POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-SmackDown is LIVE tonight at 11:15 p.m. ET with Wai Ting and I reviewing both SmackDown and AEW Rampage along with taking your calls. The show is live and available for all members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**Friday’s POST Daily News show is a free version for both audio & video subscribers as Wai Ting and I provide a preview of AEW Full Gear, discuss Tony Khan’s media call and comments about the NWA, and AEW Dynamite’s viewership from Wednesday.
**Braden Herrington & Davie Portman have released the latest edition of Best Match Ever with special guest Wai Ting discussing the SmackDown Six era from the fall of 2002 in WWE. If you thought our coffee rankings were headache-inducing, then buckle up for this rating system they concocted. The show is available for members of the upNXT Patreon.
**On Saturday, a new edition of The NWA Podcast will be released with Nate Milton, Kris Ealy, and Andrew Thompson.
**We are back Saturday night and will be live with the AEW Full Gear POST Show immediately after the show ends. This show will be live for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**On Sunday, a new edition of Wrestlenomics Radio will be released with Brandon Thurston and Chris Gullo going through all the business notes from the past week and making sense of it all.
WRESTLING NEWS
**We have the latest weekend of insanity when it comes to the schedule. This weekend’s notable events include the regular SmackDown & Rampage programs tonight, Bellator features Cris Cyborg vs. Sinead Kavanagh, GCW has a sold-out event from Detroit, and the AEW Countdown special will air tonight and could be excellent. On Saturday, the major show is AEW’s Full Gear with NJPW having a loaded show in San Jose with Battle in the Valley, UFC has an afternoon show featuring Max Holloway vs. Yair Rodriguez, GCW has the Nick Gage Invitational in Illinois, and Sunday is the ROH Honor for All streaming show. On top of those, the Best of the Super Juniors tournament kicks off Saturday and the World Tag League begins Sunday with back-to-back nights at Korakuen Hall.
**The major card of the weekend is AEW’s follow-up to its most successful show of all time with All Out in September. While the exact buys were not revealed, Tony Khan has stated several times that it was “well above” 200,000 and topping last March’s Revolution show that was highlighted by the Exploding Barbed-Wire Deathmatch between Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley.
From top-to-bottom, Full Gear appears to be a can’t-disappoint card where too many people would need to have off nights for this to not be one of the stronger cards of 2021. Without minimal if any backstage or non-wrestling segments, the four-hour pay-per-view window is expansive enough for all the relevant matches to receive adequate time while AEW crowds have shown an ability to stay engaged over the duration of the show no matter how deep the card goes and risking burnout in other environments.
The key match is the Kenny Omega vs. Hangman Page title match that has been a drawn-out story that feels like the timing is right for the title switch. While it’s easy to argue that Omega winning and defending the title against Bryan Danielson has been laid out and would make sense, so would a rematch without the title and properly sending Page into the top position after a two-year navigation since losing to Chris Jericho at All Out 2019. We will also know what the next major title match is coming off Full Gear with the result of Danielson vs. Miro and only a question of when they pull the trigger on that match.
Over the past week, the promotion for CM Punk and Eddie Kingston has been nothing short of perfect for where they want the buzz to be. The face-to-face on Rampage was among the best segments of the year and the combination with the Players’ Tribune article has made Kingston more beloved by this audience than at any point of his career. I would expect their segment on tonight’s Countdown special will be a must-see and it feels like a legitimate main event level of match and I would go as high as #2 in terms of drawing power for the show while some could go higher, it’s been that effective.
It’s a huge night for Tay Conti and with such a depth of matches, Conti and Britt Baker will have to go out and have an incredible match. Conti is light years ahead of where she was in NXT and has developed into a featured performer in the women’s division in AEW with this match the highest stage she’s had in her tenure with the company. I’m very curious to see how this one plays out and typically, Baker has had some great performances in big settings when called upon.
