POST IT NOTES
**The audio version of Monday’s news update is available for Double Double & Espresso members on the POST Wrestling Café.
**We have lots of coverage from all the major shows this past weekend with reviews of Friday Night SmackDown, Collision & Battle of the Belts IX, TNA Hard to Kill, and NJPW’s Battle in the Valley.
**Rewind-A-Raw is live at 11 p.m. ET tonight immediately after Raw.
**This Thursday, it’s Pollock & Ting – TALK Vol. 12, which is a quarterly special on the POST Wrestling Café discussing the state of the site, reflections, plans, and usually ventures into our personal lives too.
**MCU L8R will be a special free show this Friday with WH Park & Rich Fann reviewing Ep. 1 & 2 of the new Echo series on Disney+.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Tuesday: upNXT with Davie Portman & Braden Herrington
Wednesday: Pollock & Thurston
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Thursday: Pollock & Ting – TALK Vol. 12 (POST Wrestling Café)
Friday: MCU L8R – Echo Ep. 1 & 2 with WH Park & Rich Fann
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with Wai Ting & Neal Flanagan (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: NJPW New Beginning in Nagoya with Bruce Lord & Karen Peterson (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: Collision Course with John Siino & Kate from Montreal (POST Wrestling Café)
Sunday: UFC 297 with John Pollock
Sunday: The N.W.A. Podcast with Nate Milton, Kris Ealy & Andrew Thompson
WRESTLING NEWS
**Tonight, will likely be the toughest Monday of the year for Raw as it goes against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Philadelphia Eagles Wild Card game and the Iowa caucus coverage. Last year when Raw aired against the Wild Card, the game averaged 31,098,000 viewers across ABC, ESPN & ESPN2 while Raw averaged 1,482,000 and 0.42 in the demo that night in 2023. Below are the matches and segments announced for the show at the Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock, Arkansas:
*World Heavyweight Championship: Seth Rollins © vs. Jinder Mahal
*Non-title match: Finn Balor & Damian Priest vs. R-Truth & The Miz
*DIY vs. Dominik Mysterio & JD McDonagh
*Gunther returns
*Cody Rhodes starts the show
**Dave Meltzer spoke on Wrestling Observer Radio about the upcoming Vince McMahon series on Netflix. Meltzer stated he’s been interviewed multiple times for the series including this past Sunday and been asked “every single subject you can think of” regarding McMahon. He said the series will be coming out sooner than people think, and the date should be released soon but was limited in what he could disclose about the series.
**A potential trickle-down effect from this past weekend’s exclusive NFL playoff game on Peacock is its effect on this year’s Royal Rumble viewership. The streaming service paid $110 million for the national rights to this past Saturday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins, which generated tons of complaints from fans feeling gouged and such an important game being placed exclusively on Peacock (and local affiliates in the two markets). However, NBC is touting the success of the game as the most streamed event in U.S. history with an average of 23 million viewers and peaked at 24.6 million during the second quarter. Peacock has been increasing its subscribers at a steady rate with the last reported figure of 28 million subscribers at the end of Q3 2023. The NFL game is going to drive those numbers even higher when those updated figures are released and will place Peacock in more homes than ever and therefore, more access for the Royal Rumble than any time in history besides the USA Network special in 1988.
**TNA held its television tapings on Sunday and its second night at The Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. Kazuchika Okada and Will Ospreay wrestled on the show in separate matches along with Nic Nemeth having his first match since leaving WWE and had not wrestled since May of last year. TNA returns with another set of TV tapings this weekend in Orlando on Friday and Saturday, which takes them into their next TNA+ event, which is No Surrender on February 23 in New Orleans.
**TNA is advertising Trinity for the television tapings in Orlando this weekend and she also wrestled at the Snake Eyes taping on Sunday in Las Vegas.
