POST IT NOTES
**For those attending our POST Wrestling LIVE in Toronto show, there is a subway advisory from the TTC for those traveling downtown on the subway.
**The Café Hangout is available with a packed show this week. Wai Ting and I were joined by Marc Raimondi of ESPN to discuss his coverage of Cain Velasquez’s debut at TripleMania this past weekend, his future in wrestling and many other notes for covering the event live. Plus, we chatted with Marc about the G1, his recent interviews with Roman Reigns & CM Punk, and lots more. We also previewed the SummerSlam card from top-to-bottom and reviewed the OWE and Progress vs. Smash cards from Wednesday in Toronto.
**On this week’s edition of upNXT, Braden Herrington and Davie Portman are hanging out with Scrump to review this week’s episode and preview tomorrow night’s TakeOver card.
**On Saturday, WH Park will join us LIVE in-studio to review the first night of the G1 Climax at Budokan Hall with the A Block final. This show will be out Saturday afternoon for members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**Braden Herrington and Davie Portman will be attending NXT TakeOver and then doing a POST Show tomorrow night on the site.
**A new edition of Cruel Summer drops on Saturday with WH joined by Davie Portman from upNXT to review the G1 final from 2011 between Shinsuke Nakamura and Tetsuya Naito. On Sunday’s show, WH welcomes Wai Ting to review the 2012 final between Kazuchika Okada and Karl Anderson.
**There is a new edition of Five Questions with Phil Chertok discussing Colby Covington’s win over Kamaru Usman and his presentation, Cris Cyborg’s exit from the UFC, Frankie Edgar moving down to bantamweight, and this weekend’s flyweight title fight between Valentina Shevchenko and Liz Carmouche.
**This weekend on the site, we will have reports covering the ROH Summer Supercard card, GCW’s Escape from L.A., NXT TakeOver, WWE SummerSlam, and the UFC Fight Night card from Uruguay between Richard ‘Benno’ Benson, Eric Marcotte, and myself.
**If you are attending any events in Toronto, we appreciate any live reports or feedback to [email protected]
WRESTLING NEWS
**This is among the busiest weekends of the year with SummerSlam emanating from Toronto and the final three nights of the G1 Climax from Budokan Hall. In Toronto, WWE is all over the media with talent making appearances and doing press ahead of the shows this weekend. It’s been interesting going to the various independent shows and getting a sense of who is attending locally and who has traveled. At the start of the Progress vs. Smash Wrestling card on Thursday, Jim Smallman took a survey and it was a heavily local crowd. That isn’t to say people aren’t coming from out of town nor does a Thursday night independent show represent the entire weekend, but I think most can conclude that SummerSlam isn’t a weekend where large numbers are planning trips and coming to the host city like WrestleMania, Wrestle Kingdom, or a major AEW show with a Starrcast convention.
I do feel next year’s SummerSlam has a better chance to be a larger weekend for the independent promotions with the show set for Boston. It is so much easier for promotions in and around the New England area and Northeast to set up cards without the added headaches of crossing the Canadian border.
In total, I counted 19 wrestling shows in the city that includes the four WWE events. On Thursday night, there were four shows going on at the same time with Progress Wrestling at The Met, Greektown Wrestling on the Danforth, Union of Independent Professional Wrestlers at The Tranzac Club, and a Superkick’d Live. Freelance Wrestling show at their training school. I attended the Union show and I would estimate there were approximately 40-45 people in attendance, which was no doubt affected by the volume of shows that night. On Friday, there is a wXw card at 4 pm at The Met, Ring of Honor has the Summer Supercard at the Mattamy Athletic Centre, Destiny Wrestling has a card at 8 pm in Mississauga at the Don Kolov Arena, Smash Wrestling has its Super Showdown event at The Met at 8 pm, and Superkick’d Live is at The Great Hall at 8 pm. Below are the cards for today’s shows:
4 pm – wXw in Toronto
Midtown Event Theatre
*WALTER vs. Daisuke Sekimoto
*Timothy Thatcher vs. Yuki Ishikawa
*Amale vs. Allysin Kay vs. Toni Storm
*Bobby Gunns vs. Speedball Mike Bailey
*Strong Hearts vs. Aussie Open vs. The Crown (Jurn Simmons & Alexander James)
*Emil Sitoci vs. Avalanche for the wXw Shotgun title
7:30 pm – ROH Summer Supercard
Mattamy Athletic Centre (50 Carlton Street)
*Matt Taven vs. Alex Shelley for the ROH title
*The Briscoes vs. Guerrillas of Destiny for the ROH tag titles
*Rush vs. Dalton Castle in a No DQ match
*Shane Taylor vs. Tracy Williams for the Television title
*Barbaro Cavernario, Hechicero & Templario vs. Caristico, Soberano Jr. & Stuka Jr.
