POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-SmackDown is live at 10:05 p.m. ET tonight for all POST Wrestling Café members.
**POST Wrestling and Poisonrana are hosting a meet-up in Philadelphia on Sunday, April 7 from 2:30 – 4:30 p.m. at Drinker’s Pub. There are no tickets and admission is free to come hang out with us providing you with lots of time to get to Lincoln Financial Field for WrestleMania. All the details are on the poster.
**The latest edition of TALK is available for POST Café members as Wai Ting and I discuss a variety of topics including Wai Ting nearly going down a different path in his career, a long chat about the two of us negotiating contracts on behalf of ourselves, and a lot on next week’s trip to Philadelphia and what to expect on the site over the next week.
**Collision Course returns on Saturday night with Kate from Montreal and John Siino to discuss the episode from London, Ontario.
WRESTLING NEWS
**Bryan Danielson will get to cross off a major event in his career by wrestling at Arena Mexico tonight for CMLL’s sold-out Homenaje a Dos Leyendas card. Danielson will team with Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and replacement Matt Sydal against Volador Jr., Blue Panther, Místico & Ultimo Guerrero with Panther being allowed to wear his mask for one night only. Panther, 63, is Danielson’s favorite Luchador and for the uniqueness of the match, he was allowed to don the mask despite losing it in 2008 to Villano V. Moxley is returning for his first match since Revolution earlier this month and has not been on AEW programming throughout March. Sydal takes the place of the injured Wheeler Yuta, who has not wrestled since January 10 and was not cleared to wrestle or travel. The following card is listed:
*Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli & Matt Sydal vs. Blue Panther, Último Guerrero, Místico & Volador Jr.
*Torneo Increible de Parejas Finals: Rocky Romero & Máscara Dorada vs. Atlantis Jr. & Soberano Jr.
*Willow Nightingale, Tessa Blanchard & La Catalina vs. Stephanie Vaquer, Zeuxis & Lluvia
*Mask vs. Mask: Pierrothito vs. Pequeño Olímpico vs. Acero vs. Angelito
*CMLL World Light Heavyweight Championship: Bárbaro Cavernario © vs. Averno
*Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship: Esfinge © vs. Zandokan Jr.
*Mexican National Tag Titles: Rugido & Magnus © vs. Neón & Brillante Jr.
**The CMLL card can be seen live on the promotion’s YouTube channel, but it requires a subscription to its higher tier at $34.99 (USD) per month with the lowest tier offering the show on a nine-day delay.
**The BCC, Willow Nightingale, and referee Bryce Remsberg were part of a panel chat for CMLL on Friday afternoon. Danielson stated he would love to do a Hair vs. Mask match involving himself and Mistico. Matt Sydal cut the best promo I’ve ever heard from him, explaining his history with the BCC, William Regal, and standing up for AEW against the CMLL performers.
**CM Punk will be a guest on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani in-studio this Monday. It will be Punk’s first long-form interview since leaving AEW and returning to WWE last November. While Punk is not advertised for Raw at the Barclays Center, he will be in New York for the interview and could easily be inserted for the go-home Raw before WrestleMania. It is going to be an interesting dance to see how open Punk will/can be given certain things he and AEW have agreed not to speak about publicly even though it’s the events that the audience is most interested in hearing. Tony Khan has an extremely rigid stance in public settings when it comes to CM Punk or any internal matters that could have legal implications where he says absolutely nothing and doesn’t engage on any level. Punk is unlikely to take that hard of a stance and historically, Punk has been the type of person that has wanted to get his side of the story out there. The most famous example was his two-part series with Colt Cabana in November 2014 right before he announced his signing with the UFC and getting everything off his chest while also bringing on a massive lawsuit from his comments and losing a long friendship in the process of that legal mess. Of course, much larger than the AEW exit is the Janel Grant lawsuit and Punk openly referring to Vince McMahon on Raw this past week. I would expect Punk to have much less of a filter regarding McMahon and/or John Laurinaitis. Regardless of what is/isn’t said, it’s going to be a noteworthy interview.
