POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Raw is live tonight at 11:05 p.m. ET and streaming on the POST YouTube channel. We will have a review of the show from Pittsburgh and take your feedback & questions.
**Today on the site, author Steven Bell joined me to discuss the 30th anniversary of SummerSlam 1992 from Wembley Stadium and the main event between Bret Hart and Davey Boy Smith. We discussed the original location rumored for this event, the lead-up to SummerSlam, the tumultuous year Smith had with highs and lows, his physical ailments during this period, Hart’s role in the match, and where the two went after this match. Bell is the author of Dynamite & Davey: The Explosive Lives of the British Bulldogs.
**Later this week, I’ll be releasing an interview with Michael Landsberg, the former host of TSN’s Off the Record. Landsberg interviewed a who’s who of the wrestling industry on the show including multiple sit-down interviews with Vince McMahon. In terms of getting the most out of McMahon, I don’t think anyone did as effective of a job as Landsberg and his wrestling interviews became a staple of the program.
**Wrestlenomics has a big look at the momentum shift in the industry, how WWE is performing in the current quarter with live attendance, potential markets for AEW to hit, and analysis of AEW’s strategy of running the Coca-Cola Coliseum over two nights in Toronto & more.
**Karen Peterson’s Dream Slam Weekly includes an extensive interview with Kevin Kelly that Karen conducted over the past week along with an update on all the Joshi news from across the globe.
POST SCHEDULE
*Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw at 11:05 p.m. ET
*Tuesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
*Wednesday: Shot in the Dark with John Siino
*Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
*Thursday: MCU L8R – She-Hulk Ep. 3 (Patreon)
*Friday: POST Interview with Michael Landsberg
*Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (Patreon)
*Saturday: WWE Clash at the Castle POST Show (Patreon)
*Saturday: The Long & Winding Royal Road with WH Park & Daniel Makabe
*Sunday: AEW All Out POST Show (FREE)
*Sunday: Wrestlenomics Radio
WRESTLING NEWS
**AEW embarks on All Out week with three shows at the NOW Arena beginning on Wednesday night with the go-home edition of Dynamite. This show will have the task of being compared to last year’s All Out and threatening AEW’s streak of surpassing the pay-per-view buys of the previous year’s show. The mark of 205,000 that was set last year is going to be incredibly tough to outdo this year but they have a big week to maximize interest in the main event.
As of today, the promotion has not officially announced the rematch between Jon Moxley and CM Punk but I’d assume most believe that’s the match they are getting on Sunday. It’s an important episode of Dynamite when it comes to the follow-up from last week’s short title match and I’d want big promos from each one. They have already announced a promo segment with Moxley. There are similarities to Conor McGregor winning the interim featherweight title in July 2015 and then facing regular champion Jose Aldo at the end of the year and blitzing Aldo in thirteen seconds. They never did the rematch between McGregor and Aldo, but it would have been a giant fight based on the question of whether the UFC 194 knockout was indicative of who the superior fighter was or if Aldo just had a bad moment and was caught. This one is different with the idea that Punk came back too soon, and the rematch will have Punk at less than 100% and looking to avenge a humiliating loss. Punk has endless promo material including linking last week’s loss to the defeat he suffered at UFC 203 to Mickey Gall with both taking place in the same city.
The next major match on the show feels like the Trios Tournament final that most suspect will see The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega advance to face the Dark Order with Hangman Page involved to tie that long-term story together with The Elite. I’m curious how much they emphasize Omega’s own story of returning too quickly when they’re essentially doing the same with CM Punk. Sometimes, it’s overanalyzed how much duplication really hurts a show (ie: two similar finishes on the same card, same body parts being worked over) but this is the major story selling the pay-per-view with Punk and I’d want to differentiate Omega’s story from Punk’s.
As of this writing, the line-up has the Trios Tournament finals, Bryan Danielson vs. Chris Jericho, Swerve in Our Glory vs. The Acclaimed for the tag titles, Dr. Britt Baker vs. Toni Storm vs. Jamie Hayter vs. Hikaru Shida for the interim women’s title, Jade Cargill vs. Athena for the TBS title, Wardlow & FTR vs. Jay Lethal & Motor City Machine Guns, Powerhouse Hobbs vs. Ricky Starks, Jungle Boy vs. Christian Cage, and the Casino Ladder match.
