POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Raw is live at 11 p.m. ET with a review of the show from Tampa and a catch-up on the major news from the weekend.
**All of our G1 coverage including six shows is available here.
**There will be four G1 Climax podcasts this week with John Pollock & Wai Ting on Tuesday, Bruce Lord & Eric Marcotte on Wednesday, John & Wai on Thursday, and WH Park & Karen Peterson on Sunday. Additionally, we will have The Double Shot on Wednesday night covering the Bam Bam Bigelow episode of Dark Side of the Ring, MCU L8R, Rewind-A-SmackDown & Collision Course for POST Café members this week.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Tuesday: G1 Climax – Night 7 with John & Wai (Patreon)
Tuesday: upNXT with Davie Portman & Braden Herrington
Wednesday: G1 Climax – Night 8 with Bruce Lord & Eric Marcotte
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Wednesday: The Double Shot (Patreon)
Thursday: G1 Climax – Night 9 with John & Wai (Patreon)
Thursday: MCU L8R with WH Park & Rich Fann (Patreon)
Full schedule listing is available on the site.
WRESTLING NEWS
**Friday Night SmackDown attracted its largest audience on FS 1 with 1,230,000 viewers and 415,000 (0.36) in the 18-49 demographic for the show built around “The Rules of Engagement” segment involving Roman Reigns and Jey Uso. The previous viewership high for SmackDown on the cable property was 1,032,000 viewers in October 2021. This week they retained 53% of its viewership and 58% of the key demo from last week’s audience on Fox. (Data: Wrestlenomics)
**A replay of SmackDown at 10 p.m. ET on FS 1 airing head-to-head with Rampage averaged 304,000 viewers and 0.11 in the demo.
**In Canada, SmackDown scored its largest audience since April 7 following WrestleMania with 228,900 viewers and 105,200 in the 25-54 demographic this past Friday. The show was only available to Canadians on Sportsnet 360 due to the Fox affiliate not carrying it. SmackDown ranked fifth for the night among sports programs and fourth in the demo. The top sports programs were the Toronto Blue Jays vs. Seattle Mariners, the Toronto Argonauts vs. Hamilton Tiger Cats, and the soccer game between the U.S. and Vietnam.
**AEW Rampage hit a four-week high with Friday’s program attracting 415,000 viewers and 143,000 (0.11) in the 18-49 demographic featuring the Royal Rampage Battle Royal. The show increased 34% in viewership and 14% in the demo from the previous week. Adults 18-34 increased by 46% this week, which was the largest audience in that demo since June 23. Adults 35-49 were up by 4% with a small drop among males in the demo. The two-ring Royal Rampage Battle Royal took up most of the show, which included The Acclaimed & Daddy Ass against QTV, and Kris Statlander vs. Marina Shaifr for the TBS Championship. (Wrestlenomics)
**WWE Raw is in Tampa at the Amalie Arena tonight with two episodes remaining until SummerSlam and all the programs becoming finalized. Tonight’s show should lead to the confirmation of several more matches with the following announced:
*Becky Lynch vs. Zoey Stark with Becky getting a rematch with Trish Stratus if she wins
