POST DAILY NEWS
It’s Friday, so that means both the video and audio versions are free for everyone. On today’s show, Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics returns to discuss WWE’s Q4 and year-end earnings report from Thursday. The two of us go through all the relevant news items, the Q&A highlights, WWE’s initiatives for 2022, how bullish they are on several deals, and achieving the $1 billion revenue mark for the first time in the company’s history.
POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-SmackDown is live at 11:15 p.m. ET tonight. Wai Ting and I will review Friday Night SmackDown and AEW Rampage before taking your calls. This show is available each Friday for POST Wrestling Café members and Patrons can download the show right after.
**On Saturday, WH Park continues his biography series on The Long & Winding Royal Road. This month, he will be joined by Jojo Remy to go through the career of Jun Akiyama. This follows past biographies of Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Toshiaki Kawada, and Akira Taue.
WRESTLING NEWS
**After posting the results of its most financially lucrative year in history, WWE’s stock jumped by over 8 percent on Friday. The stock closed at $47.81 on Thursday before the release of the earnings report and traded as high as $53.13 on Friday before closing at $51.71.
Friday’s report and subsequent call with analysts left room for plenty of optimism among the shareholder community given WWE’s bullish stance on several fronts regarding ongoing and future deals. This includes the replay rights for Raw and SmackDown that expire with Hulu later this year, which company president Nick Khan stated were rights they were very confident with. Regarding the recent WWE Network licensing deal in Indonesia with Disney+ Hotstar, to “look for more in the international media rights space in the not too distant future.” Khan painted a strong picture of WWE’s position in the market as content creators when it’s in such demand from the emerging streaming giants while believing that they “outperformed on the Peacock deal”, which began last March and is a deal they are very happy with.
**Friday Night SmackDown will continue with the fallout from the Royal Rumble. The major segment being pushed is Ronda Rousey deciding which women’s champion she will challenge at WrestleMania. There will also be a segment involving Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman after Heyman reunited with the Universal Champion at the Rumble, and Drew McIntyre is scheduled to appear after his return on Saturday.
**Sean Ross Sapp at Fightful reported that Bill Goldberg is expected to be part of the Elimination Chamber event and added that the idea of Goldberg challenging Roman Reigns is part of the most recent plans. Goldberg has one match remaining on his deal with the company. His last match was on the previous card in Saudi Arabia last October where he defeated Bobby Lashley.
**An interesting story to watch is that NBC Universal is working with 30 different advertisers with a new measurement tool for viewership. This is a reaction to a lot of discontent with Nielsen and finding an alternative measuring system. The group is going to test out their tool for the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl next weekend to gather data and make it a part of their push on outside advertisers during the up-front season. Variety notes that Nielsen is also developing a tool called NielsenOne to measure linear and digital audiences.
**SmackDown will be live tonight and then are scheduled to tape two shows next Friday in New Orleans. There is no SmackDown taping listed for February 18th as the crew will be in Saudi Arabia, so there will be a taped edition of the show on the night before Elimination Chamber.
**Here are the matches for tonight’s edition of AEW Rampage, which was taped in Chicago on Wednesday and airs at 10 p.m. ET on TNT and streaming on TSN Direct in Canada:
*TNT Championship: Sammy Guevara (champion) vs. Isiah Kassidy
*FTW Championship: Ricky Starks (champion) vs. Jay Lethal
*Thunder Rosa vs. Mercedes Martinez
*Adam Cole vs. Evil Uno
*Kris Statlander to speak
**Tony Khan added that he is “planning to drop some newsworthy info” on tonight’s show.
**Below are the matches listed for 205 Live tonight at 10 p.m. ET on the WWE Network:
*KUSHIDA vs. Damon Kemp (Bobby Steveson, the brother of Gable)
*Brooks Jensen vs. Bodhi Hayward
*Kayden Carter & Kacy Catanzaro vs. Lash Legend & Fallon Henley
**Madison Square Garden has announced that Ronda Rousey has been added to the upcoming WWE live event on Saturday, March 5th. Rousey wrestled twice in the building during her previous run in WWE with matches against Nia Jax on July 7, 2018, and December 26, 2018. Rousey is also advertised for the live event the following day in Laval, Quebec. During Raw, a local ad for Canada promoted a match with Rousey and Sasha Banks taking on Charlotte Flair & Shayna Baszler for the card in Laval.
