POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Raw is live at 11 p.m. ET tonight with Wai Ting and I reviewing the show and discussing the news from the past weekend along with taking your feedback. You can watch live at YouTube.com/POSTWrestling.com.
**We will have a special Tuesday night edition of Rewind-A-Dynamite at 10 p.m. ET. upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman will be coming out Wednesday and they’ll be discussing both NXT & AEW from the night prior.
**Rewind-A-Wai will be pushed to Wednesday this week due to Dynamite airing on Tuesday night. This week’s show goes back to October 1983 when we chat about the WWF card at Madison Square Garden featuring Don Muraco vs. Jimmy Snuka in a steel cage and Bob Backlund defending the WWF title against The Masked Superstar. This show will be out for all POST Wrestling Café members.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting (11 p.m. ET)
Tuesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite (10 p.m.)
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Wai #118 – WWF at MSG from Oct. 1983 (Patreon)
Wednesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Wednesday: Shot in the Dark with John Siino
Thursday: The Wellness Policy “Fatherhood” (Live at 3 p.m. ET)
Thursday: MCU L8R with Rich Fann & WH Park
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with John & Wai (Patreon)
Saturday: Halloween Havoc POST Show with Braden Herrington & Andrew Thompson
Saturday: UFC 280 POST Show with John Pollock & Eric Marcotte (8 p.m.)
Sunday: Wrestlenomics Radio
WRESTLING NEWS
**Friday Night SmackDown averaged 2,274,000 viewers and 704,000 (0.54) in 18-49 on Fox this past Friday. It was a normal number for SmackDown was essentially flat from the prior week with a 1% increase in viewership and only up from 702,000 in 18-49 last week. Adults 18-34 were down 1% and adults 35-49 were up 1%. In a nutshell, Bray Wyatt’s return didn’t spike the audience for his first appearance after returning at Extreme Rules. It came nowhere near the 9/23 number when people assumed, he was returning and the show topped 2.5 million viewers. SmackDown was first among network programs in 18-49 and 18-34. (Showbuzz Daily and Brandon Thurston from Wrestlenomics)
In Canada, the show ranked ninth among sports programming with 183,900 viewers and 88,100 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360 and was their highest viewership in Canada since 8/19. |
**AEW Rampage did a great number on Friday with 458,000 viewers and approximately 222,000 (0.17) in the 18-49 demographic. The 18-49 number would equal the two-hour average that Grand Slam did last month but if you throw out that show, it was the highest Rampage has done in the demo since April. Rampage was up 37% in 18-34 from last week and equaled the amount for Grand Slam in that demo. In the 18-49 demo, males were up 26% and females grew by 20%.
Even more impressive is that Rampage aired against the L.A. Dodgers vs. San Diego Padres (4.1 million viewers, 1.07 in 18-49), a college football game between Navy and SMU (959,000 and 0.22), and an NBA pre-season game (540,000 and 0.15). Rampage was #9 among cable originals on Friday.
TSN 2 aired Rampage on Friday night and it averaged 31,000 viewers and 16,000 in the 25-54 demo. As a comparison, last Wednesday’s edition of Dynamite did 86,800 and 44,300.
**WWE Raw is at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City tonight with Brock Lesnar appearing on the show one week after attacking Bobby Lashley to restart that program. Raw will be airing the Denver vs. Chargers game on Monday Night Football, and Game 5 between the New York Yankees and Cleveland Guardians. WrestleTix reports nearly 5,900 tickets out for tonight’s show, well ahead of the number for the last two WWE shows in the arena. They are advertising the following for tonight’s show:
*Brock Lesnar to appear
*United States Championship: Seth Rollins (champions) vs. Matt Riddle
*Alpha Academy vs. Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows
*The Miz vs. Dexter Lumis – If Lumis wins, he gets a contract
*The return of Elias
*Cora Jade appears
**Paul Levesque is not at Raw after testing positive for COVID-19, PWinsider.com was the first to report the news and added to Brian James a.k.a. Road Dogg is the point-person at the arena for tonight’s show in Levesque’s absence.
