POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Raw is live at 11 p.m. ET with a review of the go-home edition of WWE Raw before SummerSlam. Wai Ting and I will chat about the passing of Adrian Street, the NXT Great American Bash card, a weight-cutting controversy from UFC 291, and all the ratings notes from Friday. Join us on the POST YouTube channel or download the show by searching for POST Wrestling.
**The Poisonrana crew has a review of the NXT Great American Bash card, which was highlighted by the main event between Carmelo Hayes and Ilja Dragunov.
**WH Park and Karen Peterson reviewed Night 10 of the G1 Climax from Nagoya with a stronger second half of the show including the main event between Hiroshi Tanahashi and Hirooki Goto.
**On Tuesday, Wai Ting and I will have a G1 Climax podcast covering Night 11 from Kagawa with Kazuchika Okada vs. KENTA in the main event. Davie Portman & Eric Marcotte will have a G1 show coming out on Wednesday. These shows will be available on the POST Wrestling Café.
**Due to Wai Ting and I traveling to Detroit for SummerSlam, we will not be doing the usual Rewind-A-SmackDown show this Friday. Instead, we will have a show in its place on the POST Wrestling Café to chat about our trip to Detroit and going to the GCW show that night.
**Leave us your feedback for this week’s Rewind-A-Wai on the Vince McMahon interview on TSN’s Off the Record in June 2004.
**Brandon Sears reviews Tod Gordon’s new book ‘Tod is God’ on his influential role in ECW’s development, his side of the story regarding his departure, and his falling out with Paul Heyman. The book is available now.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting (11 p.m. ET)
Tuesday: G1 Climax – Night 11 with John & Wai (Patreon)
Wednesday: Pollock & Thurston – WWE Q2 Earnings (2:30 p.m. ET)
Wednesday: G1 Climax – Night 12 with Davie Portman & Eric Marcotte (Patreon)
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Wednesday: Double Shot – Bash at the Beach 2000 (Patreon)
Thursday: Rewind-A-Wai – Vince McMahon on TSN’s OTR in 2004 (Patreon)
Full schedule for the week.
WRESTLING NEWS
**The G1 Climax presents its 11th show on Tuesday morning at 5:30 a.m. ET from Takamatsu City General Gym in Kagawa. Below are the A & B Block matches set for Tuesday:
BLOCK A: Hikuleo (2-3) vs. Kaito Kiyomiya (2-1-2, CO)
BLOCK B: YOSHI-HASHI (2-3) vs. Great O-Khan (1-4)
BLOCK A: Ren Narita (0-3-2) vs. Chase Owens (2-3)
BLOCK B: Taichi (3-2) vs. El Phantasmo (2-3)
BLOCK A: SANADA (5-0) vs. Gabe Kidd (2-2, CO)
BLOCK B: Tanga Loa (2-3) vs. Will Ospreay (4-1)
BLOCK A: Shota Umino (2-1-2) vs. Yota Tsuji (1-3-1)
BLOCK B: Kazuchika Okada (4-1) vs. KENTA (2-3)
In the A Block, SANADA is 5-0 and has clinched a playoff spot. The other spot is up in the air with Kaito Kiyomiya and Shota Umino at six points each, Gabe Kidd at five, and Chase Owens & Hikuelo with four (they are facing elimination on Tuesday). Kiyomiya feels like the favorite to advance and sets up a possible rematch with Kazuchika Okada in the semi-finals.
In the B Block, Kazuchika Okada and Will Ospreay are tied with eight points each, and Ospreay holds the tiebreaker. Taichi is still alive with six points and has matches with Great O-Khan and El Phantasmo and needs both wins and for either Ospreay or Okada to lose one of their last two. YOSHI-HASHI has a win against Ospreay, so he could advance if he won his last two matches and Ospreay lost his next two, but that’s highly unlikely. Basically, this block seems to be a lock for Okada and Ospreay to advance and there is no reason for either one to lose another match until the playoffs. Okada has matches against KENTA and Tanga Loa and Ospreay has ones against Loa and El Phantasmo. If Okada finishes second in the block, he could face Kiyomiya in the semi-finals but if Okada wins the block, he cannot face Kiyomiya until the finals.
