProWres Paradise come together to discuss the finals of NJPW’s 2008 G1 Climax tournament: Togi Makabe vs. Hirooki Goto from August 17 of that year.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/07/28/cruel-summer-18-togi-makabe-vs-hirooki-goto-2008-w-alan4l/
*****
UFC 240 POST SHOW
John Pollock is joined by Phil Chertok for the UFC 240 POST Show as they review Saturday night’s card from Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/07/28/ufc-240-post-show-max-holloway-vs-frankie-edgar/
*****

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POLLOCK’S NEWS UPDATE: AEW sells out the Capital One Arena

AEW sells out the Capital One Arena for their TNT debut, TripleMania preview, Cain Velasquez makes his debut, UFC walking away from Cris Cyborg talks & more.

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