POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-SmackDown is live at 11 p.m. ET tonight for POST Wrestling Café members. Wai Ting and I will review Friday Night SmackDown and the live edition of AEW Rampage along with taking your calls on any & all news from the past week.
**On Saturday night, Braden Herrington & Davie Portman will have an NXT In Your House POST Show covering the event from the Performance Center. The show will be available on the upNXT feed.
**Our WWE Hell in a Cell POST Show will be on Sunday night minutes after the show finishes on the POST YouTube channel and available to download on the POST Wrestling podcast feed. Due to the Sunday night event, the POST Daily News Show will return on Tuesday.
**Karen Peterson has a review of today’s Best of the Super Juniors Final from Nippon Budokan.
POST DAILY NEWS SHOW
Wai Ting and Andrew Thompson discuss:
– Melanie Pillman passes away
– AEW Dynamite viewership
– AEW removes MJF from roster page
– NJPW Best of the Super Juniors winner
– Juice Robinson misses show to appendicitis
– Samoa Joe & Liv Morgan receive acting roles
– Lacey Evans to SmackDown, per report
– Rampage & SmackDown previews
Audio version is free on the POST Wrestling feed.
AEW’S HANDLING OF THE MJF STORY
The handling of the MJF promo from Wednesday’s Dynamite has included AEW foregoing any online capitalization from the buzz generated. There is no question, that the viral buzz generated from the promo would be high but to make it authentic, they have not uploaded the video to any social channels or mentioned the segment. MJF has also been removed from the AEW roster page and his merchandise has been taken down. Time will tell if this is a viable angle that leads to a surge in business or is a case of the company going to unprecedented lengths to fool its audience and by extension, members of your company, that at least short-term is shooting themselves in the foot for not being able to capitalize. Of the YouTube videos following Dynamite, the most-watched is Hiroshi Tanahashi answering CM Punk’s challenge at approximately 650,000 views and there is no doubt the MJF segment would have way above that because of its uniqueness and everyone talking about it. Instead, AEW has given that exposure to fans and people in the crowd that took videos – but if you’re in this for the payoff at the end, you can’t tip your hand and make this feel like any other angle on the show. Which begs the question how effective is this long-term, when few if any are operating under the assumption this is a fully on-board storyline regardless of what you believed or didn’t believe since Saturday?
Reality-based storylines are always preferred because it doesn’t take a grand effort to suspend disbelief. The work is already done for the promoter because the audience is on board from jump street. In AEW, you’re dealing with an audience that generally has a deeper following of these news stories than most, which is a blessing and a curse. When a Minoru Suzuki or Hiroshi Tanahashi, or even Great O-Khan & Jeff Cobb suddenly appear on TV, the audience goes nuts because they follow so much more wrestling and little explanation is needed. It also comes with fans that have an incredibly keen eye when watching for elements that seem real or contrived – the former is great; the latter is nearly impossible to avoid when incorporated into the body of the program.
For MJF, it’s hard to look at anything that has happened over the past week in a negative context. He is the talk of the industry, his pending contract status went from one of the dozens of stories in the news cycle to the top one, and his value is exponentially raised given the spotlight AEW gave him on Wednesday and delivering one of his best performances ever.
The jury is out on AEW’s benefit until the angle plays out. Whether intentional or not, MJF was a babyface by the end of the promo to nearly 14,000 fans in attendance and the villain was Tony Khan, who was presented as a fanboy that doesn’t pay non-WWE talent sufficiently. That’s an important point because when the segment began and MJF walked out, he was heavily booed because AEW is perceived as a babyface company by its loyal audience and within ten minutes, that dynamic was flipped. The idea of MJF feuding with Tony Khan on television doesn’t sound like a great idea, but that was the only direction the viewer was left to assume based on the content of the promo and begs for a rebuttal by Khan. There were direct and non-direct references to CM Punk throughout the promo from MJF labeling himself the ‘Best in the World’, his message about ex-WWE talent, and stating he’s the only one capable of strapping this company to his back (a line that CM Punk had used in media appearances leading into the pay-per-view). Punk is the one that came out when the cameras cut to commercial and knowing that aspect of the segment would be spread online within seconds, and makes sense as a direction for many reasons.
