POST IT NOTES
**I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and all the best in 2022. The continued support of our site on any level never goes unnoticed. The one message I would like to convey is how proud I am of this team we have assembled at POST that has helped grow the site in ways I never thought possible. I’d like to thank everyone here at the site including Andrew Thompson, John Siino, Mark Buckeldee, Jon Pine, Bruce Lord, Kate from Montreal, Nate Milton, Kris Ealy, Martin Bushby, Benno, Andy Ogden, WH Park, Mike Murray, Eric Marcotte, Phil Chertok, Karen Peterson, Bruce Lord, Braden Herrington, Davie Portman, Dickie Bird, Neal Flanagan, Brandon Thurston, Chris Gullo, Jordan Goodman, Chris Engler, and Brandon Sears (oh, and Wai Ting).
**We will be back on Saturday night with a WWE Day 1 POST Show as Wai and I will review the first WWE event of 2022. The show will be live for Double Double+ members of the POST Wrestling Café and early Sunday morning for everyone.
**On Monday, we will have a POST Daily News update at 1 p.m. live on YouTube and back that night with Rewind-A-Raw. There will be no daily news shows on Tuesday or Wednesday, instead, we will be doing shows after each Wrestle Kingdom event, which will be available for POST Wrestling Café members. The daily news shows will resume on Thursday.
**The final POST Puroresu of the year is available with WH Park and I reviewing STARDOM’s Dream Queendom card from Wednesday (which is a must-see card), a preview of the three Wrestle Kingdom 16 cards this week, Jake Lee vacates the Triple Crown, and WH’s year-end awards are handed out.
**Brandon Sears reviews Jon Moxley’s book, which came out earlier this year.
**Phil Chertok and Eric Marcotte presented the 2021 POST MMAish Awards on Thursday going through many year-end categories including Best Fighter, Best Fight, Best Comeback, Round of the Year, and predictions for 2022. This was a tremendous show and a great recap of the past year in MMA.
**We have released several clips from interviews conducted on the POST Wrestling Christmas Show including ones from Denise Salcedo and Ariel Helwani:
WRESTLING NEWS
**The big news today is that PROGRESS Wrestling has been sold with the new ownership of Lee McAteer and Martyn Best. The first show under the new management will take place on January 23rd at the Electric Ballroom in Camden with Cara Noir vs. Chris Ridgeway for the PROGRESS Championship. The British Wrestling Experience has a breaking news podcast reacting to the news with Martin Bushby & Andy Ogden speaking with Will Cooling of the PW Torch site.
**The ‘New Year’s Smash’ edition of AEW Rampage airs tonight at 10 p.m. ET on TNT and TSN Direct in Canada. The show was taped on Wednesday in Jacksonville with the following matches and segments set to air:
*TNT Championship: Cody Rhodes (champion) vs. Ethan Page
*Street Fight: The Bunny & Penelope Ford vs. Anna Jay & Tay Conti
*Darby Allin vs. Anthony Bowens
*Technique with Taz segment on Hook’s Redrum submission
**Pro Wrestling NOAH has its big card at Nippon Budokan on Saturday (late tonight at 2 a.m. ET on Wrestle Universe and Abema) featuring Go Shiozaki challenging Katsuhiko Nakajima for the GHC heavyweight championship. Shiozaki returned earlier this month after being out since March with a shoulder injury. This is his first singles match after wrestling in tags throughout the month and the bar is high after Nakajima’s recent matches with Kenou for a big NOAH main event.
The show will also see KENTA return to the promotion he will forever be linked with, for the first time since WWE loaned him in 2018 for Naomichi Marufuji’s 20th anniversary card.
It will be interesting to see if any angles are shot for Saturday’s Wrestle Kingdom card at Yokohama Arena.
Below is the full NOAH card airing late tonight at 2 a.m. ET with English commentary from Stewart Fulton & Mark Pickering available:
*GHC Heavyweight Championship: Katsuhiko Nakajima (champion) vs. Go Shiozaki
*GHC National Championship: Kenoh (champion) vs. Kaito Kiyomiya
*Takashi Sugiura, Kazushi Sakuraba & KENTA vs. Masa Kitamiya, Daiki Inaba & Yoshiki Inamura
*GHC Tag Team Championship: Naomichi Marufuji & Keiji Muto vs. Masato Tanaka & Masaaki Mochizuki
*GHC Jr. Heavyweight Championship: HAYATA (champion) vs. Yoshinari Ogawa
*Masakatsu Funaki & Ikuto Hidaka vs. Kazuyuki Fujita & Kendo Kashin
*Ultimo Dragon, Atsushi Kotoge, Daisuke Harada & Hajime Ohara vs. NOSAWA Rongai, YO-HEY, Eita & Kotaro Suzuki