**Vince McMahon has unloaded approximately 3,484,0000 shares of his TKO stock, according to an SEC filing on Thursday evening. This is connected to McMahon’s margin loan he entered with Morgan Stanley in March 2020, which provided McMahon with $85 million four years ago. Wrestlenomics notes that rather than transferring around sixty-five percent of the shares to Morgan Stanley, he transferred the full 3,484,000 shares for an additional payout of $100 million. Since November, McMahon has divested himself of 17.2 million shares and currently holds 11.5 million shares, which equals nearly seven percent of TKO stock. Unlike the prior corporate stock plan in WWE, McMahon’s shares do not hold any additional voting power whereas his “super shares” as Chairman & CEO of WWE provided McMahon with ten times the voting power for each share. It was this structure that allowed McMahon to return to the board of directors and his post at WWE in January 2023 despite the unanimous vote by the board for McMahon not to return.
**Friday Night SmackDown is in Uncasville, Connecticut tonight at the Mohegan Sun Arena with another sell-out. This is a smaller arena with approximately 5,500 tickets distributed, per WrestleTix. They are not advertising any major names including The Rock, Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes, or Seth Rollins. The show will include Jade Cargill in her first appearance since joining the SmackDown brand. The show will also have the final qualifying matches for the tag title ladder match at WrestleMania as we get closer to finalizing the cards for Philadelphia. The following has been announced:
*Jade Cargill appears on the show
*Randy Orton & Kevin Owens vs. Pretty Deadly
*#1 Contenders Qualifying Match: Austin Theory & Grayson Waller vs. Street Profits
*#1 Contenders Qualifying Match: Angel & Berto vs. New Catch Republic
*Dakota Kai vs. Bianca Belair
**AEW Rampage airs at 10 p.m. ET on Friday as it returns to its normal night and time with the following matches and segments taped in Quebec City:
*Roderick Strong vs. Matt Menard in a non-title match
*Dustin Rhodes vs. The Butcher
*Mariah May vs. Nikita
*Deonna Purrazzo vs. Rose
*Timeless Toni Storm speaks
*Bang Bang Gang Family Dinner (This means we are getting multiple “dinner” segments within a week between NXT and Rampage)
**MLW’s War Chamber event streams on TrillerTV+ tonight at 7 p.m. ET from St. Petersburg, Florida with the following matches:
*War Chamber Match: Satoshi Kojima, Shigeo Okumura, Matthew Justice & 1 Called Manders vs. Tom Lawlor, Davey Boy Smith Jr., Richard Holliday & Josh Bishop
*NJPW World Television Championship: Matt Riddle © vs. Kosei Fujita
*MLW Women’s Featherweight Championship: Janai Kai © vs. Unagi Sayaka
*AJ Francis vs. Alex Kane
*Bad Dude Tito in action
*Cesar Duran’s offer to Salina
MLW is also taping its next set of episodes for beIN Sports with a second War Chamber match involving The Calling against Raven, AKIRA, Jake Crist & Jimmy Lloyd, Matt Riddle vs. Timothy Thatcher, Virus vs. Star Jr., and Zayda vs. Sofi Castillo.
**Shigeo Okumura has been added to MLW’s Aztec Lucha card on Saturday, May 11 at Cicero Stadium in Illinois.
**Joey Janela has announced that due to visa issues, Volador Jr. is off the Spring Break card on April 5 where he was set to wrestle Gringo Loco. Janela added that Dralistico will replace Volador Jr. on the card at Penn’s Landing and streaming on TrillerTV+.
**The next Dark Side of the Ring will focus on Harley Race and will air on Vice TV on Tuesday. The production team has secured extremely rare 8mm film footage of Race including the earliest wrestling footage that is available on Race, courtesy of his family.
Next week’s Harley Race episode features newly discovered and incredibly rare 8mm film courtesy of his family, which includes the earliest known wrestling footage of Harley we’ve ever seen.