Punk is the connective tissue through his own famous promo in June 2011 in Las Vegas that took him from a great mid to upper card heel into a top position in WWE. It’s one of the most remembered promos of this generation and I can’t tell you how many people have told me over the years that they found our podcast after the Punk promo and want to learn more. While it was historically significant, elevating Punk’s standing as a star, and led to him becoming a strong merchandise seller – the immediate result was mixed. Given the buzz of the Las Vegas promo, one would have assumed that Money in the Bank in his hometown of Chicago challenging for the WWE title against John Cena would do a gigantic number on pay-per-view. That show did do well by ‘B-level’ standards with a jump in domestic buys and a small increase in worldwide buys but finished with 205,000 buys worldwide (ironically, the same number as AEW’s record for All Out last September with Punk’s return). It was the seventh-highest pay-per-view number of 2011, on par with Elimination Chamber. It was by no means a failure, but the level of buzz and interest didn’t correlate to a blockbuster and displayed the ceiling for a non-big four event at the time by WWE. However, the result was a viable main event star and would have been a mistake to read that MITB number as a sign to give up on Punk even though the business didn’t reflect the online hype and reaction but it does convey a lesson about an online fervor correlating to business.
For me, Wednesday’s promo was a tremendous performance and a strong kick-off to an angle but now it needs to evolve into the type of feud and dynamic that has an easy-to-understand logic and purpose. It’s fun to confuse your audience and have them questioning what is real but spending so much energy in that direction has no history of showing a significant return on investment. WCW became obsessed with these styles of angles that yielded no return. A lot more latitude is given to Tony Khan and MJF because I believe there is strong confidence in the two driving this ship but these are choppy waters they are attempting to navigate.
The next steps are dictated by MJF’s status. If there is no new deal or extension, it’s a gamble to go all the way with this performer and risk him bolting in 18 months while at the same time positioning him stronger than ever and becoming more enticing to your competitor.
AEW is also at a crossroads when it comes to what its perception to the public is going to be. Over three years, they have grown a trust with the public by being honest when matches fall apart, performers are unavailable, delivering on stipulations and not forgetting about them, answering to the media after pay-per-views, and trying to be honest brokers in an industry that skirts that line more often than not. To get this angle across, they have forced themselves to engage in varying degrees of deception by either refusing to talk about it as an angle or playing fast and loose with that built-up trust. While Tony Khan may have no intention of lying to the public when asked about MJF, he is also making a conscious decision not to tell the truth by refusing to speak about it.
While some might scoff at this notion of ‘trust’ holding any tangible value, it is that exact sentiment that sold out the United Center last August because of a belief that the promotion would not screw its audience.
Regardless of what is true or not, many fans are going to write everything off as a work involving MJF including last weekend’s meet-and-greet and while it’s a small thing in the big picture, it provides ammunition for the fan to question everything and no longer take the promotion at face value. This goes even stronger for those within AEW that are left in the dark and whose trust you want to preserve at all cost.
WRESTLING NEWS
**Friday Night SmackDown takes place from the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio for the final episode before Hell in a Cell. As of now, there is no SmackDown representation on Sunday’s event. Madcap Moss is scheduled to return tonight after the injury angle at the hands of Happy Corbin. The fact Moss is returning tonight instead of next week could lead to a match at Hell in a Cell. The Six-Pack Challenge could lead to Ronda Rousey having a title defense on the pay-per-view with Rousey still advertised for the event without an opponent. Below are the advertised segments for tonight’s show:
*Undisputed Tag Team Championships: The Usos (champions) vs. Riddle & Shinsuke Nakamura
*Six-Pack Challenge: Raquel Rodriguez vs. Shayna Baszler vs. Natalya vs. Shotzi vs. Xia Li vs. Aliyah
*Madcap Moss returns
**WWE has one live event this weekend with a card on Saturday in Champaign, Illinois (the hometown of Tony Khan) and they are advertising Ronda Rousey vs. Natalya, a Street Fight between Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins, Bianca Belair vs. Asuka vs. Becky Lynch, and a MizTV segment with Theory as the guest.