*Yuya Susumu & Seiki Yoshioka vs. Haoh & Aleja
*King Tani, Mohammed Yone & Akitoshi Saito vs. Manabu Soya, Tadasuke & Nioh
*Junta Miyawaki & Kinya Okada vs. Kai Fujimura & Yasutaka Yano
**Mark Buckeldee will have a report on the NOAH card on the site Saturday.
**Prior to Shiozaki’s match with Nakajima, I recommend reading the terrific essay by Aniello De Angelis.
**Friday Night SmackDown is a special ‘Top 10 Moments of 2021’ edition airing at 8 p.m. ET on FS 1.
**WWE will hold its Day 1 event on Saturday night from the State Farm Arena in Atlanta as they launch a new concept. As a live event, it appears to be a winner with a sell-out expected and over 10,100 tickets out in the market. The promotion is staging the second match between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar of its current rivalry and is clearly the major match on the show. It’s the best story WWE has with Paul Heyman’s performances over the past several weeks among the best this year for a non-wrestling performer.
Of course, the major question is whether this card will remain intact with several talents missing live events over the past week. Dave Meltzer reported that some of the absences from the live events were precautionary measures in order to preserve the matches at the pay-per-view and not an indication that talent being absent necessarily meant they tested positive. The only wrestler to acknowledge a positive COVID test was Seth Rollins but with the new CDC guidelines that have been adopted by the NFL and NHL, the quarantine period has been reduced with WWE reportedly following suit. The company has not issued any statements publicly on its protocols.
Here is the line-up for Day 1:
*WWE Universal Championship: Roman Reigns (champion) vs. Brock Lesnar
*WWE Championship: Big E. (champion) vs. Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens vs. Bobby Lashley
*Raw Women’s Championship: Becky Lynch (champion) vs. Liv Morgan
*SmackDown Tag Team Championship: The Usos (champions) vs. New Day
*Raw Tag Team Championship: Randy Orton & Riddle (champions) vs. The Street Profits
*Edge vs. The Miz
*Drew McIntyre vs. Madcap Moss
*Pre-show: Cesaro & Ricochet vs. Sheamus & Ridge Holland
**Game Changer Wrestling presents ‘Til Infinity’ tonight at 8 p.m. ET from The Showboat in Atlantic City, New Jersey and returns on Saturday night with ‘Die 4 This’ at the same venue. Tonight’s show is available on Fite TV for $12.99 (U.S) or you can purchase both shows for $19.99. Below is the card for tonight:
*Alex Zayne & Blake Christian vs. Dante Leon & Ninja Mack
*Atticus Cogar vs. Everett Connors
*PCO vs. TBA
*Tony Deppen vs. Cole Radrick
*Nick Wayne vs. Jack Cartwheel (two big breakout performers over the past year)
*Dark Sheik vs. Colby Corino
*G-Raver vs. AKIRA
*Jordan Oliver, Ellis Taylor & Charlie Tiger vs. AJ Gray, Effy & Matthew Justice
*Allie Katch vs. Charli Evans
*Jimmy Lloyd vs. Ho Ho Lun
**BT Sport’s Ariel Helwani speaks with Drew McIntyre.
*****
BWE Special: Progress Wrestling sold
Martin Bushby & Andy Ogden are joined by Will Cooling to give their reactions to the sale of Progress Wrestling.
*****
POST PURORESU: WK 16 Preview, STARDOM, WH’s Year-End Picks
John Pollock is joined by WH Park for the final POST Puroresu of 2021. The two preview all three Wrestle Kingdom 16 cards and review STARDOM’s Dream Queendom.
*****
2021 POST MMAish Awards
Phil Chertok & Eric Marcotte are back to review the year that was in the world of Mixed Martial Arts.
*****
BDElite 12/29: New Year’s Smash
Davie Portman and B Detroit talk all about the December 29th, 2021 edition of AEW Dynamite – “New Year’s Smash” headlined by Best Friends vs Adam Cole, Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly!
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK: Final ROH show, Janela-Kiss No DQ
John Siino reviews this week’s editions of AEW Dark, AEW Dark: Elevation, NXT UK, IMPACT Wrestling, 205 Live, NJPW Strong, NWA Powerrr, Ring of Honor, and Main Event in under 15 minutes on Shot In The Dark.
*****
upNXT 12/28: Negatives into Positives
Davie Portman and John Siino review WWE NXT 2.0 headlined by Raquel Gonzalez & Cora Jade vs Io Shirai & Kay Lee Ray where the winning team will face Mandy Rose for the NXT Women’s Championship at New Year’s Evil.
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #81: WrestleMania VI [FREE]
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWF WrestleMania VI (1990) featuring “The Ultimate Challenge” between Hulk Hogan vs. The Ultimate Warrior for the WWF and Intercontinental Championships. Dan “The Mouth” Lovranski joins us to discuss attending the event live in Toronto.
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