**Friday Night SmackDown features the return of the crew from the recent leg of the European tour where the final week of shows saw Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks headlining the card. Tonight’s episode takes place from the Norfolk Scope in Virginia (the same market AEW is running Dynamite from next Wednesday at the Chartway Arena as the venues are ten minutes apart). WrestleTix reports that as of Thursday there were just under 5,900 tickets distributed for the show. WWE has announced the following for tonight’s show:
*Roman Reigns vs. King Woods
*Sasha Banks returns
**After SmackDown, the following matches are set for 205 Live at 10 p.m. on the WWE Network:
*Roderick Strong vs. Draco Anthony
*Indi Hartwell vs. Valentina Feroz
*Andre Chase vs. Malik Blade
**AEW Rampage is live tonight at 10 p.m. ET from the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota on the eve of Full Gear with the following matches listed:
*Lumberjack Match: Matt Hardy vs. Orange Cassidy
*Jungle Boy vs. Bobby Fish
*Jade Cargill vs. Santana Garrett
*Dante Martin vs. Ariya Daivari
**The Countdown to AEW Full Gear special airs immediately after Rampage at 11 p.m. ET on TNT.
**NBC has announced that season two of “Young Rock” will premiere on Tuesday, March 15th at 8 p.m. ET.
**CM Punk spoke with Chris Mueller of Bleacher Report on the match with Eddie Kingston and promotion for it:
I’m looking forward to it just because there seems to be a huge, tangible buzz about it. I think if you’re a performer, when the crowd is invested, it doesn’t matter if they love you or hate you. It just seems to be an intriguing pair of guys going at it, right? We’ve kind of breathed life into what some of the classic legends of pro wrestling used to do on the regular. It’s just two normal dudes talking normal trash. The fun part about pro wrestling is you get to go in a ring and you get to beat the crap out of each other.
**Game Changer Wrestling has two events this weekend starting with ‘Evil Deeds’ tonight in Detroit for a sold-out event at the Knights of Columbus Hall that will stream at 7 p.m. ET tonight. Below is the lineup:
*Matt Cardona vs. Alex Shelley
*Masashi Takeda & Alex Colon vs. Jeff King & Neil Diamond Cutter
*Chelsea Green vs. Allie Katch
*Gringo Loco vs. ASF
*Jordan Oliver & Nick Wayne vs. Atticus Cogar & Eddy Only
*Rina Yamashita vs. Charli Evans
*Scramble Match: Leon Ruff vs. Nate Webb vs. Chase Burnett vs. Cole Radrick vs. Brayden Lee vs. Yoya
**GCW returns on Saturday night with the Nick Gage Invitational from Summit, Illinois with Alex Colon vs. AKIRA, Masashi Takeda vs. Eric Ryan, Atticus Cogar vs. Rina Yamashita, and Kit Osbourne vs. TBA in the opening round matches. The event will be streaming at 5 p.m. ET on Fite TV.
**NJPW presents Battle in the Valley on Saturday night from the San Jose Civic Center with a loaded lineup that includes Kazuchika Okada and Tomohiro Ishii being sent over. The card airs live at 11 p.m. ET with Japanese commentary available for New Japan World subscribers and $19.99 on Fite TV for English commentary. The first hour of the show will air head-to-head with the final hour of AEW Full Gear. Below is the card:
*NEVER Openweight Championship: Jay White (champion) vs. Tomohiro Ishii
*Kazuchika Okada vs. Buddy Matthews
*Moose vs. Juice Robinson
*Will Ospreay vs. Ren Narita
*Jeff Cobb & TJP vs. Clark Connors & Karl Fredericks
*Tom Lawlor, Jorel Nelson, Danny Limelight, JR Kratos & Royce Isaacs vs. Fred Rosser, David Finlay, Rocky Romero, Alex Coughlin & Alex Zayne
*Brody King & Chris Dickinson vs. BATEMAN & Misterioso
*Josh Alexander vs. Yuya Uemura
*NJPW Strong Xtra: Chris Bey & Hikuleo vs. The DKC & Kevin Knight
**It might get lost in the sea of shows this weekend, but House of Glory features Will Ospreay vs. Amazing Red tonight at 8 p.m. ET from the NYC Arena in New York and streaming on Fite. The main event is a rematch from the Super J Cup in 2019 and its Red’s first match in almost two years.