*Jay Lethal & Jonathan Gresham vs. Bandido & Mark Haskins
*PCO & Brody King vs. Vinny Marseglia & TK O’Ryan
*Kelly Klein vs. Tasha Steelz for the Women of Honor title
*PJ Black vs. Silas Young
8 pm – Destiny Wrestling’s Icons II
Don Kolov Arena in Mississauga, Ontario
*Tyler Bate & Trent Seven vs. Josh Alexander & Michael Elgin
*Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky vs. Sami Callihan & oVe
*Ricky Shane Page vs. Channing Decker
*Trey Miguel vs. Lionel Knight vs. Ryan Wright vs. Aiden Prince vs. Kevin Blackwood for the NEXT Generation title
*Tenille Dashwood vs. Seleziya Sparx
8 pm – Super Showdown VII
Midtown Event Theatre
*Kevin Bennett vs. Speedball Mike Bailey for the Smash championship
*WALTER & Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Tarik & Brent Banks
*Psycho Mike vs. Pepper Parks
*Sebastian Suave vs. Rosemary
*LuFisto vs. Jordynne Grace
*Fight or Flight vs. Halal Beefcake for the tag titles
*Jason Kincaid vs. Tyson Dux vs. Carter Mason
*Jody Threat vs. Veda Scott
8 pm – Superkick’d Live ‘Straight Outta Toronto’
The Great Hall
**The G1 Climax enters its final weekend with three nights at Budokan Hall. So far, only Monday’s final is sold out. The A Block show goes down Saturday morning at 5 am Eastern and its down to Kazuchika Okada vs. Kota Ibushi in the main event. If Okada wins or the match goes to a draw, Okada advances to the final. Ibushi must beat Okada to go to the final. Below is the full card for Saturday:
*Jon Moxley & Shota Umino vs. Juice Robinson & Ren Narita
*Jeff Cobb & Toa Henare vs. Toru Yano & Tomoaki Honma
*Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto & Yoshi-Hashi vs. Minoru Suzuki, Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru
*Jay White, Chase Owens & Yujiro vs. Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi & Bushi
*EVIL (4-4) vs. Lance Archer (2-6)
*Sanada (4-4) vs. Bad Luck Fale (3-5)
*Zack Sabre Jr. (3-5)) vs. KENTA (4-4)
*Hiroshi Tanahashi (4-4) vs. Will Ospreay (3-5)
*Kazuchika Okada (7-1) vs. Kota Ibushi (6-2)
**Game Changer Wrestling presents Escape from L.A. tonight at 11 pm Eastern on Fite.tv. The card is headlined by Nick Gage taking on Jimmy Havoc, along with Joey Janela vs. Dustin Thomas, and Tony Deppen vs. Masato Tanaka. We will have a report on the show on the site on Saturday.
**The Breakout Tournament final between Jordan Myles and Cameron Grimes will not be taking place on TakeOver itself, but being taped to air on television next week. They have also announced Tyler Breeze & Fandango vs. The Forgotten Sons for next Wednesday’s episode. TakeOver itself will be a five-match show.
**Paige (Saraya-Jade Bevis) recently had a consultation with her doctor regarding her neck. Paige stated that the first fusion healed perfectly but she developed a hernia above it after her last match in Uniondale, New York back in December 2017. The issue is going to force her to have another surgery.
