POST IT NOTES
**POST Wrestling’s review of AEW Revolution 2024.
**Rewind-A-Raw is live at 11:05 p.m. ET tonight on the POST Wrestling YouTube channel.
**For Double Double & Espresso members of the POST Wrestling Café, we release multiple audio versions of the news update including one today going over Paul Heyman’s career, Sting & Darby Allin’s reflections on the main event of Revolution, Tony Khan on talks with WBD, and the addition of another AEW pay-per-view for 2024. Listen to today’s audio news update here.
**This Thursday, Rewind-A-Wai #152 covers NJPW Dominion 2018 featuring the Two-of-Three Falls match between Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The show will be available to all POST Wrestling Café members.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw
Tuesday: upNXT with Davie Portman & Braden Herrington
Wednesday: Pollock & Thurston
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Thursday: Rewind-A-Wai #152 – NJPW Dominion 2018 (POST Wrestling Café)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: The Long & Winding Royal Road with WH Park & JP Houlihan (Kento Miyahara vs. Takuya Nomura, Sept. 2019)
Saturday: Collision Course with John Siino & Kate from Montreal (POST Wrestling Café)
Sunday: UFC 299 with John Pollock & Eric Marcotte
WRESTLING NEWS
**After the passing of Paul “The Butcher” Vachon last week, we received the following message from Richard Sheir, who lives in Vermont and was part of the same community as Vachon:
My wife and I live in Central Vermont. Over the last several decades, we got to know Paul. He was a friend. We didn’t know Butcher as a wrestler. We knew him as the Santa at the nearby mall during Xmas with his table selling his self-published books his When Wrestling Was Real t-shirts and knick-knacks alongside his wife.
Paul was our very caring and charismatic Santa for generations of Montpelier children. Someone with a keen memory and a great sense of humor.
His seasonal work as Santa was a different side of a very interesting and charismatic person. Paul became a friend over time and never forgot my wife’s face… and name. At the Berlin Mall (in Vermont), we’d spent hours and hours talking about wrestling history. He had an incredible memory. I recall his story of how he was one of the first to try and organize wrestlers to get health insurance and a pension and why he thought that it failed. Stories of Maurice.. as well as heartbreaking stories of Vivian and Luna. I was the first person to turn him onto ECW which gives you an idea of how long our friendship spans.
Reading of his death, it dawned on me that I don’t have a single photo with Paul or even an autograph. Who asks their friends for that? I do own his self-published books and his When Wrestling Was Real t-shirt. My wife bought me both as holiday gifts a long while back.
Paul Vachon was kind and gentle with a tremendous smile and laugh.
Our mostly Thanksgiving through Christmas friendship commenced in the later years of his life decades after he had hung up his boots. I suppose people north of the border would say Butcher was the quintessential Canadian. People in Vermont would say he was the quintessential resident of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom (NEK). Actually to me, he had more than a little Kris Kringle about him. A twinkle in his eye and a friendly, warm magical smile that made children take to him instantly.. For decades, Butcher shared himself with us in wrestling rings across the world. After that, he became one of the best Santas in any mall, sharing his life with young children. His life was a life truly well spent. He was the one and only Paul Butcher Vachon. That is all that needs to be said.
**In 2012, Paul Vachon released Wrestling with the Past: Life and Out of the Ring.
**Historian Pat Laprade has a lengthy obit on the life of Paul Vachon, whom he was very close with. From his story:
On a personal basis, I have known Paul well over the past 15 years. He contributed to all the books that I wrote with Bertrand Hébert, we called each other regularly, I edited and published his third book and republished his first two, in short, he was always there for me and me for him.
In 2009, when Maurice was inducted into the Quebec Sports Hall of Fame, Paul asked me to organize a family dinner. He even took the trouble to invite my parents and gave my father a signed wooden cane. In 2014, when one of his brothers died, Paul was unavailable to go, so he asked me to go and represent him at the funeral. What a mark of trust and friendship.
I last saw him when I interviewed him for Luna Vachon’s episode of Dark Side of the Ring. I last spoke to him last summer, on the 50th anniversary of the Maurice-Kowalski match. I would have liked to say thank you one last time. I just hope he knew how important he was to me.
Paul often spoke in English during our conversations, but at the end of each one, he ended by saying, “Hello, my friend! » Well Paul, it’s my turn to say to you, for one last time, “Hello, my friend!
**Greg Oliver at SLAM Wrestling also has a story on Paul Vachon and his friendship with the late performer. Oliver mentioned that he is involved in a documentary project on the late Luna Vachon called ‘Lunatic: The Luna Vachon Story’, who was the stepdaughter of Paul Vachon. The documentary is being directed by Kate Kroll and they were able to interview Paul before he passed away.
