POST IT NOTES
**Wai Ting and I will be LIVE for the second straight night immediately following WrestleMania Night 2. We will be live immediately after the broadcast for Double Double, Iced Capp, and Espresso members of the POST Wrestling Café. You can also call in through Skype with your reaction.
**Our WrestleMania 36 Night 1 POST Show is up on the site with over two hours covering WrestleMania with our thoughts on each match and lots of feedback.
**Davie Portman has a review of this week’s episode of MLW Fusion with Mance Warner vs. MJF in an Empty Arena match with the loser leaving MLW.
WRESTLING NEWS
**The WWE Network has added the new edition of WWE 24 on Edge about his return. I’ve watched the first portion of it and it’s really good. Hopefully, we’ll have some time to chat about it on tonight’s show. For wrestling purposes, he confirmed interest from ‘another wrestling company’ without specifically stating AEW, who reached out after he did the spear to Elias at SummerSlam. Edge explained in the documentary that once he received their offer he would have to go to Vince McMahon and had a face-to-face with him that ultimately led to his new deal with WWE and the return set in motion. Beyond all the themes of his return and the wrestling stories, the portion on his life at home with his family is extremely touching and outlines the priorities this individual has in his life and why wrestling is not the be-all and end-all for him.
**I would also recommend the ‘Chronicle’ on Drew McIntyre that has received a lot of praise. Hindsight or foresight, this should have aired in its entirety on Raw this past week. Under regular circumstances, you can understand the hesitancy to not run a taped feature for an hour of television time but in this scenario, I feel that’s the call they should have made and promoted WrestleMania much more than the re-airing of the women’s title match from last year that took up a similar amount of time. The episode of the Chronicle is the most attention a WWE produced piece has addressed the COVID-19 crisis with McIntyre’s real-time reaction after the NBA shut down and realizing that WrestleMania would not be going down in its regular presentation.
**On Saturday, officials are all major sports leagues including UFC president Dana White and WWE chairman Vince McMahon were on a call with President Donald Trump. ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Adrian Wojnarowski report that during the call, Trump stated he believes the NFL would begin on time, which would be in September with stadiums and arenas re-opening in August and September. In a briefing with reporters, Trump didn’t pin down an exact date but said that he thought the re-openings of stadiums and arenas would be ‘sooner rather than later’
In ESPN’s report, they added that Trump proposed the idea of leagues working together to entice fans to return by lobbying for tax incentives.
The timetable from Trump would indicate how things have changed after recently stating he was hopeful of businesses re-opening by Easter, which is next weekend. That timeline was quickly massaged to Trump providing an ‘aspirational message’ for the public and was never going to be a realistic re-start of the economy. But the point is that Trump would likely fall on the aggressive side when it comes to getting people back to work and the economy moving, so if he is saying August and September that could be an optimistic target.
During his press briefing, Trump didn’t comment on a timetable for the stadiums and arenas to re-open but said things would return to normal with people attending and in proximity with each other again.
**The second night of WrestleMania 36 airs tonight beginning with the kickoff show at 6 pm Eastern. The following matches are set for tonight:
*Brock Lesnar vs. Drew McIntyre for the WWE title
*Edge vs. Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing match
*John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt in a Funhouse match
*Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair for the NXT women’s title
*The Street Profits vs. Angel Garza & Austin Theory for the Raw tag titles
*Bayley vs. Sasha Banks vs. Lacey Evans vs. Naomi vs. Tamina in a Five-Way Elimination match for the SmackDown women’s title
*Otis vs. Dolph Ziggler
*Bobby Lashley vs. Aleister Black
*Natalya vs. Liv Morgan on the kickoff show
**ESPN is airing WrestleMania 35 today at 3 pm Eastern.
**The following has been announced for Wednesday’s episode of Dynamite:
*Cody vs. Shawn Spears in the quarterfinals of the TNT Championship tournament
*Hikaru Shida vs. Britt Baker
*Lance Archer vs. TBA
*Tony Schiavone and Chris Jericho on commentary
**The first night of WrestleMania was a well-received show with the lion’s share of the feedback positive to the Boneyard match. It was an ambitious decision to close the show, but it was the only placement for a match of that production level and trying to go back to the empty arena would have been hard.
It tells you how much the wider audience has expanded its viewpoint as I feel this type of match for The Undertaker would not have been as praised several years ago but it absolutely worked and can ensure a role for The Undertaker for the future. I don’t think you should overdo a concept like this but once a year where a heel gets out of line prompting The Undertaker to come back is the best utilization of him at this stage rather than traditional matches. I don’t know well this would play if you had to watch it inside the stadium but as a home-viewing experience or in a group setting it’s a lot of fun.