**NJPW kicks off three straight shows at Korakuen Hall on Saturday morning with the beginning of the Best of the Super Juniors tournament. The opening night will stream live at 4:30 a.m. ET on New Japan World with the following:
*El Desperado vs. SHO
*Hiromu Takahashi vs. YOH
*El Phantasmo vs. Master Wato
*Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Robbie Eagles
*Taiji Ishimori vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru
*BUSHI vs. DOUKI
*Ryohei Oiwa vs. Yuto Nakashima (non-tournament match)
**Sunday’s card at Korakuen Hall is the opening night of the World Tag League and is headlined by Tetsuya Naito & SANADA facing Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI in Naito’s return match after his knee injury removed him from the G1 Climax in September.
**Pro Wrestling NOAH has its ‘Demolition Stage’ card late tonight at 2 a.m. ET airing on Wrestle Universe and will feature English commentary. The event from Yokohama Budokan has the following matches:
*GHC Tag Team Championship: Kaito Kiyomiya & Masa Kitamiya (champions) vs. Naomichi Marufuji & Keiji Muto
*GHC National Championship: Masaaki Mochizuki (champion) vs. Kenoh
*GHC Jr. Heavyweight Championship: HAYATA (champion) vs. Aleja
*Yoshinari Ogawa, Seiki Yoshioka & Yuya Susumu vs. NOSAWA Rongai, Eita & Kotaro Suzuki
*Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Yoshiki Inamura
*Katsuhiko Nakajima, Manabu Soya, Nioh & Haoh vs. Daisuke Harada, Atsushi Kotoge, Daiki Inaba & Kinya Okada
*Takashi Sugiura, Kazushi Sakuraba & Kendo Kashin vs. King Tani, Mohammed Yone & Akitoshi Saito
*YO-HEY vs. Tadasuke
*Yasutaka Yano vs. Hajime Ohara
**Paul Heyman was a guest on ESPN Radio on The Nick Cattles Show to promote tonight’s episode of SmackDown.
**Brian Mann documents the entire history of the Kenny Omega vs. Hangman Page feud dating back to the start of AEW in 2019.
**Rob Van Dam and Katie Forbes were married in Las Vegas with Forbes posting a photo from the ceremony, which was presided over by former WWE talent Candice Michelle. Van Dam’s documentary ‘Headstrong’ airs on Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET on Reelz.
**GRAPPL has listed the top ten matches for September and October based on the voting by its users. The Young Bucks vs. The Lucha Brothers from All Out was the top-ranked match followed by Kenny Omega vs. Bryan Danielson (Arthur Ashe Stadium), Shingo Takagi vs. Tomohiro Ishii (opening night of the G1 and appears to be consensus match of the tournament), Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Kenou (this was lost in the shuffle but was superb and some of the best kicks displayed all year), Bryan Danielson vs. Minoru Suzuki, Momo Watanabe vs. Syuri, Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada (the second night of the G1), Will Ospreay vs. Ricky Knight Jr., Shingo Takagi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (from the G1), and Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston.
**Stephanie McMahon-Levesque will be honored by the March of Dimes at their 38th annual sports luncheon on Tuesday, November 30th. McMahon-Levesque will be honored along with Henrik Lundqvist, Allyson Felix, and Kevin Warren at the luncheon.
**Jonathan Gresham and Baron Black are launching a new group called ‘Terminus’ with a teaser video announcing their first card for January 16th in Atlanta and the tagline “Modern Age Grappling”.
**C*4 Wrestling has a strong lineup for tonight’s card in Ottawa with a show at St. Anthony’s Hall (523 St. Anthony Street) including “Speedball” Mike Bailey vs. Kevin Blackwood, Kevin Ku vs. Mathieu St-Jacques, Davey Richards vs. Junior Benito, and LuFisto vs. Joshua Bishop.