*Tommaso Ciampa vs. Bronson Reed
*Contract signing between Seth Rollins and Finn Balor
*Face-to-face segment between Gunther and Drew McIntyre
*Logan Paul to appear on the show with Ricochet
*Cody Rhodes responds to Brock Lesnar
**WrestleTix reports that tonight’s episode of Raw has topped 10,700 tickets distributed.
**Bam Bam Bigelow will be covered on Dark Side of the Ring on Tuesday night. He is regarded as one of the most agile big men of his era with one of the most distinct looks with a flame tattoo covering his head but never reaching the level of his obvious potential. Bigelow came out of Larry Sharpe’s Monster Factory and he hooked up with Paul Heyman in his earliest days as Heyman was working at Studio 54 and promoted Bigelow as the next big thing in wrestling. After stops in Memphis and Dallas, his first major break occurred in early 1987 when he had his first tour with New Japan Pro Wrestling. Bigelow was instantly linked with Antonio Inoki with Bigelow attacking Inoki after a six-man match and set up a singles match that sold out Sumo Hall. Some of his most memorable moments occurred in Japan including his match with Koji Kitao in 1990, teaming with Big Van Vader in 1992 and winning the IWGP tag titles, and a fight with Kimo Leopoldo in 1996. In the U.S., his biggest match was the headline attraction at WrestleMania 11 in April 1995 against Lawrence Taylor where Bigelow received accolades for carrying Taylor. The loss by Bigelow came with the silver lining of a babyface turn but he was the odd man out when they turned him and fell behind Kevin Nash, Shawn Michaels, and Bret Hart in the pecking order even with Hart outside the title picture for most of 1995. Bigelow was done with the company by the end of the year and ventured to ECW and back to Japan wrestling for WAR. In 1997, he won the ECW Heavyweight title from Shane Douglas for a quick run and dropped it back, he won the Television belt in his hometown in 1998 and lost it to Rob Van Dam in Buffalo and kicked off the most significant reign in the title’s history. His last significant run occurred with WCW where he came in late 1998 and was paired with Bill Goldberg and felt like he was in store for a legitimate main event spot but that fizzled and he was grouped with Diamond Dallas Page and Chris Kanyon as a solid underneath tag team that had some excellent matches with Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko in the summer of 1999. He remained with WCW until it went out of business and Bigelow struggled with painkiller addiction. He was involved in a bad motorcycle accident in 2005 with his girlfriend riding with him and Bigelow facing multiple charges. Bigelow died at the age of 45 in January 2007. The trailer for the episode includes a description of his work as a bounty hunter that he engaged in prior to pro wrestling.
**The future of ESPN is going to be a major one for the future of cable and linear television. Recently, Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke with CNBC about the potential of taking on a strategic partner for the cable juggernaut with speculation of who and where would make sense. On Friday, Alex Sherman of CNBC reported that ESPN has engaged in talks with the NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball on strategic partnerships that could entail minority ownership of the network for the leagues. It’s too early to assume what outcome, if any, will be realized but it would be a change in the entire industry if any of the major sports leagues suddenly had an ownership stake in the largest cable network with a strategy by ESPN to offset the skyrocketing media rights agreements. In the interview with CNBC, Iger says he already has a date in place for ESPN to go direct-to-consumer where viewers would have the ability to pay a monthly fee with access to the network and not subscribe to a cable bundle.
**Sunday’s G1 card in Nagano was the weakest of the tour. The eight-match card featured a really dead crowd for most of the show, which was announced at 1,180, as attendance for the tour continues to suggest a lag in the product. The only standout match on the show was Shingo Takagi against Tomohiro Ishii, although they have had better matches. In the main event slot, David Finlay and EVIL just didn’t work with the all-heel dynamic and incorporation of the War Dogs and House of Torture members.
The A Block is led by SANADA and followed by Kaito Kiyomiya, B Block has Kazuchika Okada on top, the C Block is led by Finlay, and the D Block has a tie between Zack Sabre Jr. and Jeff Cobb – who will face off in the main event of Wednesday’s show. The big match of the week is between Okada and Will Ospreay at Ota Ward Gymnasium on Thursday. With Okada 6-1 in their lifetime series and 2-1 in past G1 matches.
**After six G1 shows, the tour has drawn 12,470 fans with 2,078 per show. After the first six shows in 2022, they had drawn 13,501 or 2,250 per show, so they are down 8%. In 2019, the first show of the tour was in Dallas, so excluding that and relying on the first six shows in Japan itself, G1 had drawn 20,267 or 3,377 per show in Japan by this point and is down 38.5% from the last G1 prior to the pandemic.