**AEW has a live edition of Rampage from the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California. Earlier this week, WrestleTix noted only a few hundred tickets were remaining for the near 7,400 seat set-up. This marks the return to its normal time slot at 10 p.m. ET on TNT after four weeks of being bounced around the schedule on Fridays. There is no NBA competition tonight but both Rampage and SmackDown will be airing against the New York Rangers vs. Tampa Bay Lightning and the NHL numbers are soaring as we get deeper into the playoffs. It’s a pretty loaded card including a rematch between The Young Bucks and Lucha Brothers, who have had two of the best matches in the promotion’s history at Double or Nothing 2019 and last year’s All Out, which was many people’s choice for match of the year. Below is the lineup:
*TNT Championship: Scorpio Sky (champion) vs. Dante Martin
*The Young Bucks vs. The Lucha Brothers
*Kiera Hogan vs. Athena
**New Japan announced an attendance of 3,520 at Nippon Budokan on Friday for the Best of the Supers Juniors Final. Despite the possibility being thrown around, fans were unable to cheer at the event. DDT is promoting that fans will be able to cheer at their July 7th at Shinjuku Face and therefore, you would assume fans will be able to do the same when the G1 Climax begins the following week. Juice Robinson missed Friday’s show with the company noting he had appendicitis. SANADA returned from his broken orbital bone and issued a challenge for the IWGP United States Championship but it’s unknown if Robinson will be ready to wrestle next weekend at Dominion. KENTA also made his return after suffering a dislocated hip, a broken nose, and tendon damage to his finger stemming from the match with Hiroshi Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom 16 in January. In the coming days, we should have the full lineup for Dominion on June 12th, which currently has Kazuchika Okada vs. Jay White for the IWGP title, Bad Luck Fale & Chase Owens vs. Jeff Cobb & Great O-Khan for the IWGP tag titles, Tama Tonga vs. Karl Anderson for the NEVER Openweight title (Anderson missed Friday’s show after testing positive for COVID-19), and Shingo Takagi vs. Taichi for the KOPW 2022 crown.
**Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics has the minute-by-minute breakdown from AEW Dynamite on Wednesday. In the 18-49 demographic, the six highest minutes of the program came during MJF’s promo with the peak point of 661,000 viewers in the demo. The highest minute of the show was at the start of the show with 1,243,000, which was assisted by the lead-in. The MJF went as high as 1,123,000 total viewers at 8:27 p.m. ET. There was a big plunge as soon as the promo ended and they went to commercial, although the next match with Miro and Johnny Elite did regain a lot of that audience. The full breakdown of the program is available on the Wrestlenomics Patreon site.
**Matt Hardy revealed on his podcast that Jeff Hardy was “nearly knocked out” early in the match with The Young Bucks at Double or Nothing. Matt said that Jeff doesn’t remember anything from the match and the other three had to direct Jeff throughout the rest of it, which included a Swanton onto the steps:
Yeah, I was happy with the match, especially considering very early on in the match Jeff was almost knocked out. So he got hurt pretty bad. That’s why he’s being pulled from the match in Los Angeles, obviously. So he was kind of running on fumes going through the match. He still held up his end of the bargain pretty good in the big scheme of things.
We have a couple of ideas but we’re not sure. He has no recollection. He doesn’t remember the match at all after that happened, so thank God The Young Bucks are The Young Bucks and I’m me and we were — he was literally just a vessel being given directions throughout the match to kind of do what he was supposed to do. So considering he really got knocked loopy terribly at some point earlier in the match, he still did pretty good to go through and do everything he did. (Transcription courtesy of Gisberto Guzzo of Fightful.com)
Given that description, it sounds really scary and something I wish was a thing of the past where guys are severely compromised and still have the mentality of finishing the match at all cost. It’s clear that leaving that decision to the performers is unfair because they are engrained to always continue and in an instance like this, the referee needs to convey when someone is compromised and either remove him from the match or call the audible and just end things. There was a lot of dangerous stuff in that match and knowing that one of the participants had no idea what was happening is pretty concerning.
**AEW Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa is auctioning off her outfit from Double or Nothing with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the families of the victims of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Rosa is auctioning off her headpiece, robe, leotard, black trunks, a pair of boots, and an 8×10 signed by Thunder Rosa, Serena Deeb & referee Aubrey Edwards. Rosa will donate the funds that are generated to Victims First (www.victimsfirst.org). Rosa lives in San Antonio, which is 45 minutes from Uvalde. Last week, a gunman entered Robb Elementary School and killed 19 children and two adults.
