POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Tuesday: upNXT with Davie Portman & Braden Herrington
Wednesday: Pollock & Thurston with Bill from WrestleTix
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Thursday: Rewind-A-Wai #139 – The Last of McGuinness
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with John & Wai
Saturday: Collision Course with Kate from Montreal & John Siino
Sunday: NJPW Destruction in Kobe with Bruce Lord & Karen Peterson
WRESTLING NEWS
**A report from Nick Hausman at Haus of Wrestling states that CM Punk is not expected to seek any legal action toward AEW over his dismissal with cause earlier this month. Hausman states the ex-AEW performer is looking to “move on with his life”. Punk was involved in a backstage altercation with Jack Perry at the All In event last month at Wembley Stadium, which did get physical (and reportedly caught on camera), and occurred just before Punk went out for his match with Samoa Joe. It was later revealed that there was also an incident involving Tony Khan, which the AEW president would state had him in fear for his life. Six days after the incidents, AEW announced via press release that Punk’s talent and employment contracts had been terminated with cause. There is no confirmation regarding a no-compete clause attached to Punk’s termination, although, on Friday’s CFFC card, Punk stated he has time on his hands and referred to “two months”. Punk will turn 45 next month and worked for AEW for two years after returning to pro wrestling in August 2021 with the promotion.
**Tonight’s episode of WWE Raw is at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, and will be the rare case of WWE going against two NFL games. The New Orleans Saints vs. Carolina Panthers game begins at 7:15 p.m. ET on ESPN & ESPN 2 and is followed by the Cleveland Browns vs. Pittsburgh Steelers at 8:15 p.m. on ABC & ESPN+. So, Raw will likely be airing against both for at least the first two hours tonight with coverage of the two games spread across all of Disney’s major sports platforms. The NFL has the same schedule next Monday night with two games airing against Raw. The reasoning behind this is the ongoing writer’s strike with ABC picking up ten more Monday Night Football games this season and will have four exclusive Monday Night games with 15 simulcasts of ESPN games.
The additional games that will be simulcast on ABC are going to have a significant impact on Raw this season due to the millions of additional viewers watching football each Monday night. Last week’s huge game between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills did 26.6 million viewers across all platforms including approximately 10.0 million on ABC and led to the smallest audience for a first-run episode of Raw in history.
It doesn’t appear NBC’s Monday night programming schedule will be impacted by the strike as The Voice is set to premiere next week at 8 p.m. ET.
For tonight’s episode, WWE has announced the following matches:
*Two-of-Three-Falls: New Day vs. Viking Raiders
*Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Ricochet
*Drew McIntyre vs. Jey Uso
*Cody Rhodes vs. Dominik Mysterio
**The TKO stop grew over 4% on Monday and closed at $104.19.
**Jade Cargill has been removed from the AEW roster page. Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp reported that it was heavily implied to him that her contract expired on Friday.
**AEW has been aggressively promoting Grand Slam for this Wednesday at Arthur Ashe Stadium through many on-air mentions, a 2-for-1 ticket offer, and lowering ticket prices. The result has seen approximately 1,200 tickets move over the past six days, according to WrestleTix, and up to approximately 7,500 tickets distributed. Last year’s figures were 12,600 paid and topping a $1 million gate, neither of which are going to be within reach this year and it’s a major drop from the first year. The card is very strong on paper with MJF vs. Samoa Joe for the AEW title, Claudio Castagnoli vs. Eddie Kingston in a Title vs. Title match, Chris Jericho vs. Sammy Guevara, Saraya vs. Toni Storm for the AEW Women’s title, and Jon Moxley vs. Rey Fenix for the International title. The Rampage portion of Grand Slam has Sting & Darby Allin vs. Christian Cage & Luchasaurus, The Acclaimed vs. Dark Order for the Trios titles, The Hung Bucks vs. Mogul Embassy, and Kris Statlander teaming with Orange Cassidy & Hook against Anna Jay, Matt Menard & Angelo Parker. Rampage will have a two-hour slow this Friday on TNT from 10 p.m. to Midnight ET.
**El Hijo del Vikingo appeared to be injured during the ROH tapings on Saturday night in State College, Pennsylvania. Vikingo was teaming with Metalik & Gravity against the Spanish Announce Project with a note from someone who saw the match that Vikingo messed up his leg about five minutes into the match and had to be carried off. Dave Meltzer reported on Wrestling Observer Radio that there were fears he could have broken his hip, but the hope is that it’s just a deep bruise. Vikingo is scheduled for AAA TV this Saturday and two more shows on Sunday, as was just announced by DEFY for a match with Swerve Strickland on October 13.
**AEW has released a 90-minute special on the history between Claudio Castagnoli and Eddie Kingston including footage of their matches from 2009 for Ring of Honor on HDNet, their sit-down face-to-face hosted by Caprice Coleman going into Supercard of Honor in March, and highlights of their interactions over the past year in AEW.
**David Bixenspan has an extensive look at the coverage of Japanese women’s wrestling in English-language media over the decades. Among his findings was a 26-page story on the history of the Joshi scene from September 2021 that outlines other coverage of the scene as it pertains to pay that the women made and piecing together his research to form a focused view on that section of the industry going back to coverage of The Beauty Pair in the late ‘70s.
