THE TRAGIC PASSING OF JAY BRISCOE
Tragedy struck on Tuesday evening with Jamin Pugh a.k.a. Jay Briscoe losing his life due to a car wreck.
The incident in Laurel, Delaware left two dead including Pugh. Sadly, two of Pugh’s children were injured in the accident. Daughters Gracie and Jayleigh are recovering from injuries with Gracie scheduled to undergo surgery earlier this morning, according to their mother, Ashley.
Beyond anything, our thoughts are with the Pugh family and both daughters for a complete recovery as they navigate this horrendous tragedy that has taken a husband and father.
It has been a sea of tributes and memorials online for Pugh, who alongside brother Mark, embodied professional wrestling at such a foundational level. Two out-of-control personalities that were not manufactured and that no one could script or create. They were staples over the past two decades plus, Jay being present on the inaugural Ring of Honor card (because his brother was too young to wrestle in Pennsylvania) and the two became one of the top teams of their generation and synonymous with Ring of Honor and tag team wrestling.
One year ago, Ring of Honor’s future was in doubt prior to Tony Khan’s purchase of the promotion. With that, came questions about The Briscoes, who hit the ground running competing across the country and then solidifying any doubt by producing three of the greatest matches of their careers with FTR.
A flood of memories has circulated through the wrestling audience that underscores the importance and special traits possessed by the brothers. When you think of one brother, you think of the other, and today everyone is thinking about Mark, whose birthday it is today.
It doesn’t feel like the time to properly run through Jay’s career because it is vast going back to a teenager and creating names for themselves in the Northeast and then on a national, and even international level. Today, our minds and thoughts are with the family members in need of those good wishes and hoping that Jay’s greatest legacy, his children, come out okay.
We will be opening the show tonight discussing his passing.
POST IT NOTES
**We will be live at 10 p.m. ET tonight for Rewind-A-Dynamite. Wai and I will start the show discussing the passing of Jamin Pugh a.k.a. Jay Briscoe and be joined by Jordan Goodman, who previously worked at Ring of Honor. We will also go through the rest of the news including Nick Khan’s interview with Bill Simmons and review AEW Dynamite from Fresno. The show will be live on the POST YouTube channel.
**On Tuesday night, Wai Ting and I were recording Small TALK and we are delaying the release of that show until Thursday after the news of Jay Briscoe broke as we were recording. The show will be out for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**The Wellness Policy has a special start time of 2 p.m. ET on Thursday with Wai Ting, Jordan Goodman, and Neal Flanagan.
WRESTLING/MMA NEWS
**NXT had been advertising a segment for Tuesday’s episode where New Day would be hosting a funeral for Pretty Deadly’s title shot. During the show, the news broke about Jay Briscoe’s passing and they changed the segment around to what aired with no references to a funeral. Those making the call deserve a lot of credit for acting so quickly, as the news became public while they were live on the air and changed a segment as well as inserted the acknowledgment of Briscoe’s passing by Vic Joseph and Booker T.
**AEW Dynamite is at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California and I would expect plenty of tributes for Jay Briscoe tonight. This is going to be a really tough show for many people on the roster and behind the scenes, as the whole industry is recovering from this news. The following matches are scheduled for broadcast at 8 p.m. ET on TBS:
*TNT Championship: Darby Allin © vs. KUSHIDA
*All-Atlantic Championship: Orange Cassidy © vs. Jay Lethal
*Bryan Danielson vs. Bandido
*The Young Bucks vs. Top Flight
*Toni Storm vs. Willow Nightingale
*Jake Hager vs. Ricky Starks
*Renee Paquette interviews Hangman Page
**The WWE stock closed at $88.84 on Wednesday.
**Francis Ngannou was on The MMA Hour on Tuesday and spent over an hour discussing his negotiations with UFC and why they could not reach an agreement. Ngannou was against signing a restrictive contract with the promotion and was pushing for a three-fight deal without any extensions attached to it. He wanted to fight Jon Jones twice and Stipe Miocic among those three fights and stood to make in the ballpark of $8 million he estimated for the fight with Jones. Clearly, he was moved by money and it was not an issue of the UFC not paying him enough. His issue was the restrictions in the contract and pushing for access to health insurance for all fighters and having a fighter advocate that could represent them in company business. Obviously, these were non-started from the UFC’s end and today Ngannou is a free agent and the promotion will crown a new heavyweight champion when Jon Jones fights Ciryl Gane on March 4th. Ngannou is taking a risk by leaving the UFC and was offered an incredible amount of money but he is the rare fighter with both the leverage to pull this off, and is not willing to forego his principles for a high dollar figure. It’s a very difficult combat sports landscape to navigate and Ngannou seems intent on boxing but it’s a question if he can land one of the big heavyweight names, specifically mentioning Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua during the interview. The negotiations involved Ngannou, Hunter Campbell, and Mick Maynard and he was complimentary of the company while dismissing Dana White’s depiction from Saturday’s press conference where he claimed the fighter wanted to fight lesser competition for a lot of money. In fact, Ngannou wanted to fight Jones twice and is seeking the toughest fights imaginable in a different sport.