**Fightful Select reported on Monday that AEW talent was informed over the past week of a behind-the-scenes documentary series that will begin filming in early November and wrap up December 14th with the Winter is Coming episode in Garland, Texas. The series is a co-production between Warner Bros. Discovery and Shed Media (who were behind the 2011 revival of Tough Enough on the USA Network) with Tony Khan serving as the executive producer. The outlet added that it is set to air next year.
**WWE posted a story on the passing of Humberto Garza Sr., the grandfather of Humberto Carrillo and Angel Garza.
**Konnan noted on his podcast that he asked Kenny Omega about sending a video to air at TripleMania for the winner of Hijo del Vikingo and Rey Fenix since Omega is the #1 contender. Konnan said that Omega was unable to send a video due to “legal issues”. Omega continues to be sidelined since the altercation at All Out in early September involving CM Punk, Ace Steel, and The Young Bucks.
**For one night, the AEW vs. NXT battle is back this Tuesday as the two programs go head-to-head from 8-10 p.m. ET with two different strategies. AEW is relying on multiple title matches with four announced including a rare AEW Championship match as Jon Moxley defends the title in his hometown against Hangman Page. NXT is relying on surprises of main roster talents appearing on the show including Cora Jade vs. Raquel Rodriguez, Roxanne Perez vs. TBA, Cameron Grimes teaming with two unknowns, a mystery opponent for Channing Lorenzo, and Sonya Deville wrestling Alba Fyre. The two brands ran head-to-head on Wednesday nights from October 2019 until April 2021 when NXT made the move to Tuesdays on the USA Network. Over the final six weeks, AEW averaged 765,000 viewers and 0.30 in 18-49 while NXT averaged 680,000 and 0.18 over that same stretch. The next six weeks running unopposed helped both sides with AEW’s audience rising 32% in viewers and 20% in the demo and NXT (while having to condition fans to a different night increased 11.5% in viewers and 11% in 18-49. For one week, this doesn’t matter a whole lot and it is bragging rights that are really at stake for each side, which is obviously taking it seriously enough to load up both sides. There will be a separate hour of wrestling content airing at the same time with the latest Tales from the Territories focusing on the AWA with panelists Greg Gagne, Madusa, Diamond Dallas Page, Ken Patera, and Jim Brunzell that will contain the most insane road stories thus far in the season with many centered around Mad Dog Vachon.
The lineups with both airing against the MLB playoffs:
NXT at 8 p.m. ET on the USA Network:
*Alba Fyre vs. Sonya Deville
*Roxanne Perez vs. TBA
*Cora Jade vs. Roxanne Perez
*Cameron Grimes & TBA vs. Joe Gacy, Rip Fowler & Jagger Reid
*Channing Loreno vs. TBA
AEW Dynamite at 8 p.m. ET on TBS:
*AEW Championship: Jon Moxley (champion) vs. Hangman Page
*ROH Championship: Chris Jericho (champion) vs. Dalton Castle
*AEW Interim Women’s Championship: Toni Storm (champion) vs. Hikaru Shida
*AEW Trios Championship: Death Triangle (champions) vs. Best Friends & Orange Cassidy
*MJF to speak
*Renee Paquette interviews Bryan Danielson & Wheeler Yuta
**There was a serious injury during the pre-show of TripleMania on Saturday. El Dragon was wrestling as El Furioso in the Marvel exhibition where the injury occurred. The next day, he posted a photo on Facebook in a neck collar stating everything was in God’s hands. Luchablog reported that he was set to undergo an operation on Monday and was reportedly in stable condition.
**Luchablog also has a thorough post-mortem on TripleMania, which was highlighted by the top matches involving Villano IV’s unmasking by Pentagon Jr. and a spectacular match between Hijo del Vikingo and Rey Fenix for the Mega Championship. Unfortunately, if you were watching the English feed on FITE TV, the broadcast was marred with technical problems for its team of Joe Dombrowski and Larry Dallas. First, they didn’t fly the two into Mexico City and instead, broadcast the show from their homes but were still shown in the corner of the screen, which emphasized that they weren’t in the building. Several times they lost the feed and there appeared to be a lag between the picture and their commentary. Most of all, it affected the live atmosphere from Arena Ciudad, which was not adequately captured on the English feed and was a missed opportunity given how heated it appeared to be throughout the show.
