POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Dynamite is live at 10 p.m. ET tonight with Wai Ting & John Pollock to review the show from Indianapolis and go over the latest news. Join us live on the POST YouTube channel.
**Tim Hornbaker’s latest book is The Last Real World: The Legacy of “Nature Boy” Ric Flair and our own Brandon Sears has a review posted on the site. The book will be released next Tuesday through ECW Press. Hornbaker is among the top historians in the industry and has written many excellent books on the history of the NWA, Buddy Rogers, the WWWF, and Death of the Territories.
**Rewind-A-Wai will be released on Thursday with a look at UFC 200 from July 2016 featuring Brock Lesnar vs. Mark Hunt, a drug test violation removing Jon Jones from the show, our on-the-ground coverage in Las Vegas that week & all the major headlines that including the sale of the UFC and Lesnar’s drug test issues. This show will be available for all POST Wrestling Café members.
**John Siino will be in White Plains, New York on Friday & Saturday covering IMPACT’s Victory Road special and its 1000th episode with reports coming to the site for both nights of tapings. Due to Siino’s coverage, Wai Ting will be joining Kate from Montreal on Collision Course this Saturday night on the Café.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Dynamite with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Thursday: Rewind-A-Wai #138 – UFC 200 (POST Wrestling Café)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with John & Wai (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: Collision Course with Kate from Montreal & Wai Ting (POST Wrestling Café)
WRESTLING NEWS
**WWE Raw averaged 1,704,000 viewers on Monday and 0.52 in the 18-49 demographic. The show aired against the Clemson vs. Duke football game, which drew 4,388,000 viewers on ESPN. It was Raw’s largest audience since August 13. Younger males were down with a 15% drop among males 18-34, however, males 35-49 grew by 14% this week as the major movement from last week’s show. In Canada, Raw averaged 264,200 viewers and 125,700 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360 and was #5 among sports programs for the night behind the Toronto Blue Jays vs. Oakland A’s and CFL coverage. (Wrestlenomics)
**AEW is at the Indiana Farmers Coliseum tonight in Indianapolis for the post-All Out edition of Dynamite. There is no lull for the company with several major shows over the next month with Grand Slam in two weeks and WrestleDream on October 1. The Title Eliminator Tournament kicks off in Indianapolis with the winner challenging MJF at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Below are the announced matches and segments:
*AEW International Championship: Jon Moxley © vs. AR Fox
*TBS Championship: Kris Statlander © vs. Emi Sakura
*World Title Eliminator Tournament: Roderick Strong vs. Trent Beretta
*World Title Eliminator Tournament: Darby Allin vs. Nick Wayne
*Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara vs. Aussie Open
*MJF to appear
*Hangman Page speaks
**The major story in sports this week is the carriage dispute between Disney and Charter/Spectrum, which affects approximately 14.7 million cable subscribers going into Week 1 of the NFL season. While a resolution is the likely result, there is plenty of concern that this is a tipping point with programmers seeking carriage fees in a cable industry that is losing subscribers at an alarming rate that isn’t slowing down. No one has benefited more from the carriage fees laid at the feet of the subscribers than ESPN, who commanded so much per subscriber and was key to its rise as the industry leader in sports and cable programming. Bob Iger has flat-out said there is a day coming when ESPN will be available direct-to-consumer and while not completely abandoning cable, it gives users an alternate route to ESPN that would cut out the middleman such as Charter (right now, for Charter subscribers wanting the ESPN games this weekend, they are out of luck unless they jump to a different carrier if they have access to one). For WWE, if the dispute isn’t settled by Monday, it will alleviate the expectations for the season premiere of Monday Night Football, which traditionally takes a chunk out of Raw’s audience.
**The audience for Collision this past Saturday was the lowest in the show’s twelve-week history and lower than most anticipated. The first quarter showed that people didn’t forget about the show entirely and many tuned in likely out of curiosity over the handling of CM Punk after the press release was issued that afternoon. Payback was not as significant of a show as SummerSlam but this weekend also featured three college football games, and a MLB game on the four main networks. Either you conclude that Payback had a significantly larger impact than expected, or you believe that college football is going to be more of a hit to Collision’s audience than anticipated. Short-term, Collision is going to be hurt by the loss of CM Punk, but numbers were going down regardless due to the time of the year with sports returning but this number was worse than I thought. Collision had 27,000 fewer viewers than the average for Rampage with the two shows doing an identical audience in the 18-49 demographic. You shouldn’t sound the alarm over one week but it’s not like anyone should assume a giant bounce back this Saturday when you have the college competition, MLB, and the UFC 293 prelims airing at the same time, although no WWE event.