**Tuesday’s G1 Climax show is the first of back-to-back nights in Korakuen Hall and will be streaming at 5:30 a.m. ET with the following block matches:
BLOCK B: Will Ospreay (2-1) vs. Great O-Khan (1-2)
BLOCK A: Shota Umino (0-1-2) vs. Gabe Kidd (2-1)
BLOCK B: KENTA (1-2) vs. Taichi (2-1)
BLOCK A: Yota Tsuji (0-2-1) vs. Chase Owens (2-1)
BLOCK B: Tanga Loa (1-2) vs. El Phantasmo (0-3)
BLOCK A: Ren Narita (0-1-2) vs. Hikuleo (0-3)
BLOCK B: Kazuchika Okada (3-0) vs. YOSHI-HASHI (2-1)
BLOCK A: SANADA (3-0) vs. Kaito Kiyomiya (2-0-1)
**AEW Collision’s viewership figures will be out on Tuesday morning. This past weekend’s show is going to be an interesting test as there was no CM Punk match promoted in advance, although he did wrestle for 28 minutes in the main event with a tag match set up during the opening segment. The positive for Collision was avoiding the UFC, which held a Fight Night card from London that aired at 3 p.m. ET outside of prime time in the U.S. The next two weekends will go against the UFC 291 prelims and the big one is August 5 where Collision airs head-to-head with SummerSlam.
**Gringo Loco had a crazy schedule last week working TripleMania XXXI last Saturday in Tijuana, flew to Japan for three shows with GCW/FREEDOMS from Tuesday through Thursday, then to Aguascalientes on Friday for AAA’s Verano De Escandalo before heading to Canada for a Demand Lucha event in Toronto on Sunday.
**Sam Roberts interviews Cody Rhodes including what wasn’t working on screen toward the end of his AEW run.
**Smash Wrestling held its CAN/USA Classic over the weekend in London, Ontario, and will stream it on its YouTube channel this Saturday.
**DDT has announced Konosuke Takeshita, Kanon & Daisuke Sasaki vs. MAO, Toy Kojima & Yuki Ueno for this Sunday at Korakuen Hall.
**Being the Elite Ep. 357: Blood & Guts.
**The WWE stock closed at $106.42 on Monday.
MMA NEWS
**The UFC announced an attendance of 15,078 to the O2 Arena for Saturday’s Fight Night card and a gate of $2.5 million. It was headlined by British heavyweight Tom Aspinall returning after a year off and stopping Marcin Tybura at 1:13 of the first round. Aspinall has won nine of his last ten fights and the loss to Curtis Blaydes last year occurred 15 seconds into the fight when Aspinall sustained a knee injury. He did as strong a job as he could to campaign for a future heavyweight title shot but with the timing of Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic fighting in November, he could be due for another fight in the interim.
**It’s a big weekend for combat sports coming up between UFC 291 on Saturday, Errol Spence vs. Terrance Crawford on Showtime pay-per-view, and a loaded Bellator x RIZIN card. The latter takes place at the Saitama Super Arena with a lightweight fight between A.J. McKee (18-1) and Patricky “Pitbull” Freire (24-11) in the main event and McKee’s third fight at lightweight. McKee is 1-1 against Patricky’s brother Patricio. The card includes Kyoji Horiguchi (31-5) vs. Makoto Shinryu (11-1-1), Danny Sabatello (14-2) vs. Magomed Magomedov (19-3), Veta Arteaga (7-5) vs. Kana Watanabe (11-2-1), and Andrey Koreshkov (25-4) vs. Lorenz Larkin (25-7). The card will air live on Showtime at 11 p.m. ET on Saturday and goes head-to-head with the UFC 291 main card.
**The UFC 291 Countdown special has been released and focuses on the rematch between Dustin Poirier and Justin Gaethje for the BMF Championship, and Alex Pereira moving up to light heavyweight to fight former champ Jan Blachowicz.
*****
THE N.W.A. PODCAST
Nate Milton, Kris Ealy, and Andrew Thompson are joined by Ray Williams of Kings of Sport to chat July’s biggest wrestling news stories.
*****
COLLISION COURSE
John Siino & Kate From MTL review AEW Collision featuring CM Punk & Darby Allin vs. Ricky Starks & Christian Cage. Plus, The Acclaimed challenges House of Black for the Trios Championship.
*****
ROH DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR
John Pollock and Wai Ting review ROH Death Before Dishonor 2023 featuring Athena vs. Willow Nightingale for the ROH Women’s Championship in the first-ever women’s main event on an ROH PPV.
*****
MCU L8R: Secret Invasion Ep. 5
Rich Fann & WH Park are joined by Cam Hawkins of The Ringer to talk about Episode 5 of Secret Invasion, “Harvest”.
*****
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