**The live interview conducted by Ariel Helwani with Francis Ngannou peaked at over 34,000 viewers on Tuesday.
**William Regal spoke on the Distraction Pieces Podcast with Scroobius Pip and discussed his finals months at AEW and originally coming to AEW in a different capacity, which he said didn’t happen: (Transcribed by Jeremy Lambert at Fightful)
If you’re into the wrestling, it was a bit convoluted and finished off the way it finished off where I’ve been in AEW, but I’m back with the WWE by the time you hear this. I’ve had people asking me to do things. There is a lot that happened this year and a lot of things that made me go, ‘I’m quite happy being not in the limelight.’ I have been for many years. I had my time and I had a nice little gig with NXT for a long time where I just showed up occasionally, and then in the pandemic, I was used a lot more because we had to go into survival mode and there were certain characters and it changed things a little bit. I said, ‘Don’t use me as much, if you don’t mind, it should be about the talent, not about me.’ This (interview) will be the last thing I’m doing. Unless WWE asks me to do something as myself, I’m doing nothing else about anything or wrestling for at least a year. I’m happy with that. That was one of the things, in the last months of AEW, it was getting far too much about me. It should have been about the talent I was with, not about me. I’m quite happy being in the background. All it is is grief. I’ve had my run. I couldn’t have had a better last few months as far as TV and doing that, but I didn’t go there with that intention. The intention was to do something different, and it started off the way it did, but I didn’t expect it to end up being this thing that it was for the last seven months where I just became talent. I went there with a different plan because I was asked to go there to help out in a different capacity, and that never transpired. Okay, I’m done.
**Lio Rush will be wrestling at MLW’s SuperFight ’23 card on 2/4 at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia. Rush suffered a broken nose during the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight tag title match at Wrestle Kingdom 17 earlier this month and led to his withdrawal from PWG’s Battle of Los Angeles later that week.
**IMPACT Wrestling has announced the following for Thursday’s episode on AXS TV coming off Hard to Kill:
*Mickie James kicks off the show
*Pit Fight: Kenny King vs. Speedball Mike Bailey
*Taylor Wilde vs. Killer Kelly
*Deonna Purrazzo vs. Ashley D’Amboise
*Dave LaGreca interviews Tommy Dreamer
*Before the Impact: Kon & Angels vs. Yuya Uemura & Delirious
**Episode 3 of UFC Embedded ahead of UFC 283.
ON THIS DATE
Steve Austin won his second Royal Rumble on this date in 1998 and set up his title win at WrestleMania 14. The next night featured one of the company’s major crossover angles with Austin confronting Mike Tyson inside the ring. The 1998 Rumble also saw Shawn Michaels take a back body drop during his match with The Undertaker with his lower back striking the edge of the casket and causing the injury that would shut down his career. Michaels would gut his way through WrestleMania and lose the belt to Austin that year and undergo surgery on his back one year later.
*****
upNXT
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman talk about the tragic passing of Jay Briscoe and review the January 17th, 2023 edition of WWE NXT.
*****
REWIND-A-RAW
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Raw from Cincinnati, Ohio, and chat about the news from the past weekend including Hard to Kill, Francis Ngannou, plus the return of Jon Jones.
*****
WRESTLENOMICS RADIO: Who will do business with Vince McMahon?
Brandon Thurston and Jesse Colling discuss the latest developments in Vince McMahon’s return to WWE and the company’s potential sale. Plus, did Mercedes Moné pop this week’s Dynamite rating?
*****
THE N.W.A. PODCAST: Moné, Power & Respect
Andrew Thompson, Nate Milton, and “The Professor” Kris Ealy break down Mercedes Moné’s move to NJPW/Stardom, recap a wild week for the WWE, respond to LIVE viewer feedback, and more!
*****
IMPACT Hard to Kill 2023 POST Show
John Pollock is joined by John Siino to review IMPACT Hard to Kill from Atlanta with a Full Metal Mayhem match between Josh Alexander and Bully Ray, plus Mickie James challenges for the Knockouts Championship.
*****
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