**The final edition of Raw before SummerSlam takes place from the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. The show is sold out with WrestleTix reporting nearly 12,900 tickets distributed. The following is advertised tonight:
*Seth Rollins & Sami Zayn vs. Damian Priest & Dominik Mysterio
*Maxxine Dupri vs. Valhalla
*Logan Paul to appear
*Brock Lesnar to appear
**Paul Reubens, who famously played the role of ‘Pee Wee Herman’ had died at the age of 70. While pro wrestling was a minor blip in his career, he did appear on an episode of Raw in 2010 as a guest host and appeared in a cameo segment with The Rock at WrestleMania 27 the next year. For his role as guest host, WWE honored Reubens with a Slammy Award that year. Reubens had privately been battling cancer for the past six years but opted not to disclose his diagnosis.
**Jeff Jarrett is doing media in the U.K. for All In and appeared on talkSPORT and shot an angle with Grado. The two were being interviewed when Grado made a crack about Jarrett, who responded with his best Jerry Lawler slap to Grado’s Andy Kaufman and followed with a guitar shot over the head as the hosts found it amusing.
🎸 “I think that made the highlight reel.”
When wrestling legend @RealJeffJarrett took offence to @GradoWrestling’s joke, Double J responded in the only way possible 🤣
An iconic way to promote @AEW’s huge show at Wembley in August 🔥 🤩 pic.twitter.com/sv9xPWFOxc
— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) July 31, 2023
**Since the WWE Network interface change, users have been having trouble streaming content on the network. I am not sure how widespread it is, but I have heard from plenty of Canadian subscribers that have had problems. For me, it was impossible to get the Great American Bash to stream on the WWE Network through my cable login, nor did I have access to Sportsnet Now (the Canadian digital partner) to watch either. The only option for live viewing was to watch it on the actual television channel. I was able to stream older content and the GAB was added after the show. One user noted to us that Rogers (the distributor of the WWE Network in Canada) has stated they are working on this issue but if it’s not rectified this week, I imagine there will be a lot of people trying to watch SummerSlam in Canada and having problems compared to the lower number watching NXT.
**AEW has confirmed that the August 23 event from Duluth, Georgia will be a double taping for Dynamite and Collision that week. The company will be taping the Saturday night show several days prior due to the company staging All In at Wembley Stadium in London that weekend. This will be the first time that AEW has taped the two shows on the same night.
**Pat McAfee received backlash over a tweet he made on Sunday night regarding the colors of Michigan State’s alternate jerseys. McAfee replied to a comment from one of his colleagues over the colors and criticized them by stating they must have been designed by disgraced former Michigan State doctor Larry Nasser. Nasser was sentenced to prison over decades of sexual abuse charges during his time working at the school and at USA Gymnastics along with separate child pornography charges. McAfee addressed the tweet on his show on Monday and apologized if people took it in a bad way and spun something that wasn’t intended but defended his rationale of ‘talking sh-t with a friend’ online. McAfee called Nasser ‘a terrible human being’ and noted how extensively their show covered his case. He said they aren’t going to apologize for referring to awful people even if it’s under the guise of ‘sh-t talking’. (NY Post)
**The WWE stock closed at $105.03 on Monday.
**NXT has announced the following for Tuesday’s episode following the Great American Bash:
*Jacy Jayne vs. Lyra Valkyria
*Dijak vs. Eddy Thorpe
*The Schism conducts an investigation
**The latest lineup for AEW Dynamite 200 this Wednesday in Tampa will feature:
*Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks vs. Jeff Jarrett, Jay Lethal & Satnam Singh