That’s nine matches plus the expected additions of Punk vs. Moxley, and House of Black vs. Sting, Darby Allin & Miro match that was essentially set up on Rampage. Eddie Kingston vs. Sammy Guevara was on the books at one point but hasn’t been referenced since the unaired promo by Guevara and suspension to Kingston, which recently ended. There is no shortage of guys for the ladder match with the winner receiving a title shot.
**WWE Raw is in the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania tonight with their last show before flying overseas for Saturday’s Clash at the Castle (SmackDown was taped this past Friday). The following has been announced for tonight’s episode:
*Women’s Tag Title Tournament (Finals): Dakota Kai & IYO SKY vs. Raquel Rodriguez vs. Aliyah
*Face-to-Face: Seth Rollins and Riddle
*Kurt Angle to appear
The women’s tag title final should be presented as a significant match as they try to revive the titles but I don’t know how strong the match is going to be tonight involving those two teams. The match on SmackDown saw Raquel Rodriguez work 90% of the match while Aliyah sold on the floor after taking the Michinoku Driver from Natalya. I feel this one has to be a longer match to add to the prestige and can’t get away with a 5-6-minute final match to crown the champions. Obviously, everyone is anticipating the return of Sasha Banks & Naomi and it becomes a question of when they’ll return.
**Here are the matches for AEW Dark Elevation tonight at 7 p.m. ET on its YouTube channel, taped last week in Cleveland:
*Regina di Wave Championship: Hikaru Shida (champion) vs. Emi Sakura
*Frankie Kazarian vs. Andrea Guercio
*Dante Martin vs. Wes Barkley
*Julia Hart vs. Arie Alexander
*Serena Deeb vs. Katie Arquette
*The Butcher, The Blade & Rush vs. Elijah, Chase Oliver & Zack Nystrom
*Matt Hardy vs. Rickey Shane Page
*Nyla Rose & Marina Shafir vs. Skye Blue & Queen Aminata
**Over the weekend, it was reported by Fightful Select that FTR was not scheduled to be part of the first version of the AEW Fight Forever video game. On Monday, the team spoke with Louis Dangoor of Give Me Sport and revealed they found out about this news back in March when a reporter contacted them. FTR subsequently spoke with officials at AEW to see if there was an outstanding issue and confirmed to Dangoor that it was a “non-issue” and they are not mad:
The headline (for this) can be, ‘FTR is not upset, FTR does not blame anyone for pulling us out of the game.’ We heard about this, I want to say March, it was before the Briscoes match (at ROH Supercard of Honor) and we heard about it a long time ago. I had someone message me, one of the journalists messaged me and said, ‘Is this true?’ I thought I did respond to him. The first thing I did is text Cash, obviously. ‘Have you heard about this?’ ‘No, let’s text Tony (Khan) and find out.’ We text Tony, we went through the right chain of commands. We text Tony, talked to him. Legal texted us, talked with them a bit, we got our answer, and it was a non-issue. We wanted to make sure we weren’t doing something wrong and if there was something we could do to correct that, let us know. Months later, this article comes out, I couldn’t believe it didn’t come out in March. It blindsided both of us. I don’t care to be in the video game. (Transcribed by Jeremy Lambert at Fightful)
**Nikki Bella and Artem Chigvintsev were married this past Friday in Paris, France. Nikki noted that the wedding will be documented in a four-part series on E! called “Nikki Bella Says I Do”, although didn’t announce a premiere date for the series. The two have been together for several years and have a two-year child together.
**The N-1 Victory tournament concluded its round-robin portion on Sunday with the finals scheduled for Saturday in Osaka. Hideki Suzuki won the A Block with 11 points and beat out Kazuyuki Fujita (10), GHC champion Kenoh (9), and Go Shiozaki (8). The Block came down to Kaito Kiyomiya and Katsuhiko Nakajima each having 10 points and Kiyomiya advanced based on his win against Nakajima during the tournament. The next run of the block saw Satoshi Kojima, Takashi Sugiura, and GHC National champion Masakatsu Funaki with 8 points each.