**The WWE stock closed at $55.91 on Friday.
MMA NEWS
**Bellator lightweight Usman Nurmagomedov was taken into custody at an airport in Moscow, Russia after the fighter and a friend of his was in a car and accused of running over a police officer. The TASS outlet in Russia reported that officers demanded that their vehicle stop near a checkpoint and the request was ignored with the car allegedly speeding up and going over a security barrier where it struck the officer. Shaun Al-Shatti of MMA Fighting received the following statement from Bellator on the matter:
The promotion has been made aware of the situation involving Usman Nurmagomedov and is in the process of gathering information and have no further comment at this time.
**Bellator 271 takes place from the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida tonight with the main card airing on Showtime at 10 p.m. ET. The following fights are slated for the main card:
*Women’s Featherweight Championship: Cris Cyborg (145) vs. Sinead Kavanagh (145) – Cyborg is listed as high as -5000 on some books and would make this an upset of enormous proportions if she were to lose.
*Linton Vassell (239.2) vs. Tyrell Fortune (253.8)
*Aaron Pico (145.4) vs. Justin Gonzalez (145.6)
*Arlene Blencowe (145.8) vs. Pam Sorenson (146)
**The UFC runs its Fight Night card from the Apex on Saturday afternoon featuring the return of Max Holloway, who could be fighting for the championship again, if victorious. Holloway will be fighting Yair Rodriguez, who has not fought since 2019 and is coming back with a tall task in fighting Holloway. The former champion at 145 pounds has two losses to current champ Alexander Volkanovski but he would be the clear-cut contender with a victory on Saturday. Below is the full card with results from Friday’s weigh-in:
MAIN CARD (4 p.m. ET on ESPN+)
*Max Holloway (146) vs. Yair Rodriguez (145.5)
*Ben Rothell (265) vs. Marcos Rogerio de Lima (259)
*Felicia Spencer (145.5) vs. Leah Letson (145)
*Miguel Baeza (170.5) vs. Khaos Williams (169)
*Julio Arce (135.5) vs. Song Yadong (135.5)
PRELIMINARY CARD (1 p.m. ET on ESPN+)
*Thiago Moises (155) vs. Joel Alvarez (157.5*) – Alvarez was fined 30 percent of his purse, per MMA Junkie for missing weight
*Cynthia Calvillo (126) vs. Andrea Lee (125.5)
*Sean Woodson (145.5) vs. Collin Anglin (146)
*Cortney Casey (125) vs. Liana Jojua (128.5*) – Jojua was also fined 30 percent
*Marc Diakiese (156) vs. Rafael Alves (155)
*Da-un Jung (204.5) vs. Kennedy Nzechukwu (205)
**LFA has a card on UFC Fight Pass tonight at 10 p.m. ET from Burbank, California headlined by Jaqueline Amorim fighting Loveth Young for the women’s strawweight title.
**Jon Jones stated over the past week that he will not be returning to Jackson-Winkeljohn’s in Albuquerque. Coach Mike Winkeljohn made the call after Jones’ latest arrest that he was not welcome at the gym until he sorted his issues out, which is a major statement for a coach of such a major star in the sport. Jones is now training at the original Jackson’s gym in the city and posted the following:
I want to sincerely thank gym owner/ coach Nick Urso and everyone at the original Jackson’s MMA program for allowing me to call their dojo my new home base. I was so proud to see the condition of the gym, it was so well taken care of and the energy felt amazing exactly the way it was before. It has wonderful memories of my time learning from GSP, Sugar Evans, The dean of mean and so many more. I won my first world title out of this gym. I am grateful to have this comfortable place for both my local and visiting training partners to come enjoy. The best is yet to come!
**Conor McGregor and Jorge Masvidal went back-and-forth on Thursday with Masvidal’s management getting involved. McGregor criticized Masvidal for pulling out of the UFC 269 fight with Leon Edwards for an undisclosed injury. Masvidal fired back followed by his managers Ibrahim and Malki Kawa. Ibrahim stated that the UFC had asked Masvidal to cut down to 155 pounds for a fight with McGregor in the past, then McGregor went on to fight Donald Cerrone at 170. Malki appeared to back up that story stating McGregor’s camp asked to fight Masvidal and then said, “he’s too big for him”.