**Mick Foley is the latest to enter the podcast world with the launch of Foley is Pod through the Ad-Free Shows network. His first episode covers his Hell in a Cell match with Triple H in February 2000 but covers tons of topics from the era. Foley is one of those rare personalities that has a strong penchant for the truth and doesn’t have an inflated sense of his accomplishments, which you can certainly argue he has every right to have given his role in one of the most successful periods in the industry’s history. He is a terrific storyteller and communicator and I would say in the history of performers I’ve had the chance to speak with, he is maybe the most reflective without hesitation to be critical of his own industry or blunt about his own shortcomings – and that’s rare.
In the podcast, he recounts his limitations in the fall of 1999 and was ready to retire, informing Vince McMahon that he was having memory issues and being told “you’ve wrestled your last match”. In fact, Foley pre-taped an interview with Michael Landsberg of TSN for Off the Record where he said that by the time the interview airs, he will have announced his retirement. Instead, due to Steve Austin’s neck injury and company needing him, he continued and led to the program with Triple H in 2000 that produced two of the best matches of Foley’s career with the Royal Rumble match being an all-time classic. The No Way Out match in Hartford was really supposed to be his retirement match but with Foley’s popularity so high, they couldn’t resist adding him to the main event of WrestleMania and Foley reluctantly came back six weeks after retiring.
**TMZ covered the news that Sammy Guevara proposed to Tay Conti at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
**NXT 2.0 presents In Your House on Saturday night from the Performance Center in Orlando, Florida, and streams on the WWE Network & Peacock. It is the second standalone special they have presented since the rebrand last September and follows the Stand & Deliver card in Dallas in April over WrestleMania weekend. From an interest level, this must be among the lowest in the history of NXT TakeOver events and below April’s special. The counterargument is that so many more people have access to these shows on Peacock than in the prior model. In the black & gold era, piggybacking off a major WWE pay-per-view with a TakeOver special worked well and allowed WWE to do two sizable gates instead of one on those weekends. This time, it’s two very minor shows from the company, although Hell in a Cell has a great advance even with so many top stars not advertised.
NXT has announced six matches for the show, which airs at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday:
*NXT Championship: Bron Breakker (champion) vs. Joe Gacy – If Breakker is disqualified, he loses the title. The story has been really difficult to get behind with Breakker coming off silly on a routine basis. I didn’t think this program had legs beyond the Spring Breakin’ special, but here we are. Of the available heels that are ready for Breakker, you have Grayson Waller, Carmelo Hayes and that’s about it. Gacy winning the title and Breakker chasing him doesn’t sound implausible but feels like a misread of your audience.
*NXT Women’s Championship: Mandy Rose (champion) vs. Wendy Choo – I don’t think anyone takes Choo seriously as a title contender but she’s very good as this character, but it has a shelf life and I feel we’re approaching its limit. Rose has had the title for a long time but now isn’t the time to change the title. One would assume Rose keeps the title and her next title defense would be against Roxanne Perez, if she wins the Breakout Tournament, and allows Cora Jade to be in Perez’s corner to counter Toxic Attraction and get back to Rose vs. Jade.
*NXT Tag Team Championships: Pretty Deadly (champions) vs. The Creed Brothers – If the Creeds lose, they are out of The Diamond Mine, whose defining feature is losing members every few months. The Creeds are going to make it once they get more experience as the athleticism is there and they are fun to watch in the prototype of Charlie Haas & Shelton Benjamin. It would seem Roderick Strong has some involvement in this match and could cost the Creeds the match and fires them. I don’t sense a title change but curious to see how well the four perform.
*NXT North American Championship: Cameron Grimes (champion) vs. Carmelo Hayes – I feel Hayes has graduated to the next level and should be part of the NXT title scene with Breakker. It would feel like a step back for Hayes to regain the title. The winner will defend the title against Solo Sikoa. This could be the top match on the show and seems like a safe bet.
*NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships: Jacy Jayne & Gigi Dolin (champions) vs. Kayden Carter & Katana Chance – Carter & Chance have a lot of charisma together and I think have improved a lot as a team. Given the state of the main roster, it makes you wonder when they’ll be calling up some women’s tag teams to fill the large void. While they don’t appear to be as ready as other options, Jayne & Dolin seem tailor-made for a call-up with their characters already set. The only question would be if they bring all three members up together or keep Rose on NXT since so much is built around her. I don’t know how well this match will come off but Carter & Chance having the belts would liven things up.
*Santos Escobar, Raul Mendoza & Cruz del Toro vs. Tony D’Angelo, Channing Lorenzo & Troy Donovan – Should be a fine six-man tag, Mendoza & del Toro are really underrated as a tag team but are very consistent. It’s hard to have a strong read on Lorenzo & Donovan with such limited ring time but this is a big test for them. D’Angelo has done really well taking to this character and where he stands despite less than 15 matches total in his career.
**MLW has added Richard Holliday to the Battle Riot match on June 23rd at the Melrose Ballroom in New York City.
MMA NEWS
**The UFC Fight Night card takes place Saturday at the Apex in Las Vegas with the following card with results from the weigh-ins:
MAIN CARD (4 p.m. ET on ESPN+)
*Alexander Volkov (256.5) vs. Jairzinho Rozenstruik (259)
*Dan Ige (145.5) vs. Movsar Evloev (146)
*Lucas Almeida (145.5) vs. Michael Trizano (145.5)
*Poliana Botelho (125.5) vs. Karine Silva (125)
*Ode Osbourne (126) vs. Zarrukh Adashev (125.5)
*Askar Mozharov (204.5) vs. Alonzo Menifield (205)
PRELIMINARY CARD (1 p.m. ET on ESPN+)
*Karolina Kowalkiewicz (115.5) vs. Felice Herrig (115)
*Alex Da Silva (155.5) vs. Joe Solecki (155.5)
*Damon Jackson (145.5) vs. Daniel Argueta (145.5)
*Benoit Saint Denis (155.5) vs. Niklas Stolze (156)
*Johnny Munoz (135) vs. Tony Gravely (135.5)
*Jeff Molina (125.5) vs. Zhalgas Zhumagulov (126)
*Andreas Michalidis (170.5) vs. Rinat Fakhretdinov (170.5)
*Erin Blanchfield (124.5) vs. JJ Aldrich (125)
ON THIS DATE
On many people’s short list of the greatest matches of all time from 1994:
Shawn Michaels returns as a regular to WWF programming in 2002 and would launch the second phase of his career that would last nearly eight years. It was believed Michaels’ career was done four years prior after a back injury:
Josh Alexander and TJP’s Ironman match from last year:
*****
POST DAILY NEWS SHOW: AEW Dynamite ratings, BOSJ winner
Wai Ting & Andrew Thompson discuss the latest wrestling news including AEW Dynamite ratings and MJF’s quarter-hour performance, New Japan’s BOSJ 29 winner, and more.
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE: AEW Dynamite & MJF promo
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite from the promotion’s California debut in Los Angeles. We hear from MJF! AEW World Champion CM Punk teams with FTR against The Gunn Club & Max Caster, Jon Moxley vs. Daniel Garcia, and more.
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK: Johnny Elite on AEW Dark, Kazarian on IMPACT
John Siino reviews this week’s editions of AEW Dark, AEW Dark: Elevation, NXT UK, IMPACT Wrestling, NXT Level Up, NJPW Strong, NWA USA, NWA Powerrr, and Main Event in under 15 minutes on Shot In The Dark.
*****
upNXT: In Your House go-home
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review the May 31st, 2022 episode of NXT 2.0 headlined by Cameron Grimes vs Nathan Frazer!
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #111: The Office (S2E6) & Friends (S3E4)
John Pollock & Wai Ting review two fight-themed editions of popular sitcoms The Office (S2E6 – “The Fight”) and Friends (S3E24 – “The One with the Ultimate Fighting Champion”).
*****
REWIND-A-RAW
John Pollock & Wai Ting review tonight’s WWE Raw featuring the final build to Sunday’s Hell In A Cell premium live event.
*****
AEW DOUBLE OR NOTHING POST SHOW
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Double or Nothing 2022 featuring “Hangman” Page vs. CM Punk for the AEW World Championship. They discuss the entire 13-match card and the weekend’s drama involving MJF.
*****
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