**Chris Jericho spoke about his weekend in London for All In and the planning that went into his show with Fozzy, his appearance at RevPro’s 11th Anniversary Show, and Sunday’s match with Will Ospreay. He mentioned that Bully Ray suggested Fozzy play “Judas” live in the stadium while Ortiz added the idea of the Freddie Mercury “Ay-Oh” introduction from Queen’s famous set in 1986 at Live Aid in Wembley. Jericho said the Fozzy show in Kentish Town on Friday was the group’s largest headlining show (they’ve played larger festivals but not as headliners) and sold 1,003 tickets.
**NJPW returns with its first domestic card since the G-1 Climax with the Road to Destruction tour beginning on Friday at Korakuen Hall. The show will stream for free on NJPW World with SANADA & Taichi vs. EVIL & SHO in the main event, and Zack Sabre Jr. defending the NJPW World Television title against Oleg Boltin in the top matches. British wrestler Callum Newman debuts for NJPW teaming with Jeff Cobb, Great O-Khan & Henare against Shingo Takagi, Hiromu Takahashi, Tetsuya Naito & Yota Tsuji. The next major show is Destruction in Kobe on September 24 with Will Ospreay vs. Yota Tsuji for the IWGP U.K. Championship.
**FMW expert @BretBahuFMW has a great piece on Terry Funk’s time in FMW that began in 1993 and was a significant chapter of Funk’s career including a legendary death match with Atsushi Onita in May of that year at Kawasaki Stadium.
**The WWE stock closed right at $100.00 on Wednesday.
MMA NEWS
**The UFC is taking additional steps regarding education for its fighters regarding gambling on fights. This follows the FBI investigation after suspicious line movement in advance of a November 2022 fight in the UFC between Darrick Minner and Shayilan Nuerdanbieke. Nevada suspended Minner, his coach James Krause, and teammate Jeff Molina and led to fighters attached to Krause being banned from the promotion. The UFC is working with ProhiBet to help ensure fighters are not betting on fights where inside knowledge is accessible. In a compliance video that was sent to fighters, it included examples of fighters that bet on themselves in fights, which is prohibited whether it be directly or through a third party where a bet is placed. (ESPN)
**All five winners on Tuesday’s episode of Contender Series were awarded UFC contracts with the following results from the UFC Apex:
*Brendson Ribeiro def. Bruno Lopez by KO at 3:47 of Round 1
*Serhiy Sidey def. Ramon Taveras by TKO at 2:26 of Round 1 – Dana White disagreed with the stoppage being so early and is going to give Taveras another fight this season on the show
*Dylan Budka def. Chad Hanekom by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Jean Silva def. Kevin Vallejos by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Dione Barbosa def. Rainn Guerrero by armbar at 4:35 of Round 1
**Laura Sanko becomes the first woman since UFC 1 to be part of the commentary team this Saturday at UFC 293 in Australia. Sanko will be part of the team with Jon Anik and Daniel Cormier and is the first pay-per-view broadcast she has been part of in this capacity after calling Contender Series and Fight Night events. Sanko is the first woman since Kathy Long at UFC 1 to be part of the commentary team, who called the show with Bill Wallace and Jim Brown. Of course, Megan Olivia has been part of the UFC broadcasts for years as an on-site correspondent.
*****
POLLOCK & THURSTON
John Pollock and Brandon Thurston are guestless this week and open the forum for your questions to be sent in along with the latest news & notes.
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upNXT
John Siino and B-Detroit return to review WWE NXT from September 5th, 2023 featuring Von Wagner vs. Bron Breakker in a No Disqualification Match.
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REWIND-A-RAW
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Raw following Payback as Gunther attempts to become the longest-reigning IC champion of all time with one final defence against Chad Gable.
*****
ALL OUT 2023 REVIEW
John Pollock and Wai Ting review AEW All Out 2023 from Chicago, IL featuring Orange Cassidy vs. Jon Moxley AEW International Championship.
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COLLISION COURSE
John Siino & Kate From MTL discuss the firing of CM Punk and review the final AEW Collision before Sunday’s All Out. Featuring Dax Harwood vs. Jay White.
*****
WWE PAYBACK // CM PUNK FIRED
John Pollock and Wai Ting discuss CM Punk’s termination with cause from AEW before reviewing WWE Payback 2023 featuring Seth Rollins vs. Shinsuke Nakamura.
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