**Trish Stratus has mentioned throughout the week that Sunday’s match with Charlotte Flair at SummerSlam will be her final one.
**Joe Koff spoke with TSN ahead of tonight’s Summer Supercard event in Toronto. The most noteworthy portion came regarding their television presentation and Koff indicating they could look at being more ‘time-sensitive’ with their weekly program:
I think that would be our next step to create a weekly show that is time-sensitive, so people are seeing it in real-time pretty much like we’re going to see from the other promotions. But we have to stand on our own. We’re not doing it because they are. I’m doing it because I think that’s what the consumer would rather have. They’re very satisfied with what they get. Our ratings over our TV stations and TV networks are fine and they’ve been good and haven’t really deteriorated to any degree that people might think. I think having appointment television, destination television in one solid place would make a big difference and that would be my goal.
Regarding the departures of The Young Bucks, Cody, and Hangman Page and Ring of Honor allowing the talent to go ahead with ‘All In’ last year, Koff said:
We didn’t know at that time that they were going to spin off into their own organization. They were my talent and they were part of our family and we’ve always been a collaborative organization and they came up with this idea and I felt like it was ours to support. It bore itself out true and what happened after that is just part of their chapters and the wrestling business’s chapter, but no, I would never look back at that. I would do it all over again.
**At the Union of Independent Professional Wrestlers (UIPW) card on Thursday night, the standout match of the night featured Josh Alexander of Impact Wrestling defeating Holden Albright. The two went over twenty-minutes and it was a hard-hitting style of a match. Alexander is a tremendous talent and a great pickup by Impact. He’s been great for years but has so many tools to be a big player for that company. I had not seen Albright do a match at this level and came away impressed with him, as well. The audience was small and many of them started heckling during the match, and these two were total pros and overcame. The story was Albright bringing the fight to the established pro and taking him to the limit before finally faltering and tapping out to an ankle lock. Their pace was incredible, and Alexander even took a suplex onto the stage. This was the match of the show and went on right before intermission, I was glad I went to the show and saw this.
**UIPW is returning to the Tranzac Club on December 6th in Toronto.
**This past Tuesday’s edition of SmackDown averaged 2,088,000 viewers on the USA Network, which was up 9% from the week prior. Miz & Mrs. averaged 1,057,000 viewers following SmackDown, which was a jump of 16% from the week before that went against the Democratic debate.
**New Japan has added Jonathan Gresham, Soberano Jr., Clark Connors, and Rocky Romero to the Super J Cup tournament. They join Dragon Lee, Caristico, Amazing Red, Bushi, YOH, Taiji Ishimori, Ryusuke Taguchi, SHO, and TJP. The tournament begins on Thursday, August 22nd from Tacoma, Washington and continues August 24th and 25th in San Francisco and Long Beach, California. The events are being taped and will eventually go up on New Japan World.
**Bet Online has released odds for SummerSlam this weekend. The biggest favorite is Bray Wyatt at -1000 to beat Finn Balor, followed by Bill Goldberg at -650 against Dolph Ziggler, and Kevin Owens listed at -400 against Shane McMahon. Brock Lesnar and Kofi Kingston are both at -200 to retain their titles against Seth Rollins and Randy Orton respectively.
**Here are the matches for tonight’s episode of Impact Wrestling at 10 pm Eastern:
*Josh Alexander & Ethan Page vs. Daga & Ortiz for the Impact tag titles
*Taya Valkyrie vs. Jessicka Havok for the Knockout’s title
*Jake Crist vs. Aiden Prince for the X Division title
*Rhino vs. TBA
**MLW will be holding a tribute for Gary Hart at their September 7th event in Texas at the Nytex Sports Center. Hart was a mentor to MLW CEO Court Bauer and worked with MLW during the promotion’s first incarnation.
**MLW has announced that their November 2nd pay-per-view will be available on Fite TV for $19.95. The show will take place from Cicero Stadium in Illinois.