**Mercedes Mone and Bayley were in Las Vegas on Saturday night and attended TNA’s Hard to Kill.
**After his match teaming with the Motor City Machine Guns, Okada addressed the crowd and stated despite people assuming, he doesn’t hate TNA and somewhat jokingly stated that TNA made him, “not the Rainmaker” as he chuckled. Before becoming a star in New Japan, Okada was sent to TNA on excursion and had one of the legendary worst gimmicks for a future star when he was renamed “Okato” as a spoof from The Green Hornet and paired with Samoa Joe, which was a dreadful character and even worse in hindsight once he became New Japan’s franchise player when he returned in 2012. It led to bad blood on New Japan’s behalf over the treatment of a player they had massive investment in and it took an entire regime change in TNA/IMPACT and years apart before New Japan would work with TNA again and Okada’s appearance on Sunday at the tapings brought things full circle.
**Masa Fuchi turned seventy years old on Sunday and celebrated by wrestling in the main event of All Japan’s card at Korakuen Hall. Fuchi is celebrating his 50th year as a pro wrestler after debuting in August 1974 for All Japan and has been a constant for the promotion throughout his entire career. When the exodus of talent occurred in 2000 led by Mitsuharu Misawa to form NOAH, Fuchi, and Toshiaki Kawada were the only Japanese stars to stay with AJPW along with several foreigners. On Saturday’s card, Yuma Anzai won an eight-man battle royal to set up the main event match where he beat Fuchi in front of 1,258 fans.
**The never-ending dissection of the real attendance at WrestleMania 3 from 1987 continues. Researcher Cory Gibson recently uncovered coverage from the publication American Amusement with a Pontiac Silverdome official Mike Abington stating on the record that the announced figure of 93,173 was counting every person in attendance, which included wrestlers, personnel and staff workers for the day. The publication stated there were 88,100 tickets sold ranging in price from $9 to $100. It was years after the event when former WWF event promoter Zane Bresloff informed reporter Dave Meltzer that the real attendance was 78,500 and had the building document as proof of the real number. Over the years, David Bixenspan has done extensive research on the show and found figures in the Detroit Free Press that cite 3,130 additional people between staff workers and reporters in the venue along with many people allowed into the building at the last minute without tickets for standing room only access. For paid attendance, it is possible this event and WrestleMania 32 in Texas from 2016 would be ahead of All In last August. The WrestleMania 32 card at AT&T Stadium had a turnstile count of 80,709, and typically the turnstile count is several thousand lower than the paid number but we only know the range of tickets sold for the AT&T Stadium is between 73,000 and 85,000, per the WWE’s key performance indicators covering that show. For whatever it’s worth, throughout AEW’s promotion of achieving the highest verifiable paid attendance in history for All In, the WWE has never disputed that claim directly or indirectly using the two WrestleMania events as evidence of holding larger paid attendance figures.
**Jon Langmead has released a new book titled Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling and is out through the University of Missouri Press. Below is the description:
Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling is a history of professional wrestling’s formative period in the U.S., from roughly 1874 to 1941, and the contested interplay of wrestlers and promoters who built the “sport” as we know it. During this period, the major conventions that would define wrestling to the present day were perfected and codified, as wrestling morphed from a rough sport practiced on farms and at town gatherings to melodramatic mass entertainment that reliably drew large crowds in cities across the nation.
The narrative uses the life and career of Jack Curley—a boxing promoter whose fortune took a turn for the better when he began promoting wrestling matches—as a compass as it charts the development of wrestling. By the late 1910s, Curley’s shows were selling out Madison Square Garden monthly. Ballyhoo chronicles his competition with the other promoters, as well as the lives of colorful athletes like “Strangler” Ed Lewis, Frank Gotch, the “Masked Marvel,” Jim Londos, “Gorgeous George” Wagner, “Farmer” Martin Burns, and “Dynamite” Gus Sonnenberg.
SLAM Wrestling has an excerpt from the book.
**Pro Wrestling NOAH’s Sunny Voyage event at Shinjuku Face this Wednesday is headlined by Jack Morris defending the GHC National Championship against Titus Alexander. The event streams on Wrestle Universe. The rest of the card features Kaito Kiyomiya, Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr., Ryohei Oiwa, Alpha Wolf & Dragon Bane vs. Jake Lee, Anthony Greene, LJ Cleary, YO-HEY & Tadasuke, Daga & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Eita & HAYATA, Kenoh teams with Yu Owada & Taishi Ozawa vs. Go Shiozaki, Hi69 & Atsushi Kotoge, Takashi Sugiura & Ulka Sasaki vs. Masa Kitamiya & Daiki Inaba, Naomichi Marufuji with Super Crazy & Hajime Ohara vs. Manabu Soya, Junta Miyawaki & Shuji Kondo, and Ninja Mack vs. Alejandro (which should be incredible given their high flying chemistry together).
