WRESTLING NEWS
**We would like to send our condolences to those that knew Matt Mann a.k.a. Kid Zombie, who was involved in the Northern California independent wrestling scene for years. He had been tweeting as recently as Sunday and we don’t know what the cause of death was. West Coast Pro in San Francisco is naming its show on 6/9 in his memory at the State Room.
**WWE Raw is at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, Missouri as the WrestleMania card continues towards finalization with the last remaining angles coming together. Tonight’s show is promoted around Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes appearing together for a segment. While anything could change, Reigns is not advertised for another television appearance until SmackDown on 3/31 in Los Angeles. Below are the segments and matches listed for tonight’s show:
*Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes to appear
*Impaulsive TV with Logan Paul
*Austin Theory vs. Montez Ford
*Bianca Belair & Asuka vs. Chelsea Green & Carmella
**AEW presented its first house show in nearly two years with the inaugural ‘House Rules’ at the Hobart Arena in Troy, Ohio. It had to be deemed a success as WrestleTix reported 3,200 tickets distributed, just shy of capacity for the venue. They also drew this amount without too many major names as Jon Moxley, Britt Baker, and Darby Allin were the key ones nor did they promote this heavily on its broadcasts. There is no other house show announced until the 7/15 event at the Saddledome in Calgary but the number should encourage further live events, especially mid to small-level markets that aren’t getting any television or pay-per-view cards.
**Kevin Nash and co-host Sean Oliver spoke on Kliq This about Dark Side of the Ring planning a future project on the late Scott Hall, who died one year ago. This comes shortly after A&E aired an episode of ‘Biography’ on the N.W.O, which included Nash. Nash explained that they would emphasize the trauma that Hall lived with after a 1983 shooting that left another man dead after getting into a fight with Hall outside a nightclub when the bartender confronted Hall with a gun. Hall was charged with second-degree murder but the charges were later dropped:
They (Dark Side of the Ring) want to do something and they want to involve me and they want to involve Sean Waltman, Cody (Hall) is going to be involved and you and I had this conversation yesterday, you know the thing we want to do is … just tell people who Scott Hall really fucking was, and I just don’t think that the A&E perspective is ever going to cover the post-traumatic stress of Scott and the shooting that happened at the Doll House on Orange Avenue. Scott’s thing was that he was so highly religious that Scott would say, ‘but you don’t understand man, I am not going to go to heaven, I’ve broken one of the ten commandments, thou shalt not kill, I’ve killed and I’m not going to go to heaven, my soul is going to be in limbo’.
**Rolling Stone has an excerpt from Abraham Josephine Riseman’s upcoming book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America which is out next week. The preview covers the ring boy scandal in the WWF in the early ‘90s and centers around Tom Cole, who took his life in 2021. David Bixenspan wrote an excellent story on the scandal for Business Insider and spoke with us about one of the darker stories in the company’s history.
**GCW held a sold-out event at the Opera House in their debut card in Toronto on Sunday. The venue was completely packed, which made it tough for sight lines for the SRO attendees. Overall, it was a pretty entertaining show with standouts being a violent main event between Masha Slamovich and Speedball Mike Bailey, and a bloody match between Rina Yamashita and LuFisto. In the main event, Bailey played heel and tore apart the ring which culminated with the ring boards being removed and Slamovich choking him as he dangled beneath the ring (like Brody King and Darby Allin on the apron). Gringo Loco and Jack Cartwheel did a lot of impressive athletic spots during their match including this. In between matches, in-ring announcer Emil Jay asked the crowd if the promotion should return to Toronto, they cheered but never announced a return date. I would think plenty of promotions will be eyeing the weekend of Forbidden Door to piggyback on a traveler-heavy weekend. It was a strong weekend for GCW with sell-outs in both New York and Toronto. They don’t run any more events until WrestleMania Weekend. WH Park and I will share our live thoughts on the show on the POST Wrestling Café on Tuesday night.
**MJF has been added to Create A Pro’s Homecoming event on 5/13 in Melville, New York at the All Sportz venue. MJF trained at Create A Pro and made his debut in 2015 for the promotion and wrestled throughout the Northeast independent scene including with CZW. He was part of MLW’s first show back in October 2017 when the promotion relaunched and became its middleweight champion. After being part of All In, he was signed by AEW and continued to work with MLW until late 2020 before going exclusively with AEW.
**All Japan Pro Wrestling has a big show at Ota Ward Gymnasium on Tuesday at 3 a.m. ET on its streaming service. The main event sees Yuji Nagata make the first defense of the Triple Crown against former holder Shuji Ishikawa. There will also be several inter-promotional matches involving talent from Pro Wrestling NOAH.
*Triple Crown: Yuji Nagata © vs. Shuji Ishikawa
*AJPW Tag Titles: Yuma Aoyagi & Naoya Nomura © vs. Kenoh & Manabu Soya
*Kento Miyahara, Yuma Anzai & Ryo Inoue vs. Masa Kitamiya, Yoshiki Inamura & Kinya Okada
*Shotaro Ashino & Ryuki Honda vs. Suwama & KONO
*Minoru Suzuki & Hokuto Omori vs. Jun & Rei Saito
*Dan Tamura vs. Atsuki Aoyagi
*Rising HAYATO vs. Hikaru Sato
*Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Yutaka Yoshie & X vs. Takao Omori, Yoshitatsu & Mitsuya Nagai (the mystery partner will be part of the Champion Carnival)
*Black Menso-re vs. Oji Shiiba
**Anthem Sports & Entertainment (the parent company of IMPACT Wrestling and Invicta FC) has hired Michael Shewchenko as its new Vice President of Digital Operations. He has previous experience working at Bell Media as a senior manager of its OTT products and with distribution & strategic partnerships, as well as working at the Canadian Football League (CFL) as an associate VP for its digital products division.
