POST IT NOTES
**It’s a doubleheader tonight on the site as Wai Ting and I will be LIVE at 10 p.m. ET for Rewind-A-Dynamite to cover the New Year’s Smash edition from Broomfield, Colorado. Immediately after, we will switch over to the POST Wrestling Café for the return of the DOUBLE SHOT as we review the Ric Flair documentary that streamed on Peacock and will go through the news from the past few days. All Café members will have live access to the Double Shot tonight, which will begin at approximately 11 p.m. ET.
**If you missed the POST Wrestling 5-Year Anniversary Show, we have added the Q&A show on the POST Wrestling Café. For 90 minutes, Wai Ting and I discuss the origins of POST, the early days of the site, the transition from our previous jobs, uncovering emails from the launch, and lots more. The show is posted in both audio and video for all Café members.
**Karen Peterson will have coverage of the Dream Queendom II card on the site with a report on Thursday.
WRESTLING NEWS
**Dax Harwood has released the first episode of his new podcast on Ad Free Shows covering his friendship with CM Punk and the issues leading into and out of All Out. Harwood spoke about the positives of having Punk in the locker room and his hope that the parties involved with the backstage fight at All Out can sit down and work their issues out for the betterment of AEW. Harwood also shared his interaction with Punk after the press conference at All Out (Transcribed by Jeremy Lambert at Fightful):
All the boys in the locker room were drinking and having a good time, and we were hugging, I have picture of me and Jay Lethal on the ground together just laughing our ass off. I had my wife and daughter there, Cash had his girlfriend. It was such a great time. After our match was over, I shower up, we had a couple of drinks with the guys real quick, grab my girls, and head back to the hotel. I was laying in bed and I got a text from one of the wrestlers that said, ‘is this shit true?’ I had no idea what he was talking about. Right after that, I got a call from my buddy CM Punk and he told me what happened. I said, ‘You’re lying to me dude. There is no way that happened.’ He was covered in blood from the match. He FaceTimed me, it was that night. He said, ‘I want to let you know, you’re going to hear some things. I want you to hear it from me. This is what happened.’ I said, ‘Dude, are you okay? Do you need anything? I’ll come right now to help you out, get you cleaned.’ ‘No, no, everything is fine, it’s died down, we’re good.’ That’s when I first heard about it.
**While it’s a number you can’t put any significance into, the “best of” Raw special from Monday night averaged 1.11 million viewers and 0.27 in the 18-49 demographic and tied for ninth place among cable originals in the demo rating. The Monday Night Football game between the L.A. Chargers and Indianapolis Colt averaged 10.9 million viewers and 3.01 in the 18-49 demo on ESPN. The only interesting pattern for Raw is that all the demos dropped throughout the show, which would be expected, except adults 18-34 and males 12-34, which dropped in hour two but increased in the final hour for whatever reason. There was some fresh content on the show including interviews with Cody Rhodes (which they should have promoted) and Drew McIntyre, but no one knew in advance and it was easily the most skippable show of the year from WWE. All signs point to a big audience tuning in for Friday’s edition of SmackDown with heavy promotion of John Cena & Kevin Owens vs. Roman Reigns & Sami Zayn in Tampa. (Showbuzz Daily)
**Friday’s episode of SmackDown on Sportsnet 360 in Canada averaged 161,400 viewers and 68,500 in the 25-54 demographic, which was eighth among sports programs in the country that night against the Toronto Raptors, World Junior Hockey, and several NHL games.
**The final AEW Dynamite of the year takes place from the 1st Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado tonight at 8 p.m. ET on TBS. Over the past four weeks, Dynamite has averaged 904,000 viewers and 0.30 in the 18-49 demographic. Next week is a major show from Seattle with the company promoting a new look for the show and is their debut in the market, which should likely have something significant involving Bryan Danielson. Below is the lineup for tonight’s episode:
*TNT Championship: Samoa Joe (champion) vs. Wardlow
*Match #6, Falls Count Anywhere: Death Triangle vs. The Elite
*Bryan Danielson vs. Ethan Page
*Ruby Soho & Willow Nightingale vs. Tay Melo & Anna Jay
*Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli vs. Top Flight
**After being advertised for weeks, it appears that Sammy Guevara and Tay Melo will not be at the AAA event in Acapulco tonight. This became evident once AEW announced that Melo was wrestling on Dynamite tonight. Melo & Guevara previously missed a AAA card in Ciudad Madero last week, which was said to be due to a visa issue. Dave Meltzer reports that the two will not appear on the show tonight and will be stripped of the belts with new champions crowned. AAA has not addressed the status of the two with the two still featured on promotional material for the event.