**New Japan World has added both Royal Quest II cards from 10/1 and 10/2 at The Crystal Palace in London, England. I have only seen the FTR vs. Aussie Open match from the first night, which Will Ospreay called the greatest tag match he had ever seen. The match was utterly fantastic that was low on spectacular moves apart from Cash Wheeler landing a tope suicida and more reliant on cool tag team maneuvers and tricks that worked so well in front of a red-hot crowd. The closing sequence was perfection in action with the set-up to the Big Rig as perfectly executed as one could hope for. This one goes right alongside the matches with The Briscoes and the match with The Young Bucks from Dynamite this year and I can see many deferring to the Aussie Open one as the best of the four.
**Tony Khan is doing a meet-and-greet this Thursday at 4:30 p.m. ET at Daily’s Place in Jacksonville to promote AEW Rampage taking place the following night at the venue.
**The Associated Press has an interview with Dwyane Johnson on whether he can bring stability to the DC franchise through his role in Black Adam.
**The WWE stock closed at $75.42 on Monday.
MMA NEWS
**The UFC returns to Abu Dhabi this Saturday for an afternoon pay-per-view with one of the biggest lineups of the year. In the main event, Charles Oliveira takes on Islam Makhachev for the vacant title after Oliveira missed weight in his last fight. Aljamain Sterling defends the bantamweight title against former champion T.J. Dillashaw in the top two fights. Below is the full card:
MAIN CARD (2 p.m. ET on pay-per-view)
*UFC Lightweight Championship (vacant): Charles Oliveira (33-8) vs. Islam Makhachev (22-1)
*UFC Bantamweight Championship: Aljamain Sterling (21-3) vs. T.J. Dillashaw (17-4)
*Sean O’Malley (15-1) vs. Petr Yan (16-3)
*Mateusz Gamrot (21-1) vs. Beneil Dariush (21-4-1)
*Katlyn Chookagian (18-4) vs. Manon Firot (9-1)
PRELIMINARY CARD (10 a.m. ET on ESPNews & ESPN+)
*Sean Brady (15-0) vs. Belal Muhammad (21-3)
*Caio Borralho (12-1) vs. Makhmud Muradov (25-7)
*Volkan Oezdemir (18-6) vs. Nikita Krylov (28-9)
*Lucas Almeida (12-1) vs. Zubaira Tukhugov (20-5-1)
*Magomed Mustafaev (16-3-1) vs. Gadzi Omargadzhiev (13-1)
*Armen Petrosyan (7-2) vs. AJ Dobson (5-1)
*Malcolm Gordon (14-5) vs. Muhammad Mokaev (7-0)
*Karol Rosa (15-4) vs. Lina Lansberg (10-6)
**MMA Fighting reported that Joe Rogan will not be calling the UFC 280 card this Saturday and that Paul Felder will take his place alongside Jon Anik and Daniel Cormier.
**The first episode of UFC Embedded prior to UFC 280.
**The Countdown to UFC 280 special.
ON THIS DATE
Toshiaki Kawada, Akira Taue & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Mitsuharu Misawa, Jun Akiyama & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi from 1993:
The match that truly elevated the standings of Edge, Christian & The Hardys in 1999:
*****
WRESTLENOMICS RADIO
Brandon Thurston, Jesse Collings & Chris Gullo discuss exclusive news about WWE’s Day 1 premium live event, TV ratings and attendance for Bray Wyatt’s first SmackDown appearance, and more.
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock & Wai Ting review Friday Night SmackDown feat. Bray Wyatt’s return, and AEW Rampage with Pollock’s live notes from the show in Toronto.
*****
MCU L8R: She-Hulk Season Finale Review
Rich Fann and WH Park are joined LIVE by Wai Ting and brother Nate Milton to discuss the She-Hulk Season Finale, Ep. 9 “Whose Show is This?”
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE: Toronto Debut
John Pollock & Wai Ting are back to review AEW’s Canadian debut with Dynamite at the Coca-Coliseum in Toronto featuring Chris Jericho vs. Bryan Danielson for the ROH Championship.
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK
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.
*****
upNXT: Strong Medicine
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman chat all about WWE NXT from October 11th, 2022 headlined by Ilja Dragunov vs Grayson Waller.
*****
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