**Game Changer Wrestling is back this weekend with their first set of shows since the Hammerstein Ballroom pay-per-view. They are teaming with Loko Wrestling for Fight Club 2 in Houston tonight at the Premier Arena. The show streams at 9 p.m. ET on FITE with the following card:
*GCW Extreme Championship: AJ Gray (champion) vs. Mysterious Q
*Matt Tremont vs. Sadika
*Mascara Dorada (the former Gran Metalik in his first match since leaving WWE) vs. Gringo Loco vs. Blake Christian vs. ASF
*Loko Championship: Dante Leon (champion) vs. Sam Stackhouse
*Jimmy Lloyd vs. Grim Reefer vs. Matthew Justice vs. Allie Katch vs. Jordan Oliver vs. Chris Carter
*Nick Wayne vs. Ninja Mack
*Effy vs. Bryan Keith
*Atticus Cogar vs. Gino Medina
**Saturday’s GCW card in Dallas will feature AJ Gray vs. Allie Katch for the Extreme title, Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Joey Janela, Laredo Kid vs. Blake Christian, Jordan Oliver & Nick Wayne vs. Dante Leon & Ninja Mack, John Wayne Murdoch vs. Matthew Justice, Speedball Mike Bailey vs. Jimmy Lloyd, and Psycho Clown vs. Gringo Loco. Jon Pine will have reviews of both GCW cards on the site this weekend.
**Beyond Wrestling presents ‘Day 91’ tonight from Worcester, Massachusetts at the Fete Music Hall and streaming on IWTV and FITE TV at 8 p.m. ET. The card will include Biff Busick’s first match since leaving WWE as he takes on Slade, LuFisto vs. Masha Slamovich, Matt Cardona vs. Rickey Shane Page, Trish Adora & Kings of the District against Tracy Williams, Wheeler Yuta & Rhett Titus, and Marcus Mathers vs. Alex Price. The promotion has stated that Alex Shelley is off the card after he was in a car accident and Kimber Lee is sick with a non-COVID illness and unable to wrestle on the show tonight. Kimber Lee had been scheduled to face Alec Price, who will now face Marcus Mathers.
**Everyone is talking about the match between Will Ospreay and Michael Oku from this past weekend’s Rev Pro event. The match was awarded five stars in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter this week. It’s available now through Rev Pro’s streaming service on Pivotshare. You can sign-up for a two-week trial at no charge if you are not a member and there are also options to buy and rent the show if you don’t want to subscribe. Wai Ting and I will be chatting about this match on Monday’s edition of the POST Daily News Show.
The match and its rating in the Observer led to an exchange between Ospreay and Kenny Omega on Twitter:
Dude your approaching 40 and we all still poke fun that you wrestled a 9 year old girl.
That’s you.
Bit weird bro. https://t.co/PR1sFmPvpp
— ᵂⁱˡˡ ᴼˢᵖʳᵉᵃʸ • ウィル・オスプレイ (@WillOspreay) February 4, 2022
**New Japan World is going to broadcast six live events as part of the New Japan Golden Tour throughout the month of February. In March, there will be sixteen live cards including the 50th Anniversary show and opening night of the New Japan Cup – both at Budokan Hall along with the entirety of the New Japan Cup, which concludes March 27th. They are set to return to the tour this Monday with a show from Korakuen Hall that will stream live at 4:30 a.m. ET.
**Denise Salcedo recently spoke to “Speedball” Mike Bailey on signing with IMPACT Wrestling, wanting to go to New Japan, and spoke about the changes to his career after he was unable to wrestle in the U.S. for a five year period:
You assume that things are gonna go a certain way for your wrestling career, a lot of people with whom I wrestled at PWG during 2015/2016 ended up going to NXT shortly thereafter or IMPACT back then. And that’s sorta what I was hoping would happen with myself as well, and once you know that’s not gonna happen the trajectory that you had made for yourself is not gonna work out at all. You have two options basically, I can just quit, I can stop, I can take the “L” and move on to something else with my career and let pro wrestling go or I can figure out another way to become a successful pro wrestler outside of the United States outside of the place where everyone wants to be. That forced me to look at Europe, shortly after I was banned I did some shows in Canada, RevPro, then I got to wrestle for DDT…DDT was really my home from 2016 to 2020 right up until the pandemic, I would have been right back there if the pandemic wouldn’t have made things so darn difficult. DDT became my home, I was able to learn a living as a pro wrestler outside of the U.S, my mission was really to keep as much momentum as I could going up until the end of my 5 year admissibility.
**Progress Wrestling presents Chapter 128: Technique this Sunday at Manchester City Centre featuring four title matches. Jonathan Gresham defends the ROH championship against Chris Ridgeway, Cara Noir puts the Progress title on the line against Dean Allmark, women’s champion Gisele Shaw defends against Rhio, and The Smokin’ Aces defend their tag titles against Lykos Gym.