The card will be streaming at 8 p.m. ET on FITE TV and airs at the same time as Dynamite, which seems like a bad night and time. The main event between Hijo del Vikingo and Bandido could be extraordinary with high expectations. FTR will defend the AAA tag titles against Dragon Lee & Dralistico with FTR doing a losing streak on AEW where they have gone 0-3 and are selling the damage from the Double Dog Collar match. To continue that thread, it would seem plausible that they drop the AAA titles tonight and lose the IWGP tag titles next week at Wrestle Kingdom 17.
Below is the card:
*AAA Mega Championship: Hijo del Vikingo (champion) vs. Bandido
*AAA World Tag Team Championships: FTR (champions) vs. Dragon Lee & Dralistico
*AAA Demon Championship (Vacant): Taurus vs. Arez vs. Villano III Jr.
*Copa Mundial Imperial Match: Announced – Aero Star, Murder Clown, Vampiro, Blue Demon Jr., La Diva Salvaje, Mr. Iguana, Nino Hamburguesa, Dave the Clown, La Parka Negra, Jessy Ventura, Panic Clown & Pagano
*AAA World Trios Championship: El Cuatrero, Forastero & Sanson (champions) vs. Myzteziz Jr., Willie Mack & Aramis
*AAA Mixed Tag Team Championship (Vacant): Octagon Jr. & Lady Shani vs. Komander & Sexy Star vs. TBA?
*Arcano vs. Picadura Letal vs. Leyenda America vs. Gran Mazo vs. El Enganosa
**STARDOM presents its Dream Queendom II card late tonight at 3 a.m. ET and streaming on pay-per-view on the Pia site (approx. $33 USD) with the following card from Ryogoku Kokugikan:
*World of Stardom Championship: Syuri (champion) vs. Giulia
*Wonder of Stardom Championship: Saya Kamitani (champion) vs. Haruka Umesaki
*Goddess of Stardom Championship: Tam Nakano & Natsupoi (champions) vs. Nanae Takahashi & Yuu
*Artist of Stardom Championship: Starlight Kid, Momo Watanabe & Saki Kashima (champions) vs. Risa Sera, Suzu Suzuki & Hiragi Kurumi
*High-Speed Championship: AZM (champion) vs. Hikari Shimizu
*KAIRI vs. Utami Hayashishita
*MIRAI & Ami Sourei vs. Maika & Himeka vs. Natsuko Tora & Ruaka
*Mayu Iwatani, Momo Kohgo & Hanan vs. Hazuki, Koguma & Saya Iida
*Mai Sakurai & Thekla vs. Unagi Sayaka & Mina Shirakawa
**DDT also has its big show with Never Mind 2022 from Tokyo Dome City Hall and streaming on Wrestle Universe:
*KO-D Openweight Championship: Kazusada Higuchi (champion) vs. Yuki Ueno
*DDT Extreme Championship: Jun Akiyama (champion) vs. Super Sasadango Machine
*KO-D Six-Man Tag Team Championship: Naruki Doi, Toru Owashi & Kazuki Hirata (champions) vs. Tetsuya Endo, Kotaro Suzuki & Yusuke Okada
*Shinya Aoki vs. Chihiro Hashimoto
*Daisuke Sasaki vs. Chris Brookes vs. Cara Noir vs. MAO
*Konosuke Takeshita & Yukio Naya vs. Daisuke Sekimoto & RSP
*Saki Akai & Yuki Arai vs. Saori Anno & Riko Kawabata
*Yuki Iino, Danshoku Dieno, Yumehito Iminari & Takeda Koju vs. Akito, Osamu Nishimura, Shinichiro Kawamatsu & Shunma Katsumata
*Yuji Hino & Yuki Ishida vs. HARASHIMA & Yukio Sakaguchi
*Sanshiro Takagi vs. Takeshi Masada
**The WWE stock dropped over 2 percent on Wednesday and closed at $67.51. After significant growth throughout the year, the stock is down 15 percent over the past month.