**Tuesday’s edition of NXT will include a women’s battle royal for a title shot against Lyra Valkyria, Valkyria & Tatum Paxley vs. Lola Vice & Elektra Lopez, and two more Dusty Classic opening round matches with Edris Enofe & Malik Blade vs. Trick Williams & Carmelo Hayes, and Cruz del Toro & Joaquin Wilde vs. Duke Hudson & Andre Chase.
**Demand Lucha runs a show in Toronto this Thursday night at Parkdale Hall and streams on Independent Wrestling. The show is headlined by Jack Cartwheel vs. Gringo Loco vs. Mustafa Ali and includes Joey Janela vs. Seraphis, Kevin Blackwood vs. TIM, and Los Medicos vs. Junior Benito & Macrae Martin.
MMA NEWS
**MMA Fighting has a story on a text message exchange between Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta from May 2014 when they were negotiating with Jon Jones for a rematch with Alexander Gustafsson. Their first fight occurred at UFC 165 the prior September and was one of the greatest title fights in the history of the company with Jones admitting he barely trained for the fight but managed to win the fight by decision. Jones came back in April and beat Glover Teixeira at UFC 172 and this text exchange took place one month after the Teixeira fight. The exchange was brought up through discovery in the ongoing antitrust case against the UFC and contained the following between White and Fertitta on May 24, 2014:
White: What’s up with Jones? Did he straighten up or is he still being a scumbag?
Fertitta: Still a douche, but we’re inching closer. Haven’t moved on money, but sent the letter with an ultimatum.
White: Awesome. F*** that punk, Lorenzo. He needs to know we don’t need him, or he will f*** us over more than he already does.
Jones would not fight against until the following January when he faced Daniel Cormier at UFC 182 and was a huge fight for both men with the rematch against Gustafsson not taking place until late December 2018. MMA Fighting revealed that White was interviewed by the plaintiffs’ lawyer Michael Dell’Angelo and the back-and-forth was also part of the unsealed documents. White clarified that when referring to Jones as a “scumbag” he meant in his life choices and not in terms of the negotiations they were engaging in.
From White:
Do you know Jon Jones’ history? Just to be a scumbag in life. …. I mean, you could get pretty much every guy who works for me to testify that, yes, I was not happy with Jon Jones’ life choices.
**The UFC is back in Toronto for Saturday’s pay-per-view at the Scotiabank Arena and will be its first card in the city since December 2018. Among the events this week, there will be a press conference on Thursday at 4 p.m. ET in downtown Toronto with all the main card fighters including UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland and challenger Dricus du Plessis. The event is going to draw a tremendous gate at the Scotiabank Arena with prices scaled very high and WrestleTix reporting 17,832 tickets are out for the show.
**Episode 1 of UFC Embedded going into UFC 297.
*****
NJPW BATTLE IN THE VALLEY
Bruce Lord & Karen Peterson review NJPW Battle in the Valley featuring Kazuchika Okada vs. Will Ospreay and Shingo Takagi vs. Jon Moxley.
*****
TNA HARD TO KILL
John Pollock & John Siino review TNA Hard to Kill featuring Alex Shelley vs. Moose for the TNA title, and the debut of Nic Nemeth.
*****
COLLISION COURSE
Kate From MTL and Wai Ting review AEW Collision and Battle of the Belts IX featuring Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara vs. Ricky Starks & Big Bill for the AEW tag titles.
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock and Wai Ting review this week’s WWE SmackDown as The Bloodline look for a partner to face the team of Orton, Knight & Styles.
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #147: WWF BREAKDOWN 1998
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWF Breakdown: In Your House from September 1998 featuring Steve Austin defending the WWF Championship against the Mr. McMahon-appointed duo of The Undertaker and Kane.
*****
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