I hope the entire team that helped produce this gets their due because in the wrong hands this could have been a disaster. I don’t know for a fact that Jeremy Borash was involved but I have a strong sense he was, and he was retweeting a lot of compliments about the match.
For story purposes, AJ Styles should disappear for a long time and come back with a darker edge from the trauma of the loss. He was excellent in this entire thing playing the arrogant heel and The Undertaker was tremendous at playing the American Bad Ass and trying his best to be Clint Eastwood.
**One added thought is that with the continued embracement of these cinematic style presentations, it might be time to go all the way and end them with a credit roll. The Undertaker and AJ Styles deserve plenty of praise but it’s the production that would make or break this end-product and I’d like to see all those involved get the credit that is deserved.
**Kevin Owens spoke with Pat Laprade & Kevin Raphael on Les anti-pods de la Lutte for a French-language interview prior to the airing of WrestleMania. Owens said the lack of crowd didn’t affect him and it felt like a big deal for him. Regarding precautions taken at the WWE PC, Owens said every time you left the building, they took your temperature again, there was a document to fill out to check for symptoms and they cleaned the entire PC. Between matches, Owens noted that they cleaned the ropes and changed the mat. He was also asked if there was a specific rule to avoid ‘COVID-19’ and ‘Coronavirus’ and he said he was not aware, but he personally didn’t want to mention them for his promos. My understanding is there is an edict to avoid those terms and the fact neither has been mentioned once on WWE programming would be evidence of that.
**In Canada, AEW Dynamite will be airing on TSN2 and TSN3 this Wednesday night at 8 pm Eastern.
**Viewership for both WWE and AEW has been very strong during this period with wrestling being one of the only entities producing new content. For the week of March 23rd, Raw and SmackDown were the top two most-watched sports programs in Canada. The rest of the list included old games from the NHL, Toronto Raptors, Toronto Blue Jays, and the Olympics. AEW was listed at #15 among sports programs for their March 25th episode.
**FS1 will be airing three episodes of WWE 24 this Tuesday night as part of their new spring programming block. It begins with an episode on WrestleMania 31 airing at 8 pm Eastern followed by WrestleMania 33 at 9 pm, and WrestleMania 34 at 10 pm. There will also be a new episode of WWE Backstage airing at 11 pm.
**Penelope Ford and Kip Sabian announced they got engaged this weekend. Congratulations to both.
**AJ Styles spoke with Newsweek promoting WrestleMania and the impact the coronavirus is having on the entire world and wrestling industry. He noted that instead of flying to Orlando, he took his personal bus as it’s a seven-hour trip for him. He described his reaction when suffering his shoulder injury at the Royal Rumble after landing on it when he took the spear from Edge:
Shortly after finding out that I separated my shoulder, it was a little before Vince left the Royal Rumble, I told him I’d be fine and I would just take a couple of weeks and I’ll be ready to rock. They told me that I’d be ready in four to six weeks, so keep in mind I didn’t want [Vince] to think: “Well, I got to find someone else for The Undertaker.” I didn’t want anything like that to happen.
So it scared me for a minute especially in the ring because I thought I dislocated my shoulder. Not saying that a separated shoulder is a good thing. It sucks too, but it’s something I can recover from and not need surgery or anything like that.
**New Japan has pushed back the on-sale dates for the Wrestle Dynasty card at Madison Square Garden this summer. The pre-sale date was scheduled for this Wednesday and changed to Wednesday, May 13th at 10 am ET with the general on-sale on May 15th at 10 am. Of course, it’s unknown if New Japan will even be able to run The Garden in August as planned.
**Drew McIntyre spoke to Steven Muehlhausen of the Sporting News and DAZN about his instance on coming back to WWE and starting in NXT in 2017:
For one, I knew a lot of the guys there. It was the same guys I knew before in the independents who got assigned, but nobody knew who they were when I was champion for Evolve made names for themselves were there and I knew the roster. But most importantly, the NXT fans are the hardcore fans. They know what’s going on around the world. They knew who Drew McIntyre/Drew Galloway is now, not who he was. Obviously, Raw and Smackdown have the larger audience and might now who I am or might remember me as the 3MB guy. I think that was important for me to be in front of the right crowd. Also ,an individual can make a difference to NXT. I worked for these other companies around the world. I was able to grow them. I was able to help the roster with my experience, and that’s what I wanted to do for NXT. I wanted to go there, work my way to the championship. It was a nice experience to gives positive advice, tell them to not make the same mistakes I did and be a leader. That was very important to me as well as educating the WWE fans on who I am.
