POST IT NOTES
**It’s a special LIVE & FREE edition of Rewind-A-SmackDown tonight as Wai Ting & Kate from Montreal will be live at Midnight ET. The two will be reviewing the season premiere of Friday Night SmackDown, AEW Rampage & Battle of the Belts IV, plus taking your phone calls and taking feedback from the POST Wrestling Forum.
**Our Bound for Glory POST Show will be added to the POST Wrestling Café feed late tonight with John Siino and I reviewing the card from Albany, New York.
**John Siino will have written coverage for Bound for Glory and Extreme Rules this weekend, Jon Pine is covering the GCW event on Saturday feat. Jon Moxley vs. Nick Gage and Karen Peterson will have Dream Slam Weekly and a report on New Japan’s Declaration of Power as well as Tokyo Joshi Pro’s Wrestle Princess III event on Sunday. John Kleinchester is covering SmackDown & AEW tonight on the site.
**Braden Herrington & Davie Portman have released their latest edition of Best Match Ever covering the career of Io Shirai with special guest Karen Peterson to select & discuss the best matches from Shirai’s career.
**We will have an announcement this Monday on Rewind-A-Raw at the beginning of the show.
POST WEEKEND SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-SmackDown w/ Wai Ting & Kate from Montreal (LIVE & FREE – Midnight ET)
Tonight: IMPACT Bound for Glory POST Show w/ John Pollock & John Siino (Patreon)
Saturday: WWE Extreme Rules POST Show w/ John Pollock & Wai Ting
Sunday: Wrestlenomics Radio w/ Brandon Thurston, Chris Gullo & Jesse Collings
WRESTLING NEWS
**We want to send our condolences to the family and friends of Sara Lee, who died tragically this week at the age of 30. She is survived by her husband Cory Weston a.k.a. wrestler Wesley Blake and the couple had three children. It is a very sad story and no cause of death has been revealed yet. A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to assist the family during this time and has already raised more than $75,000.
WWE issued the following statement on Sara Lee, who won the 2015 edition of Tough Enough:
WWE is saddened to learn of the passing of Sara Lee.
Born and raised in Hope Township, Michigan, Lee excelled in powerlifting before eventually joining the sixth season of WWE’s “Tough Enough.” Lee went on to win the fan vote for “Tough Enough” and serve as an inspiration to many in the sports-entertainment world.
WWE offers its heartfelt condolences to her family, friends and fans.
**The season-premiere of Friday Night SmackDown airs from the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts featuring an in-ring face-to-face between Roman Reigns and Logan Paul to promote their match next month in Saudi Arabia. There are over 5,100 tickets out for tonight’s show, per WrestleTix, and comes as WWE & AEW have been running that area of the country a lot including Dynamite and Survivor Series in Boston in November.
The show includes a rematch of many people’s top WWE match of the year between Gunther and Sheamus from Clash at the Castle. Gunther did not wrestle at the house shows last weekend in Canada, although he did appear in the corner of Ludwig Kaiser & Giovanni Vinci for their tag matches with Drew McIntyre & Sheamus.
The new commentary team for SmackDown is Michael Cole and Wade Barrett and goes into effect tonight as Barrett makes the move from NXT. There will be two-man booths on all three shows, although that could change when Pat McAfee returns from football duties.
Here are the matches and segments announced for SmackDown tonight:
*Face-to-face between Roman Reigns and Logan Paul
*Intercontinental Championship: Gunther (champion) vs. Sheamus
*Ricochet vs. Solo Sikoa
**AEW has a live edition of Rampage followed by Battle of the Belts IV from the Entertainment & Sports Arena in Washington, D.C. tonight at 10 p.m. ET. Tony Khan stated in his interview with Ariel Helwani that the network was happy with AEW’s two-hour Grand Slam performance two weeks ago and trying again. It also allows Battle of the Belts to avoid running against Extreme Rules tomorrow night, but they will still be contending against the MLB playoffs that begin today. The audience retention in the second hour is more important to focus on, as a strong performance should suggest that more of these two-hour experiments will happen and inevitably, the discussion of expanding Rampage would be a natural expectation.