*Anything Goes Match: Jon Moxley vs. Trent Beretta vs. Penta El Zero Miedo
*AEW Women’s Championship: Toni Storm © vs. Hikaru Shida
*ROH Tag Team Championships: Aussie Open © vs. El Hijo del Vikingo & Komander
*Chris Jericho & Konosuke Takeshita vs. Sammy Guevara & Daniel Garcia
*Face-to-Face: Jack Perry and Jerry Lynn
*MJF to speak
**Being the Elite Ep. 358: ‘Colt Gets Tagged In’.
MMA NEWS
**Stephen Thompson was on The MMA Hour on Monday to address his fight with Michel Pereira falling apart after Pereira missed weight. The two were set to fight at UFC 291 over the weekend but Thompson first got word that Pereira may miss weight the day before the weigh-ins, but Thompson continued his cut and made the welterweight limit. Pereira missed by three pounds and Thompson opted not to take the fight due to the disadvantage and cited his past fight with Darren Till in 2018 where Till missed by 3.5 pounds and Thompson lost the fight by unanimous decision. Thompson is adamant about not allowing short-cuts for fighters not making weight and determined after the Till fight that he would never take a fight if an opponent missed weight again. There was a report over the weekend that due to not taking the fight, the UFC did not pay Thompson his show money (the standard procedure is you earn your show money once you make weight regardless of whether the fight falls apart afterward). Thompson said his management is dealing with the UFC and has not received anything yet and would be very disappointed if he was not paid his show money. Thompson was optimistic that once Dana White gets back from his vacation in Italy that it will be taken care of. It would be a real black eye to the promotion if they withheld his show money over this decision. Thompson said he would not accept a fight with Pereira again. He said he would love to be added to the UFC 295 card in November at Madison Square Garden.
**The UFC 291 card on Saturday drew an announced attendance of 18,467 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, and a gate of $6,556,443.97. The gate was up 53% from UFC 278 in the same venue in August 2022 for Kamaru Usman vs. Leon Edwards.
**Heavyweight Derrick Lewis could find himself in a very lucrative position after Saturday’s win at UFC 291. Lewis stopped Marcos Rogerio de Lima in 33 seconds after coming out with a flying knee and stopping de Lima with ground-and-pound. Lewis announced he was a free agent following this fight and has been fighting for the promotion since 2014 and has had 27 fights in the UFC. He has become one of the most popular fighters on the roster and it’s widely known that the PFL needs to find a heavyweight to draw with Francis Ngannou when their recent signing wraps up his boxing fight with Tyson Fury and debuts for the PFL. It has been noted that Ngannou’s provision was his opponent will make a guaranteed $2 million and would be huge money for someone like Lewis. There are not many marketable heavyweights out there for Ngannou to fight and while he and Lewis had one of the all-time worst fights in UFC history, it’s hard to imagine that the PFL could do much better regarding an opponent with name value and attempting to erase the memory of their last fight, which was over five years ago.
**The UFC hosts a Fight Night event at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville this Saturday night on the same night as Nate Diaz vs. Jake Paul and SummerSlam. The main event is a 140-pound catchweight fight between Cory Sandhagen (16-4) and late replacement Rob Font (20-6), who is replacing Umar Nurmagomedov. After coming up short against Petr Yan two years ago, Sandhagen is working his way back to the top of the division after wins against Song Yadong and Marlon Vera. Font has won six of his last eight fights but was stalled after back-to-back decision losses to Jose Aldo and Marlon Vera before stopping Adrian Yanez in his last fight in April. Tatiana Suarez (9-0) is back at flyweight and is fighting former 115-pound champion Jessica Andrade (24-11) in Suarez’s biggest fight of her career. Suarez had significant health issues that have stalled her career and didn’t fight between 2019 and this past February. She is now 32 and has been one of the biggest ‘what if?’ prospects in the UFC and a win over Andrade should make up for a lot of lost time and propel her near the top of the weight class. The top two fights are very strong for a free card but it’s an extremely busy night between MMA & Pro Wrestling. The UFC prelims & main card will be airing on both ESPN & ESPN+ with the prelims airing at 6 p.m. ET and the main card at 9 p.m.
*****
NXT Great American Bash Review
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review the WWE NXT: The Great American Bash from July 30th, 2023 headlined by Carmelo Hayes vs Ilja Dragunov for the NXT Championship.
*****
COLLISION COURSE
John Siino & Kate From MTL review AEW Collision featuring FTR vs. MJF & Adam Cole for the AEW Tag Team Titles.
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown with Rey Mysterio taking on Santos Escobar for a future U.S. title shot.
*****
MCU L8R – Secret Invasion Season Finale
It’s the Secret Invasion Finale! Nate Milton joins to help WH Park & Rich Fann explain what they saw and what they missed.
*****
Dark Side of the Ring: ‘Bam Bam Bigelow’ Review
On this week’s Double Shot, John Pollock and Wai Ting continue their weekly look at Dark Side of the Ring with a review of Season 4 Episode 8, “Bam Bam Bigelow: The Beast from the East”.
*****
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