**AEW put forward one of its best pay-per-views in history with Revolution. The show was promoted around the retirement of Steve “Sting” Borden, who began his career in 1985 and had his breakout performance in the Greensboro Coliseum in March 1988 against Ric Flair on TBS. The performer’s final run will be remembered for a long time with no expectation that his debut in 2020 would elicit such a quality of performance coupled with his booking as a proper legend. The final match presentation encapsulated all the emotions required through a phenomenal video presentation where Sting sat alone in a theatre watching highlights of his career, to his entrance alongside his two sons dressed as “Surfer Sting” and “Wolfpac Sting” before Metallica’s Seek & Destroy was played. The match was heavily stunt-based and included one of the scariest moments in the promotion’s history as Darby Allin plunged off a gigantic ladder onto six chairs covered by panes of glass – slicing up his back and temporarily taking Allin out of the match. It cannot be emphasized enough how great The Young Bucks were as opponents and were the perfect option for the close of Sting’s career. This was like a Guerrilla Warfare match in PWG, but inside of a giant arena. They opted to end the show with a happy ending and Sting winning his last match was as strong a retirement presentation as you’ll see.
**The business results for the show will be known once the pay-per-view figures trickle in but Tony Khan seemed optimistic that it was going to do a big number on pay-per-view. Only two AEW events have topped 200,000 buys with All Out 2021 (CM Punk vs. Darby Allin) and All In last summer at Wembley Stadium. On Sunday, I asked for people’s predictions in a poll and 30.9 percent believed the show would be between 160-180k buys. Barring any significant issues due to the B/R Live technical issues during the show. When a concept or story hits the public, it’s hard to assess what the ceiling is, and this story clicked. The audience understood that this show was a part of wrestling history and a real retirement. It would not stun me to see this exceed the 180,000 figure.
**AEW announced the attendance of 16,878 during the broadcast. It was not the record for professional wrestling at the Greensboro Coliseum, which belongs to the WWF’s Unforgiven event in April 1998, which drew 21,427 and 20,268 paid, per the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Tony Khan stated the gate was around $1 million.
**Amazingly, Darby Allin stated he was okay after his fall through the pane of glass onto the chairs at Revolution. He attended the press conference with Sting after the show and said he wanted to show up to show everyone he was still alive and was getting stitched up. He added that he is set to leave on March 27 to climb Mt. Everest.
**AEW confirmed its latest addition to the pay-per-view calendar with Dynasty scheduled for April 21 at the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, Missouri. It brings the pay-per-view number to nine as it joins Revolution, Double or Nothing, Forbidden Door, All In, All Out, WrestleDream, Full Gear, and Worlds End along with three Ring of Honor events per year. Last week, Tony Khan stated that nine to ten pay-per-views was the sweet spot in addition to their ROH events. Dynasty will take place the night after TNA Rebellion, which could hurt the TNA show, and is a brand that just completed its most successful pay-per-view in years with Hard to Kill.
**WWE Raw is at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas tonight and is sold out with WrestleTix reporting 13,500 tickets distributed. The following matches have been announced:
*Becky Lynch vs. Nia Jax
*Drew McIntyre vs. Jey Uso
**There is a GoFundMe campaign that has been launched by the family of the late Anthony Gaines (Anthony Nicometi). Gaines was a Buffalo area wrestler, who recently passed away at the age of 30.
**The Greensboro Coliseum had several custom baseball bats designed for Sting, Darby Allin, Ric Flair, Tony Khan, Tony Schiavone, and Jim Ross. It was also declared ‘Thank you Sting Day’ in Greensboro on Sunday.
**Episode 1 of UFC Embedded going into UFC 299 this Saturday in Miami, Florida.
*****
AEW REVOLUTION 2024
John Pollock and Wai Ting review AEW Revolution 2024 featuring Sting’s Last Match as he teams with Darby Allin to defend the AEW Tag Team titles against The Young Bucks.
*****
COLLISION COURSE
Kate From MTL is joined by Bruce Lord to review the final AEW Collision before Revolution featuring an 8-man tag between Orange Cassidy, Trent Beretta, Hook & Daniel Garcia vs. Christian Cage, Killswitch, Roderick Strong & Brian Cage.
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson responds to Cody Rhodes’ challenge for a match.
*****
POST PURORESU
WH Park & Karen Peterson discuss Kazuchika Okada’s final matches with NJPW and how the promotion handled his exit.
*****
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