Due to the changes with Andrade vs. Preston Vance off tonight’s show, PAC will be wrestling twice with a Trios Championship match with Rey Fenix & Penta El Zero M against Dark Order, and an All-Atlantic title match against Trent Beretta, so those are two big matches for him in a short amount of time. WrestleTix is listing 2,200 tickets out for the show tonight (keep in mind, this is the same building they ran two nights ago for Dynamite and drew 3,300 and 3,100 paid according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Here are the matches for both episodes beginning at 10 p.m. ET on TNT (TSN 2 is listing Battle of the Belts at 11 p.m. ET but not Rampage):
AEW Rampage:
*Trios Championship: Death Triangle vs. Dark Order
*The Varsity Blonds vs. Tony Nese & Josh Woods
*Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta vs. Rush & Private Party
AEW Battle of the Belts IV:
*TBS Championship: Jade Cargill (champion) vs. Willow Nightingale
*ROH Tag Team Championships: FTR (champions) vs. The Gates of Agony
*All-Atlantic Championship: PAC (champion) vs. Trent Beretta
**Both WWE and AEW will be running against Game 1 of the Wild Card series between the New York Mets and San Diego Padres that airs on ESPN tonight.
**The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that Vice’s “Nine Lives of Vince McMahon” documentary will premiere on 10/18 at 8 p.m. ET as a lead-in for that night’s Tales from the Territories episode on the AWA. It’s a tough night for traction as both NXT and a special Tuesday edition of AEW Dynamite will be airing at the same time. Reporters Dave Meltzer, Bryan Alvarez, Brandon Thurston, and former WWE magazine writer Brian Solomon have noted they have been interviewed for the documentary.
**The latest on Bandido from Dave Meltzer is that the performer has not signed a deal yet with AEW and revealed earlier this week that he has also received an offer from WWE. It demonstrates the mentality of WWE and that we are moving back to an arms race for talent with Bandido being a perfect example of someone that was a free agent for a while and now has interest from both sides. For talent, it’s a much better marketplace when the two biggest groups have a wider view of what they’re looking for as opposed to a narrow hiring process.
**IMPACT’s Bound for Glory pay-per-view airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on FITE TV for $29.99. We have a preview of the show on the site with a rundown of all the matches and stories that are going on. Below is the full card:
*IMPACT Championship: Josh Alexander (champion) vs. Eddie Edwards
*Knockouts Championship: Jordynne Grace (champion) vs. Masha Slamovich
*X Division Championship: Speedball Mike Bailey (champion) vs. Frankie Kazarian
*IMPACT Tag Team Championships: Mike Bennett & Matt Taven (champions) vs. Motor City Machine Guns
*The Last Rodeo: Mickie James vs. Mia Yim
*Digital Media Championship: Brian Myers vs. TBA
*Knockouts Tag Team Championships: Deonna Purrazzo & Chelsea Green vs. Taya Valkyrie & Jessicka
*Call Your Shot Gauntlet Match (Announced: PCO, Rich Swann, Gisele Shaw, Heath, Bhupinder Gujjar, Bobby Fish, Steve Maclin, Moose, Sami Callihan, Johnny Swinger, Killer Kelly, Tasha Steelz, Savannah Evans, Joe Hendry, and Eric Young with five slots open)
**Game Changer Wrestling is at The Showboat in Atlantic City, New Jersey for two shows this weekend. The big card is Saturday at 6 p.m. ET with Jon Moxley defending the GCW title against Nick Gage in a Title vs. Career match, which is a very interesting outcome given Moxley is the AEW champion. The rest of the card includes Alex Colon & John Wayne Murdoch vs. Drew Parker & Rina Yamashita for the GCW tag titles., YAMATO vs. Tony Deppen, Allie Katch vs. Sawyer Wreck, Jonathan Gresham vs. Jordan Oliver, Joey Janela & Cole Radrick vs. Ciclope & Miedo Extremo, and Shun Skywalker vs. Nick Wayne. Sunday night’s card has Rina Yamashita vs. Ciclope for the Ultraviolent title, Joey Janela vs. Cole Radrick, Shun Skywalker vs. Blake Christian, YAMATO vs. Speedball Mike Bailey, Drew Parker vs. Miedo Extremo, Nick Wayne & Jordan Oliver vs. Effy & Allie Katch, and Jimmy Lloyd & Wasted Youth vs. Second Gear Crew. Both cards are streaming on FITE TV.