**MMA Junkie was the first to report that a welterweight fight between Stephen Thompson (16-5-1) and Belal Muhammad (19-3, 1 NC) is set to take place on the final UFC card of the year on December 18th at the UFC Apex. Thompson will be turning 39 next February and lost a key fight to Gilbert Burns this past July and making it tough to imagine he can work his way to another title fight in the division. Muhammad is unbeaten since January 2019 where has gone 5-0 with a no-contest against Leon Edwards this past March due to an accidental eye poke. Muhammad is coming off a decision win against Demian Maia this past June.
**MMA Junkie reports that Ed Herman (25-15) and Maxim Grishin (31-9-2) are scheduled to fight on February 12th, which is expected to be the UFC 271 card. Herman, 41, has been fighting for the UFC since 2006 when he came off the third season of the Ultimate Fighter and has won three of his last four but is coming off a decision loss to Alonzo Menifield this past August at UFC 265.
ON THIS DATE
The inaugural UFC event took place on this date in 1993 without any television support and drew just over 86,500 buys on pay-per-view. The original show was the passion project of Art Davie, who conceived of the concept and found a way to pull it off with the question of what would happen when representatives of varying fighting arts squared off? The early years were unrecognizable to a modern consumer but it was the circus appeal that allowed UFC to find an audience on pay-per-view as a pure sports presentation would have likely been met with apathy akin to ESPN’s airing of kickboxing.
Fast-forward to 2011 and on this date, UFC aired its first event on Fox with the heavyweight title fight between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos. The event took place from the Honda Center and was a milestone for the promotion. The format was questioned as the Fox broadcast was limited to the one fight with a sensational lightweight bout between Benson Henderson and Clay Guida relegated to the prelims. For future Fox cards, there would be additional main card fights after this experiment. The fight saw dos Santos stop Velasquez in 1:04 with the fight doing 8,802,000 viewers on Fox and 764,000 on Fox Deportes, which are figures they never hit again during their time on Fox.
Finally, UFC 205 was on this date in 2016 with the promotion’s first event at Madison Square Garden. This was an enormous success and set the gate record at the arena that still stands with $17.7 million as Conor McGregor defeated Eddie Alvarez to become a two-division champion in an utterly spectacular performance from the Irish fighter.
*****
POST News 11/12: AEW Full Gear Preview, Tony Khan media call
John Pollock & Wai Ting preview AEW Full Gear, go over Dynamite’s viewership figures and the highlights from Tony Khan’s media call.
*****
BWE: A-Kid vs. Ilja Dragunov, Michael Oku vs. Will Ospreay, wXw 16 Carat
Martin Bushby is back with Benno & Andy Ogden to review the latest from NXT UK (Ilja Dragunov vs. A-Kid), RevPro (Michael Oku vs. Will Ospreay), Zack Sabre Jr. in the G1 Climax, and his exhibition against Shibata.
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE 11/10/21: Full Gear go-home show
John Pollock & Wai Ting review the final AEW Dynamite before Full Gear featuring the contract signing between Kenny Omega and Hangman Page. They also discuss Bryan Danielson’s MMA Hour comments about WWE contracts.
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK: NWA By Any Means Necessary, Meiko vs. Jinny on NXT UK
John Siino reviews this week’s editions of AEW Dark, AEW Dark: Elevation, NXT UK, 205 Live, NJPW Strong, NWA Powerrr, Ring of Honor, and Main Event in under 15 minutes on Shot In The Dark.
*****
POST DAILY NEWS – Wednesday, November 10
John Pollock & Wai Ting discuss Monday’s WWE Raw viewership that dropped in the third hour, the state of UpUpDownDown/WWE, and NXT confirms War Games for December.
*****
upNXT 11/9/21: The Bruiser Way
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman talk about the November 9th 2021 edition of WWE NXT 2.0 headlined by Pete Dunne vs Carmelo Hayes!
*****
MCU L8R: Eternals (2021)
Wai Ting and WH Park review the 26th Marvel Cinematic Universe film, Eternals (2021).
*****
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