**MLW has added a four-way match for the MLW National championship to its SuperFight event. Champion Alex Kane will defend the title against Calvin Tankman, Matt Cross, and ACH on Saturday, February 26th at the Grady Cole Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Earlier this week, it was announced that Ricky Steamboat would be in attendance at the show as a special matchmaker and available for photos and autographs prior to the taping.
**Anthem Sports & Entertainment has announced that IMPACT Wrestling and Fight Network are now available on YouTube TV as part of the Sports Plus package, which is available for $10.99 per month.
**NJPW Strong has announced Tomohiro Ishii, Jay White, Tom Lawlor, Fred Rosser, Ren Narita, Yuya Uemura, Clark Connors, Gabriel Kidd, Chris Bey, JR Kratos, David Finlay, and Juice Robinson for its ‘Lone Star Shootout’ event on Friday, April 1st as part of the WrestleCon events at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas, Texas. There is a pre-sale today for WrestleCon Superfans with the general public on-sale taking place Saturday at Noon Eastern. With the ‘Windy City Riot’ event on April 16th in Chicago, it would suggest that Ishii will be in the country for a few weeks as he is advertised for both.
**AIW (Absolute Intense Wrestling) has announced that Dr. D David Schultz will be in attendance for their card on Saturday, March 26th at the Tadmor Shrine in Akron, Ohio.
MMA NEWS
**The UFC Fight Night card on Saturday night will feature the following fights along with the results from today’s weigh-ins:
MAIN CARD (7 p.m. ET on ESPN+)
*Sean Strickland (185.5) vs. Jack Hermansson (185.5)
*Punahele Soriano (185) vs. Nick Maximov (185)
*Carlston Harris (169) vs. Shavkat Rakhmonov (170.5)
*Brendan Allen (205) vs. Sam Alvey (205)
*Bryan Battle (185.5) vs. Tresean Gore (186)
*Steven Peterson (149*) vs. Julian Erosa (145.5) – Peterson was fined 30 percent for missing weight
PRELIMINARY CARD (4 p.m. ET on ESPN+)
*John Castaneda (136) vs. Miles Johns (135.5)
*Michael Trizano (145.5) vs. Hakeen Dawodu (146)
*Marc-Andre Barriault (184.5) vs. Chidi Njokuani (185)
*Julija Stoliarenko (135.5) vs. Alexis Davis (135)
*Jailton Almeida (203) vs. Danilo Marques (205.5)
*Jason Witt (171) vs. Phil Rowe (170.5)
*Denys Bondar (125) vs. Malcolm Gordon (126)
ON THIS DATE
Daniel Bryan takes on Rey Mysterio in 2019:
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE: CM Punk vs. MJF, Kendrick pulled
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite from Chicago featuring the first-time match between CM Punk vs. MJF. Plus, the latest in the Brian Kendrick controversy.
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK: Jay White & G.O.D. on IMPACT, Sudu Shah on 205 Live
John Siino reviews this week’s editions of AEW Dark, AEW Dark: Elevation, NXT UK, IMPACT Wrestling, 205 Live, NJPW Strong, NWA Powerrr, NWA USA, and Main Event in under 15 minutes on Shot In The Dark.
*****
upNXT: I Am The Cake!
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review the February 1st, 2022 edition of WWE NXT 2.0 featuring Bron Breakker & Tommaso Ciampa vs Legado Del Fantasma.
*****
REWIND-A-RAW: Ronda Rousey Speaks, Elimination Chamber Qualifiers
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE Raw with Royal Rumble fallout, the return of Ronda Rousey, Brock Lesnar’s WrestleMania decision, and Elimination Chamber qualifiers.
*****
Wrestlenomics: Who will buy WWE’s next-day rights?
As terms for Hulu’s next-day rights to Raw and Smackdown near expiration, Brandon Thurston and Chris Gullo discuss the possible suitors for that content.
*****
WWE Royal Rumble 2022 POST Show
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Royal Rumble 2022 featuring Men’s & Women’s Royal Rumble matches, Brock Lesnar vs. Bobby Lashley, Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns, and more.
*****
POST Puroresu: Stardom & Big Japan previews, NOAH & AJPW reviews
This month on POST Puroresu Bonus, WH Park is joined by Joey Bay to talk about recent shows and upcoming events in Japan from Stardom, BJW, AJPW and Pro Wrestling NOAH.
*****
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