**Brandon Thurston has the quarter hours from Dynamite, which revealed a sliding scale for overall viewership throughout the two hour program. The usual high point remained the first quarter with 1,179,000 viewers and 484,000 in 18-49 with those figures dropping to 879,000 and 378,000 respectively for the main event quarter with Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara vs. Bryan Danielson & Daniel Garcia. There were two quarters where the 18-49 audience showed a slight increase to interrupt the downward trend. The show stayed above an average of one million viewers and 417,000 in 18-49 for six of the nine quarters.
**WWE has added The Undertaker’s 1 deadMAN Show for Survivor Series weekend in Boston. Mark Calaway will host his one-man show at Big Night Live on Friday, November 25th (the night before the event). Tickets go on sale next Tuesday on Ticketmaster at 10 a.m. ET. This follows shows in Nashville, Cardiff, and Philadelphia in conjunction with WWE premium live events the same weekend.
**It’s a loaded weekend as WWE and New Japan Pro Wrestling have major events. Extreme Rules takes place from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on Saturday night. The event has been a giant success with around 13,500 tickets out and the arena will be full, according to WrestleTix. The lineup has Liv Morgan vs. Ronda Rousey for the SmackDown Women’s Championship, a ladder match between Bianca Belair and Bayley for the Raw Women’s Championship, Edge vs. Finn Balor in an I Quit Match, a Fight Pit match between Seth Rollins and Matt Riddle with Daniel Cormier as the referee, Drew McIntyre vs. Karrion Kross in a Strap match, and a Donnybrook fight with The Brawling Brutes against Imperium. The major tease is the return of Bray Wyatt, which most are assuming could happen on this show but hasn’t been outright stated. If he is appearing, they should make the clue pretty clear on tonight’s episode to drive last-minute interest in the show.
**NJPW’s Declaration of Power airs on Monday morning at 4 a.m. ET from Sumo Hall and it’s the promotion’s first card in Japan since the passing of founder Antonio Inoki, so I would expect a ceremony of some type on the show. Prior to Inoki’s passing last week, there were plans to try and have Inoki appear at a show and were going to name him an honorary chairman for life, which they revealed this past week. Below is the card for Declaration of Power:
*IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Jay White (champion) vs. Tama Tonga – White’s only loss in the G1 was to Tonga, although no one believes a title change is happening
*Kazuchika Okada vs. JONAH – Another G1 rematch where Okada attempts to avenge his loss
*NEVER Openweight Championship: Shingo Takagi (holder) vs. El Phantasmo – the loser must proclaim the other his “Daddy”
*Taiji Ishimori vs. TBA – KUSHIDA remains ill and was removed from the card with the company stating there would be a replacement named
*Will Ospreay, Aaron Henare, TJP & Francesco Akira vs. Tetsuya Naito, SANADA, Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI
*Jeff Cobb & Great O-Khan vs. Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI
*Hiroshi Tanahashi, Hikuleo, Ryusuke Taguchi & Master Wato vs. EVIL, SHO, Yujiro & Dick Togo
*Zack Sabre Jr. & Taichi vs. Bad Dude Tito & Shane Haste
*El Desperado, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & DOUKI vs. David Finlay, Robbie Eagles & Ren Narita
**The next major shows for New Japan include 10/27 and 10/28 in New York City followed by Battle Autumn at Edion Arena in Osaka on 11/5 with Will Ospreay vs. Tetsuya Naito for the IWGP U.S. title and Karl Anderson vs. Hikuleo for the NEVER Openweight title.
**MLW has announced the addition of Sam Adonis, who will be part of the company’s Fightland event on 10/30 at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia. The Fusion taping will include the Last Man Standing match between Alex Hammerstone and EJ Nduka for the MLW world heavyweight title, Jacob Fatu vs. Lio Rush, and Willie Mack vs. Calvin Tankman.