**Metallica promoted that The Undertaker entered the boneyard at WrestleMania to ‘Now That We’re Dead’.
**Peter Rosenberg interviewed Kofi Kingston for ESPN prior to the airing of the ladder match at WrestleMania.
**Former WWE performer Caylen Croft (Kris Pavone) spoke with Jordan Garber NOW about his two runs with WWE. This was his response on being released in March 2006 for partying too hard when he was teaming with The Miz and lasted one week on the main roster:
It was St Patrick’s Day in March 2006 and we just went all out and I ended up in the hospital that night for drinking and partying and it was pretty serious as I almost ended up dying and I was hospitalized. Then the office found out about it and this was the time when the Wellness policy first got into effect. Because past wrestlers were dying too young. For example Eddie Guerrero just passed away months before and there was lots of stuff surrounding that so WWE was really coming down and started doing drug testing which is still in effect today. So I made it from debuting on SmackDown to being fired in a week. It ended up being one of the best things to happen to me because that really caused me to look at myself and how I’m doing and how I am living. Over the next couple years, I have made a couple of huge changes in my life because I wanted to.
**Charlotte Flair (Ashley Fliehr) turns 34 today.
**During the WrestleMania broadcast, there was a promo for a limited series that will run on the WWE Network chronicling The Undertaker. The series is titled ‘The Last Ride’ with Mark Calaway fully out of character and discussing his winding down his in-ring career. There will be a sneak preview of the series airing tonight after WrestleMania. In the promo, there are interviews with The Undertaker, Vince McMahon, Michelle McCool, Steve Austin, Edge, Big Show, and Shawn Michaels.
**Pro Wrestling NOAH has released its Reboot card from January 5th at Korakuen Hall. I attended this show and highly recommend the main event tag with Katsuhiko Nakajima & Go Shiosaki vs. Naomichi Marufuji & Masaaki Mochizuki:
POLL RESULT
The Boneyard Match:
Loved it: 86.6%
Hated it: 13.4%
2,962 votes
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 4/3/20: Strowman replaces Reigns, The Life and Crimes of New Jack
John Pollock and Wai Ting review the final Friday Night SmackDown before WrestleMania 36 featuring the announcement of Roman Reigns’ replacement. Plus, a review of Dark Side of the Ring: “The Life and Crimes of New Jack”.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/04/04/rewind-a-smackdown-4-3-20-strowman-replaces-reigns-new-jack-on-dsotr/
*****
THUNDERSTRUCK #24: Liger & Murahama vs. KENTA & Marufuji
WH Park and John Carroll from Voices of Wrestling’s Wrestling Omakase talk for the first time to review Jushin Liger & Takehiro Murahama vs. KENTA & Naomichi Marufuji in a match to determine the first-ever NOAH Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/04/04/thunderstruck-24-liger-murahama-vs-kenta-marufuji-7-16-03-w-john-carroll/
*****
WWE WrestleMania 36 Night 1 POST Show
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE WrestleMania 36 Night 1 featuring The Undertaker vs. AJ Styles in a Boneyard Match main event that everyone is talking about. Plus, Goldberg defends the WWE Universal Championship against Braun Strowman.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/04/04/live-link-wrestlemania-36-night-1-post-show-1030pm-et/
*****
BWE Retro Edition: TWC International Showdown (2005)
Martin, Benno & Jamesie take a look back at The Wrestling Channel’s International Showdown 2005, one of the biggest wrestling events to take place in the UK during the 2000s featuring CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles and Mitsuharu Misawa.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/04/02/bwe-retro-edition-twc-international-showdown-2005/
*****
Café GRANDE Hangout: Live Charity Q&A with Special Guests
John Pollock and Wai Ting couldn’t do their live show in Tampa this year, but that won’t stop them from bringing it to your homes with the first-ever Café Grande Hangout.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/04/02/cafe-grande-hangout-live-charity-qa-with-special-guests-free-stream-at-2pm-et/
*****
upNXT 4/1/20: Hostage Situation
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review the April 1st edition of WWE NXT featuring Damian Priest vs. Dominik Dijakovic vs. Keith Lee for the North American Championship.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/04/02/upnxt-4-1-20-hostage-situation/
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE 4/1/20: Release the Hounds
John Pollock and Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite from an undisclosed location. Featuring Cody & Darby Allin taking on Sammy Guevara & Shawn Spears ahead of next week’s TNT Championship tournament.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/04/02/rewind-a-dynamite-4-1-20-release-the-hounds/
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #58: WCW World War 3 (1995)
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WCW World War 3 (1995) featuring a 60-Man Battle Royal for the vacant WCW Heavyweight Championship.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/31/rewind-a-wai-58-wcw-world-war-3-1995/
*****
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