**The WWE stock closed at $84.79 on Monday.
**The second season of Canada’s Got Talent begins on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ER on City TV. Trish Stratus is one of the judges alongside Howie Mandel, Lilly Singh, and Kardinal Offishall, and is hosted by Lindsay Ell.
**MLW has added a match between Mandy León and Clara Carreras for its War Chamber event on 4/6 at the Melrose Ballroom in New York City.
**Being the Elite Ep. 339: Never Forget Where You Came From.
**Denise Salcedo has joined the team at Busted Open Radio and will be co-hosting the show each Saturday with Mark Henry at 9 a.m. ET on Sirius XM Fight Nation.
**House of Glory will run its next card on 4/14 at the NYC Arena in Queens with Charles Mason vs. Lio Rush along with Trey Miguel & Zachary Wentz, Jacob Fatu, Amazing Red, Brian XL & more announced for the card.
MMA NEWS
**The UFC did a massive gate at the O2 Arena on Saturday in London, England. They announced the gate at $8,580,000 (U.S.) and 17,588 in attendance. Between the two pay-per-view cards in March, they generated nearly $21 million between the gates in Las Vegas and London. Their next pay-per-view is 4/8 in Miami with Alex Pereira vs. Israel Adesanya for the UFC Middleweight Championship and Jorge Masvidal vs. Gilbert Burns in the top two fights. It will be the promotion’s first event in Miami since April 2003.
**Colby Covington appears to be the next contender for the UFC welterweight title, according to Dana White. Covington was the back-up fighter over the weekend, making weight on Friday in case there was an issue between Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman. After his win, Edwards dismissed Covington as the next challenger citing his inactivity (he has not fought in the past year and had two losses to then-champion Usman). It’s the familiar adage that stars will always have favorable breaks, although Covington has not broken through to a level that I see him warranting such preferential treatment. Compounded is that there are many great options at welterweight and Belal Muhammad is unbeaten in his last nine fights, although isn’t going to be as favorable promotionally as Covington. White also said they are looking at putting together a fight between Muhammad and Shavkat Rakhmonov.
**This weekend’s card sees the UFC exit Las Vegas and runs a Fight Night event on the road in San Antonio, Texas. The main event is a tremendous fight at bantamweight between contenders Marlon Vera (22-7-1) and Cory Sandhagen (15-4). Vera has won four straight and coming off a knockout of former champion Dominick Cruz. Sandhagen fought for the interim title in 2021 and lost by a decision to Petr Yan and bounced back with a stoppage of Song Yadong last September. The main card includes former bantamweight champion Holly Holm (14-6) vs. Yana Santos (14-6, 1 NC), Nate Landwehr (16-4) vs. Austin Lingo (9-1), Maycee Barber (11-2) vs. Andrea Lee (13-6), Alex Perez (24-7) vs. Manel Kape (18-6), and Chidi Njokuani (22-8) vs. Albert Duraev (15-4).
POST IT NOTES
**Beginning next Monday, we will be doing daily shows on the POST Wrestling Café for all of WrestleMania Week with guests, news, show reviews throughout the week, and previews of the major cards that weekend. We will be maintaining our schedule of free shows after Raw and Dynamite and will be live for everyone immediately following both nights of WrestleMania. It’s a great time to join the POST Wrestling Café as $6 for a month of access provides you with all the bonus shows next week along with this week’s shows covering the New Japan Cup Final, Drive to Survive, and IMPACT Sacrifice.
**Rewind-A-Raw is live at 11 p.m. ET with a review of Raw in St. Louis and all the top stories of the day with Wai Ting and I. Tune in on the POST YouTube channel.
**Our UFC 286 POST Show is available with a full rundown of Saturday’s card including the trilogy fight between Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington waiting in the wings, an incredible fight between Justin Gaethje and Rafael Fiziev, and Anderson Silva is announced for the UFC Hall of Fame.
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Tuesday: New Japan Cup Final with Pollock & WH Park (Patreon)
Tuesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Wednesday: Pollock & Thurston Interview – Mike Weber of FITE TV
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Thursday: Drive to Survive – S5 Ep. 9 & 10 (Patreon)
Thursday: The Wellness Policy
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with Wai Ting & Kate from Montreal (Free)
Friday: IMPACT Sacrifice POST Show with Pollock & John Siino (Patreon)
Saturday: The N.W.A. Podcast
Saturday: The Long & Winding Royal Road (Kobashi vs. Vader, April ’99)
Sunday: Wrestlenomics Radio
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WRESTLENOMICS: AEW begins running house shows
Brandon Thurston, Jesse Collings and Chris Gullo talk about AEW running house shows and other subjects in wrestling business.
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UFC 286 POST SHOW
John Pollock and Eric Marcotte review the UFC 286 card with the third fight between Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman for the UFC Welterweight Championship.
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REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown with Drew McIntyre against Sheamus for a shot at the Intercontinental Championship.
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F1: Drive to Survive Season 5, Ep. 7 & 8
John Pollock & Wai Ting are joined by Chris Elliot to discuss Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive Season 5, Episodes 7 & 8.
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REWIND-A-DYNAMITE
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite with The House of Black vs. The Elite vs. J.A.S., and MJF’s Re-Bar Mitzvah as the promotion debuts in Winnipeg.
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