**Impact Wrestling has released tickets for the Bound for Glory show on Sunday, October 20th at The Odeum in Villa Park, Illinois. They have released the top-tiered tickets with Titanium tickets at $300, front row at $100, and Golden Circle floor seats for $60. General admission seats go on sale Monday for $25. The pay-per-view will be available on traditional carriers, as well as Impact Plus and Fite tv.
G1 CLIMAX REVIEWS
Night 1: https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/07/07/g1-climax-29-post-show-opening-night-okada-vs-tanahashi-free-preview/ (Tanahashi vs. Okada) – FREE SHOW
Night 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28351982 (White vs. Goto)
Night 3: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28374580 (Tanahashi vs. KENTA)
Night 4: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28403937 (Naito vs. Taichi)
Night 5: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28475091 (Ospreay vs. Ibushi)
Night 6: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28495477 (Moxley vs. Ishii)
Night 7: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28520429 (Okada vs. Ospreay)
Night 8: https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-g1-climax-28631911 (Naito vs. Ishii)
Night 9: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28693414 (Okada vs. KENTA)
Night 10: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28714838 (Moxley vs. Naito)
Night 11: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28781154 (Tanahashi vs. EVIL)
Night 12: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28837190 (Ishii vs. Goto)
Night 13: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28887506 (Okada vs. Sanada)
Night 14: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28909244 (Naito vs. Takagi)
Night 15: https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/07/free-g1-climax-29-post-show-august-7-okada-vs-evil-ibushi-vs-zsj/ [FREE SHOW]
Night 16: https://www.patreon.com/posts/29017443 (Ishii vs. Takagi)
*****
CAFÉ HANGOUT feat. Marc Raimondi of ESPN
John Pollock and Wai Ting are joined by ESPN’s Marc Raimondi to discuss his recent trip to Mexico following Cain Velasquez ahead of his pro wrestling debut at AAA TripleMania. Plus, a full preview of Sunday’s WWE SummerSlam.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/09/marc-raimondi-talks-cain-velasquez-debut-summerslam-preview-cafe-hangout/
*****
upNXT 8/8/19: NXT TakeOver Toronto Preview Show
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman are back with another episode of upNXT and this week they are joined by Scrump from Pro Wrestling Tees to preview NXT TakeOver: Toronto 2019.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/08/upnxt-8-8-19-nxt-takeover-toronto-preview-show/
*****
BWE 8/7/19: Defiant closes, Jim Smallman leaves Progress, OTT ‘So It is’
Benno and Jamesie welcome Will Cooling of Pro Wrestling Torch to talk the closure of Defiant Wrestling and the announcement that Jim Smallman is leaving Progress.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/07/bwe-8-7-19-defiant-closes-jim-smallman-leaves-progress-ott-so-it-is-sendai-girls-uk-wxw/
*****
RASD 8/6/19: Hit-and-Rowan
John Pollock and Wai Ting review Tuesday’s WWE SmackDown as Roman Reigns discovers the identity of the man who tried to kill him.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/07/rasd-8-6-19-hit-and-rowan/
*****
RAR 8/5/19: Bill Goldberg returns at SummerSlam
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Raw featuring the return of Bill Goldberg to set up his SummerSlam match against Dolph Ziggler.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/06/rar-8-5-19-bill-goldberg-returns-at-summerslam/
*****
CRUEL SUMMER: Togi Makabe vs. Shinsuke Nakamura w/ Mike Murray
Longtime friends WH Park and Mike Murray (POST Wrestling’s ROH reviewer) get together to discuss the finals of NJPW’s 19th installment of their G1 Climax tournament: Togi Makabe vs. Shinsuke Nakamura from August 16, 2009.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/03/cruel-summer-19-togi-makabe-vs-shinsuke-nakamura-2009-w-mike-murray/
*****
CRUEL SUMMER: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Satoshi Kojima w/ STRIGGA
WH Park and the returning STRIGGA of the Eastern Lariat podcast team up again to discuss the finals of NJPW’s 20th G1 Climax tournament: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Satoshi Kojima from August 15, 2010.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/08/04/cruel-summer-20-hiroshi-tanahashi-vs-satoshi-kojima-2010-w-strigga/
*****
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