“The Life and Legends of Harley Race” premieres Tuesday at 10pm on @vicetv. pic.twitter.com/5zwZeDQckh
— Dark Side of the Ring (@DarkSideOfRing) March 29, 2024
**ACTION Pro Wrestling is hosting DEAN~!! Next Thursday in Williamston, New Jersey with a tribute to the late Dean Rassmussen with an eclectic set of matches in his honor. The lineup includes the final match between Timothy Thatcher and Daniel Makabe, Krule vs. Warhorse for the Independent World Championship, Dr. Cerebro vs. Gringo Loco, Mad Dog Connelly vs. Demus El Demonico in a Dog Collar Match, Slim J vs. Adam Priest, Matt Makowski vs. Arez, and Alex Kane defends the ACTION World Championship against Colby Corino. Tickets are $35 and $50 at ACTIONDean.com and will be streaming on IndependentWresting.tv. The Segunda Caida site and the Death Valley Driver Review Board is co-promoting the show.
**NJPW has added a Frontier Zone match to the Sakura Genesis card at Sumo Hall on April 6. The outside talent will be Ayato Yoshida, Takuro Niki, and Chicharito Shoki of 2AW and they will take on Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano & Oleg Boltin.
**Dana White announced the first set of fights for the promotion’s inaugural event in Saudi Arabia on June 22 including the main event. Former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker (25-7) will fight Khamat Chimaev (13-0), which is a really big fight in the division. UFC has also announced Sergei Pavlovich vs. Alexander Volkov, Kelvin Gastelum vs. Daniel Rodriguez, Johnny Walker vs. Volkan Oezdemir, and Ihor Potieria vs. Shara Magomedov. UFC was set to debut in Saudi Arabia earlier this month but the card was pushed back until June. An interesting question is whether any female fighters will be on the card given the restrictions in the country and if they receive the same criticism WWE received when female talents were not part of the initial shows in the country when their deal began in 2018. In time, WWE added Renee Paquette onto the broadcast and later female matches became regular occurrences on the Saudi Arabia shows, although with outfits that covered them as opposed to their usual ring attire.
**The UFC returns to Atlantic City, New Jersey on Saturday for a card on ESPN and ESPN+. It is headlined by a women’s flyweight fight between the top two contenders Erin Blanchfield and Manon Fiorot. The winner would be the deserving title challenger, but champion Alexa Grasso is filming The Ultimate Fighter with Valentina Shevchenko and therefore, will fight at the end of that season and leave the winner of Saturday’s fight either on the sidelines for most if not all, of 2024 – or taking another fight in the interim. Former middleweight champion Chris Weidman is competing against Bruno Silva and it’s going to be a test to see where Weidman is at his age, sustained a lot of injuries, and needs a win to stay afloat.
MAIN CARD (10 p.m. ET on ESPN & ESPN+)
*Erin Blanchfield vs. Manon Fiorot
*Vicente Luque vs. Joaquin Buckley
*Chris Weidman vs. Bruno Silva
*Sedriques Dumas vs. Nursulton Ruziboev
*Bill Algeo vs. Kyle Nelson
*Chidi Njokuani vs. Rhys McKee
PRELIMINARY CARD (7 p.m. on ESPN 2 & ESPN+)
*Nate Landwehr vs. Jamall Emmers
*Loopy Godinez vs. Virna Jandiroba
*Julio Arce vs. Herbert Burns – Arce missed weight by a pound and was fined 20 percent of his purse
*Dennis Buzukja vs. Connor Matthews
*Anton Turkalj vs. Ibo Aslan
*Viktoriya Dudakova vs. Melissa Gatto
*Jacob Malkoun vs. Andre Petroski
*Angel Pachedo vs. Caolan Loughran
**The TKO stock closed at $86.41 on Friday.
*****
MCU L8R: X-Men ’97 Episode 3 Review
Rich Fann and WH Park are joined by John Siino to review Marvel Animation’s X-Men ’97 Episode 3, “Fire Made Flesh”.
*****
POLLOCK & TING: TALK (Vol. 13)
John Pollock & Wai Ting discuss children’s TV, the art of negotiation, Naked News, WrestleMania Week in Philadelphia, and more.
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE
John Pollock and Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite featuring Will Ospreay taking on Katsuyori Shibata in Quebec City.
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POLLOCK & THURSTON
John Pollock and Brandon Thurston discuss their report on WWE’s Consensual Relationship Policy and welcome guests CJ Donald and Brad Balukjian to the show.
*****
upNXT
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review WWE NXT featuring a Prime Target for Trick & Melo, Wolfdogs vs Alpha Academy, and more.
*****
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