Some notes from the tournament:
*GHC champion Kenou lost to Kazuyuki Fujita, Masato Tanaka, and went to a 30:00 draw against Hideki Suzuki
*GHC National champion Masakatsu Funaki lost to Kaito Kiyomiya, Masa Kitamiya, and Satoshi Kojima
*A Block winner Kaito Kiyomiya’s only loss during the round-robin portion was to newcomer Jack Morris
*Kinya Okada (who was a late replacement for Timothy Thatcher) went 0-7
*Funaki and Sugiura had the shortest match of the tournament with Funaki winning in 57 seconds
**AEW and Joe Hand Promotions announced on Monday that they are expanding the number of theatres that will carry All Out this Sunday in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. The pay-per-view will be airing in select theatres with Cinemark, AMC, Regal, Emagine Theatres, and Marcus Theatres in the U.S. as well as Cineplex and Landmark Cinemas in Canada and Cinepolis in Latin America. They have a full list of the theatres that will carry All Out.
REVIEW
The latest A&E Biography covered Rey Mysterio on Sunday night with a two-hour special. The doc was aided by lots of footage of his early days as Colibri and included the announcement by his uncle Rey Misterio Sr. in the ring in Tijuana that would now wrestle as Rey Jr in 1991. The documentary did delve into issues that had not been covered in the past including Mysterio falling into a dark place after WCW went out of business and before joining WWE in the summer of 2002. His wife Angie was describing his attitude and treating her poorly during that time while she was pregnant with their daughter. Rey is heard off camera telling Angie to admit “I was a dick” during that time. They also went into Rey’s painkiller dependency in 2008 which led to him quietly going to rehab for a month. It also focused heavily on the loss of Eddy Guerrero in November 2005 and how much it affected Rey, who did get to see Eddy and say goodbye after he was discovered in his Minneapolis hotel room that morning. The doc portrayed the on-screen tribute to Eddy with Rey winning the Royal Rumble and fast forward to WrestleMania 22 when he won the title. It omitted all of the tasteless angles and promos they did involve Eddy when Rey feuded with Randy Orton and was among the dirt-worst tact the company has ever taken with a story. Konnan was interviewed for the piece, which added a lot given his knowledge of every facet of Rey’s life within the business. They also included the footage from The Crash event in March 2015 where Rey & Extreme Tiger wrestled Perro Aguayo Jr. & Manik (TJP) where Aguyao Jr. went out during the match and was later pronounced dead. It was clearly a very traumatic event for Rey. It also featured his various stem cell treatments that he swears by and credits the therapy with his ability to continue wrestling, which is insane when you consider how bad his knee issues were two decades ago.
Next Sunday is the final WWE on A&E block with a documentary covering the first WrestleMania from March 1985 and a WWE Rivals episode focusing on Stephanie McMahon vs. Brie Bella from 2014.
ON THIS DATE
The very first SummerSlam took place in 1988 from Madison Square Garden featuring Hulk Hogan & Randy Savage taking on Andre the Giant & Ted DiBiase:
One of the biggest events ever in the U.K. where the WWF staged SummerSlam at Wembley Stadium in 1992 featuring Davey Boy Smith winning the Intercontinental title from Bret Hart:
Finally, the 1994 edition of SummerSlam took place at the United Center (a rare time they didn’t run the Allstate Arena/Rosemont Horizon in the market) with Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart in a steel cage and The Undertaker vs. Undertaker (Brian Lee) match:
Kevin Owens wins the WWE Universal title on this date in 2016 in a four-way match that included Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, and Big Cass:
*****
30th Anniversary of SummerSlam 1992 w/ author Steven Bell
John Pollock is joined by author Steven Bell to discuss the 30th anniversary of Bret Hart vs. The British Bulldog at SummerSlam 1992 in Wembley Stadium.
*****
WRESTLENOMICS: Has WWE-AEW momentum shifted?
TV ratings for WWE Raw are doing well since Triple H took over creative after Vince McMahon’s exit. Critical reception of WWE has improved too. AEW’s ratings are stable amid multiple reports of conflicts between talent as the All Out pay-per-view draws near.
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock & Kate from Montreal review the Friday Night SmackDown featuring Drew McIntyre vs. Sami Zayn and AEW Rampage with Claudio Castagnoli vs. Dustin Rhodes.
*****
MCU L8R: She-Hulk Episode 2
WH Park & Rich Fann are joined by Travis Bryant from the PWTorch East Coast Cast to review She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Episode 2: “Superhuman Law”.
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE: CM Punk vs. Jon Moxley
John Pollock is joined by Bruce Lord to review AEW Dynamite from Cleveland featuring CM Punk vs. Jon Moxley.
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK
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 WWE Main Event in under 15 minutes on Shot In The Dark.
*****
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