*Kaito Kiyomiya will team with Yuki Yoshioka against Kenoh and Kota Minoura on the 11/11 card that is being promoted by Pro Wrestling NOAH and Dragon Gate, which will air on Wrestle Universe. Kiyomiya is the reigning GHC champion while Yoshioka holds the Open the Dream Gate championship.
**The WWE stock closed at $72.73 on Friday.
REVIEW
Impact Wrestling (October 6)
RESULTS: Frankie Kazarian over Kenny King, Mia Yim over Gisele Shaw, Steve Maclin over Moose with Sami Callihan as the referee, Taya Valkyrie & Jessicka over The Swingerellas, Alex Shelley over Matt Taven
THOUGHTS:
*The final segment was very good with the contract signing between Jordynne Grace and Masha Slamovich and positioning their title match on par with the Alexander vs. Edwards match in terms of importance. Slamovich said, “Masha’s Gonna Kill You” at the end and attacked Grace, who attempted to fight her off. Slamovich stopped the Muscle Buster and put Grace through the table with a Snow Plough. Slamovich has been built up for months and this is the big challenge as she goes for the title. I thought it was the most effective go-home segment on the show.
*The rest of the show was very standard. After a sit-down interview with Tom Hannifan, Josh Alexander went to exit and was confronted by Eddie Edwards and they had a pull-apart. Alisha got involved and gave Eddie an ultimatum that he needs to choose between his new beliefs (Honor No More) and her. Either Alisha turns and joins Eddie, or Eddie loses and begins a return to a babyface role, those would seem the likely options. It feels like a nice main event match on paper, but the build-up hasn’t made it feel special or created buzz.
*There was a graphic at the beginning of the show for Antonio Inoki, which was a nice touch.
*The video package for Speedball Mike Bailey and Frankie Kazarian outlined both men’s pursuits with Speedball trying to get the record for most title defenses and Kazarian trying to win the title for the fifth time. I like what they’re doing with Bailey and he’s among the top wrestlers in the world, so he’s a great asset for IMPACT in the current landscape.
ON THIS DATE
Lou Thesz travels to Japan in 1957 to defend the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship against Rikidozan:
Kenta Kobashi & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi take on Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas in Osaka in 1992:
Dean Malenko and Eddy Guerrero meet on WCW Saturday Night in 1995:
*****
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Rich Fann and WH Park are joined by PWTCast’s Scrump to discuss the final Black Panther II: Wakanda Forever trailer and Episode 8 of She-Hulk featuring the MCU debut of Daredevil.
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REWIND-A-DYNAMITE
John Pollock & Wai Ting are back to review the three-year anniversary edition of AEW Dynamite and react to the backstage incident between Andrade and Sammy Guevara.
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SHOT IN THE DARK: Allie Katch on IMPACT, Brian Cage vs. Tracy Williams
John Siino reviews this week’s editions of AEW Dark, AEW Dark: Elevation, IMPACT Wrestling, Women of 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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upNXT: Orange is the New Black (And Gold)
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman chat all about WWE NXT from October 4th, 2022 headlined by Pretty Deadly vs Brawling Brutes!
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REWIND-A-WAI #117: WCW Great American Bash 1996
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WCW Great American Bash 1996 highlighted by a memorable interview involving Eric Bischoff and Scott Hall & Kevin Nash. 21-year-old Rey Mysterio makes his WCW debut.
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REWIND-A-RAW
John Pollock and Wai Ting chat WWE Raw from St. Paul, Minnesota for the go-home edition before Extreme Rules this weekend.
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POST PURORESU: The Legacy of Antonio Inoki (1943-2022)
John Pollock is joined by WH Park for a special edition of POST Puroresu to discuss the life and legacy of Antonio Inoki.
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WRESTLENOMICS: Antonio Inoki, Q3 2022 trends for WWE and AEW
We discuss Antonio Inoki’s contributions to the wrestling industry. Plus, how momentum continues to shift for WWE and AEW. We look at ticket sales, cagematch.net reception, and other measures to get an idea of fan sentiment.
*****
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