**MLW has added the Full-Blooded Italians (Little Guido and Ray Jaz) to its Blood & Thunder event on 1/7 at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia. The F.B.I. will face a mystery team. The Fusion taping will include Alex Hammerstone defending the MLW Heavyweight Championship against YAMATO and Jacob Fatu taking on Ben-K.
MMA NEWS
**Bellator light heavyweight champion Vadim Nemkov has withdrawn from his fight with Yoel Romero on 2/4 with the promotion adding a new title fight to the CBS card. Middleweight champion Johnny Eblen will defend the title against Anatoly Tokov in the co-feature on the main card alongside the rematch between Ryan Bader and Fedor Emelianenko. Eblen (12-0) defeated Gegard Mousasi in June to win the title and this will be his first title defense and is 8-0 since joining Bellator. Tokov (31-2) is 32 years old and fighting since 2009. He joined Bellator in 2017 and has gone 7-0 in the promotion and is coming off a TKO win against Muhammad Abdullah last June at Bellator 282.
**Several UFC fighters will be taking part in the FURY 6 grappling event this Friday at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, which also streams on UFC Fight Pass at 9 p.m. ET. Former UFC strawweight champion Rose Namajunas will compete against Gillian Robertson, Clay Guida will face Chase Hooper, Trevin Giles takes on Mike Malott, and Pat Barry takes on Jon Pellot among the grappling bouts that are scheduled.
ON THIS DATE
Twenty-five years ago today, WCW presented one of its biggest shows ever with Starrcade and the return of Sting after a year and a half since wrestling on television. The match was one of the great anti-climactic conclusions as the match with Hollywood Hogan was marred by an errant count by Nick Patrick that was supposed to be a fast count and was done with the regular cadence and ruining the ending. Bret Hart came down to “right” the injustice that the audience saw as a normal count and Sting won the match after the reset and went off the air as champion only to find out the title was held up and they did a rematch in February. It was the second most-purchased event in WCW history and was a tremendous build-up but the match was terrible and affected both Sting and Bret Hart, two key babyfaces that were greatly diminished in 1998 but offset by the unsuspecting explosion of Bill Goldberg to help the company that year.
*****
upNXT
Davie Portman talks all about WWE NXT from December 27th, 2022 headlined by Wes Lee vs Tony D’Angelo for the NXT North American Championship!
*****
POST Wrestling’s 5-Year Anniversary Show
Join John Pollock, Wai Ting, Braden Herrington, Davie Portman and members of the international POST Wrestling family for our live 5-Year Anniversary Show from QXT’s Night Club in Newark, NJ.
*****
POST PURORESU
It’s the last episode of POST Puroresu for 2022! Joining WH Park to review the year in Japan is the creative force behind Dream Slam Weekly, Karen Peterson.
*****
WRESTLENOMICS: The Fall of Vince McMahon
Vince McMahon was the most powerful man in the wrestling business. In 2022, he resigned in disgrace as WWE’s chief executive in light of multiple sexual misconduct allegations. These are the events that led up to and followed one of the biggest news stories in wrestling history.
*****
THE POST WRESTLING CHRISTMAS SHOW 2022
Many surprise guests stop by the POST Office to chat with John Pollock and Wai Ting for the annual POST Wrestling Christmas Show! Plus, the POST Christmas Jingle Contest!
*****
THE WELLNESS POLICY: 2022 (Open Calls)
Wai Ting, Jordan Goodman, and Neal Flanagan are back with The Wellness Policy to reflect on the year that was and hang out with our tremendous listeners.
*****
Browse the POST Wrestling Store
https://store.postwrestling.com
Subscribe to POST Wrestling
https://postwrestling.com/subscribe
POST Wrestling Forum
https://forum.postwrestling.com
Support our Patreon – The POST Wrestling Café
http://www.patreon.com/POSTwrestling