**MJF appeared on CBS New York to promote AEW Grand Slam and his match with Samoa Joe.
**Billy Corgan revealed to WGN 9 in Chicago that he was married over the weekend to long-time partner Chloe Mendel. The couple has been together since 2012 and they have two children. Corgan was performing a pair of acoustic shows with the Smashing Pumpkins as a Tower Records pop-up store in Chicago on Sunday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the release of Siamese Dream and shared the news with a local reporter.
**House of Glory has announced Minoru Suzuki for its Friday the 13th event on October 13 at the NYC Arena and streaming live on Premier.
**NJPW has Road to Destruction cards on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before the Destruction in Kobe card next Sunday. The Kobe card is headlined by Will Ospreay vs. Yota Tsuji in an IWGP U.K. Championship match and was set up after Tsuji pinned Ospreay in an eight-man tag on the final night of the G1 Climax and hitting Ospreay with a spear.
**Being the Elite Ep. 365: “Penny For Your Thoughts”.
MMA NEWS
**Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko had one of the closest and most competitive fights in women’s championship history on Saturday. Grasso (16-3-1) and Shevchenko (23-4-1) fought to a split draw with a 48-47 card for each, and judge Mike Bell had it even 47-47 after five rounds. I scored the fight 48-47 for Grasso with the champion winning Rounds 2, 4, and 5. The reason it was a draw is because Bell scored the fifth round 10-8 for Grasso, which few agreed with but I also wouldn’t call it crazy, although didn’t meet the current criteria for a 10-8 round. There was no arguing that Shevchenko won Rounds 1 & 3 or Grasso won Rounds 2 & 5. The debatable round was Round 4, which I felt Grasso convincingly won due to the strikes landed in the first half of the round and several knees delivering damage. It was the closest round with Grasso landing 20 of 49 significant strikes and Shevchenko landing 19 of 43 and it’s a debatable round. Shevchenko completed 4 of 7 takedowns but made an egregious error in the fifth round going for a standing head-and-arm choke, which Grasso immediately reversed and took Shevchenko’s back and put her down where she unloaded on the former champion and ended the fight strong.
Shevchenko now has a loss and a draw against the current champion and while they could do a third fight, there are multiple contenders waiting to fight the champion and could be an excuse to move on. Manon Fiorot (11-1) is 6-0 in the UFC and just beat former strawweight champion Rose Namajunas and has wins against former title contenders Jennifer Maia and Katlyn Chookagian. Erin Blanchfield (12-1) is also 6-0 since joining the UFC from Invicta FC and submitted former strawweight champion Jessica Andrade and beat Talia Santos by decision in August. Either Fiorot or Blanchfield would be suitable contenders to fight Grasso, who has improved as much as any female fighter over the past year and reached a different level with her grappling.
**The UFC announced an attendance figure of 18,766 and a live gate of $2,265,537.16 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday. That is a big success for a Fight Night card and was marketed around Mexican Independence Day with the theme of the show being an homage to Mexican heritage in the history of combat sports. There was no Fight of the Night bonus, but five Performance of the Night bonuses were awarded to Raul Rosas Jr., Daniel Zellhuber, Roman Koplov, Lupita Godinez, and Charlie Campbell.
**During his post-fight interview with Daniel Cormier, Charlie Campbell asked Cormier what he thought of his boxing and Campbell cut him off with “It doesn’t matter what you think” and said he’s a big fan of Dwayne Johnson. Cormier went along with the gag but also didn’t seem thrilled at being the unsuspecting target.
**Next Saturday, the UFC returns to the UFC Apex with a Fight Night card headlined by a lightweight contest between Rafael Fiziev (12-2) and Mateusz Gamrot (22-2, 1 NC). Fiziev is coming off the first loss of his career when he dropped a majority decision to Justin Gaethje in March at UFC 286. Fiziev had been on a big streak of wins over Renato Moicano, Bobby Green, Brad Riddell, and former champion Rafael dos Anjos prior to the loss. Gamrot is 5-2 in the UFC, dropped a decision to Beneil Dariush last October, and bounced back with a split win over Jalin Turner this past March. The card is airing exclusively on ESPN+ due to college football commitments.
**Bellator 299 takes place on Saturday afternoon from Dublin, Ireland with the main card airing at 4 p.m. ET on Showtime with Johnny Eblen (13-0) vs. Fabian Edwards (12-2) for the Bellator Middleweight Championship, Aaron Pico (11-4) vs. Pedro Carvalho (13-7), Mads Burnell (17-5) vs. Daniel Weichel (42-14), and Sara Collins (4-0) vs. Sinead Kavanagh (9-5). There are also seventeen prelim fights that will begin airing at 11 a.m. ET online and somewhere it should be legislated that twenty-one fights is way too much for one MMA event.
*****
THE N.W.A. PODCAST
Nate Milton, Kris Ealy, and Andrew Thompson return to discuss the month’s top stories including Jade Cargill’s expected AEW exit, the UFC-WWE merger, CM Punk’s AEW firing, the death of Bray Wyatt, and more.
*****
COLLISION COURSE
Kate From MTL is joined by Bruce Lord to review AEW Collision featuring Kris Statlander vs. Britt Baker for the TBS Championship.
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock & Wai Ting discuss WWE SmackDown featuring The Rock’s surprise return. Plus, a review of IMPACT 1000 and your calls.
*****
THE LONG & WINDING ROYAL ROAD
Bruce Lord joins WH Park to discuss Kenta Kobashi challenging “Dr. Death” Steve Williams for his Triple Crown Championship from September 3rd, 1994.
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite with the finals of the World Title Eliminator Tournament between Samoa Joe and Roderick Strong.
*****
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