POST IT NOTES
**Wai Ting and John Pollock are live at 10:10 p.m. ET tonight following AEW Dynamite with a review of the show, the handling of the footage from All In, and all the latest news.
**Rewind-A-Wai #154 is out this Friday with a look back at the February 18, 2002, episode of WWF Raw in Chicago. One month before WrestleMania X8, the show includes Hulk Hogan’s first appearance on Raw in nine years to set up his match with The Rock with a famous in-ring segment, and not-so-well-remembered attack afterward. John & Wai will look at all major news from that week in wrestling history, the key programs being set up for WrestleMania, and the state of the company in 2002. This show is available to ALL members at POSTWrestlingCafe.com.
**The POST Wrestling Café will have a slew of shows out in the coming days including Rewind-A-SmackDown, Rewind-A-Wai, and MCU L8R on Friday. On Saturday, Karen Peterson and Bruce Lord review NJPW’s Windy City Riot, and John Siino & Kate from Montreal return with Collision Course.
**The April edition of POST Puroresu with WH Park & Karen Peterson will drop late Thursday night as they chat Sakura Genesis, the departing talents from STARDOM, Rossy Ogawa’s upcoming press conference, and Giulia appearing at NXT Stand & Deliver.
**The UFC 300 review will be live this Sunday at 11 a.m. ET with John Pollock and Jack Wannan.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Dynamite with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Thursday: POST Puroresu with WH Park & Karen Peterson
Friday: MCU L8R with WH Park & Rich Fann
Friday: Rewind-A-Wai #154 – WWF Raw from Feb. 18, 2002
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with Wai Ting & Neal Flanagan
Saturday: NJPW Windy City Riot with Bruce Lord & Karen Peterson
Saturday: Collision Course with John Siino & Kate from Montreal
Sunday: UFC 300 with John Pollock & Jack Wannan
Sunday: The N.W.A. Podcast with Nate Milton, Andrew Thompson, Kris Ealy & Two-Way Ray
WRESTLING NEWS
**One of the more unique promotional tactics will be the focus of tonight’s Dynamite episode with the company airing backstage footage involving CM Punk and Jack Perry from All In at Wembley Stadium last August. The announcement on Saturday generated a lot of groans from the audience as the company continues to live under the cloud of Phil Brooks and becomes the central figure of tonight’s show while working for another company. It’s hard to cast a stern judgment until the footage airs tonight, how it is handled, and if they can successfully use this footage for its own business and propel the attention toward its pay-per-view next weekend. The ideal scenario is that the footage is vindication for Jack Perry (which inevitably makes the company look bad for taking him off television for so long and punishing him to the extent it has) and can return as the “Scapegoat” and champion of the people while transferring the heel heat onto the Young Bucks as the ones who banished him, rather than Tony Khan.
The show is coming off two weak numbers, although have maintained a solid ranking position against its cable opposition but a loss of audience is still a loss. WrestleTix reports just under 3,000 tickets distributed at the Charleston Coliseum in West Virginia, so the airing of the footage has not led to any significant sale of tickets since the announcement. The following matches and segments are advertised:
*The airing of the All In footage
*Title Eliminator: Samoa Joe vs. Dustin Rhodes
*TNT Championship: Adam Copeland © vs. Penta El Zero Miedo
*HOOK, Chris Jericho & Katsuyori Shibata vs. Shane Taylor, Lee Moriarty & Anthony Ogogo
*Mariah May vs. Anna Jay
*Champagne Toast with Timeless Toni Storm and Thunder Rosa
**Dark Side of the Ring presented Welcome to My Nightmare: The Chris Colt Story on Tuesday and was among the most riveting episodes in the history of the series. Colt (real name Charles Harris) was a journeyman wrestler who performed under a multitude of names including Chris Colt, The Chris Colt Experience, Chuck Dupree, Paul Dupree, and Chris Von Colt (where he played a Nazi in Alabama). He bounced around many territories and had a lengthy tag run with Ron Dupree, who was his lover. This portion documented his struggles of being a gay wrestler during that era, which you can only imagine given the time. They focused on his upbringing where he was thrown out of school and fled his home after his father attempted to kill his mother and himself., leading to a life full of drugs, sex, and an apparent death wish. It outlined how he formed a friendship with the late singer Janis Joplin and would tell friends that he expected to die by the age of 27, which was the age when Joplin died. One of the strengths of Dark Side is locating people close to the subject that are not household names and this was a perfect example of that ethos with close friend Bill Anderson, family members Ty Haggart and Rhonda Rondeau, historian and close friend Tom Burke, and film director Jack Fritscher. From the wrestling perspective, Jim Cornette and Bill Anderson were leaned on for biographical information and first-person accounts and aided by an unpublished 100-page manuscript written by Colt. It was one insane story after another from Colt wrestling after taking LSD and tripping out during the match with the belief that giant spiders were crawling over the cage and into the ring (Sanshiro Takagi was probably taking notes), and a crazy incident on the road where Colt was strung out and started punching Bill Anderson and Mike Boyette, which led to Boyette choking him unconscious and trying to run him over with the car when Anderson steered the vehicle away from Colt’s body on the road. Later in life, Colt was involved in gay pornography and this area is covered by Fritcher, who had a deep analytical assessment of the industry, its ties to the gay population, and a profound reflection on Colt’s life beyond distilling his legacy to one word or thought. This was a great episode with a lot of tragedy, trauma, and darkness but for a figure that so little was known about, it was a tremendous subject for a one-hour documentary, and I would highly recommend it.
**The remaining episodes for season five of Dark Side of the Ring will cover “Gentleman” Chris Adams, “Sensational” Sherri, The Sandman, and Black Saturday.
**NXT averaged 85,000 viewers and 33,000 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360 and did not rank among the top ten sports programs on Tuesday.
**Brandon Thurston shared data on the post-pay-per-view “bump” that Raw received after WrestleMania. It was the largest increase in the show’s viewership (compared with the median average from the prior four episodes) since WrestleMania 31 in 2015. This past Monday’s show experienced a thirty-six percent bump, last year’s increased by twenty-six percent, a nineteen percent increase in 2022, and a fifteen percent increase in 2021.
**Tuesday’s episode of NXT appeared to be Bron Breakker’s wrap-up with the brand after dropping the tag titles with Baron Corbin and giving a farewell speech after the show went off the air. Breakker had already been introduced on the SmackDown brand but remained tag champions with Corbin as the two clicked and revitalized Corbin. Breakker has been ready for the call-up for a long time but having heel run over the past year was another dimension to his presentation, which he took to seamlessly.
**Bayley noted that one of the masked men who carried her on the stage at WrestleMania was former Tough Enough contestant AJ Kirsch. Kirsch was also utilized as an off-duty officer during an angle with Paul Heyman and Cody Rhodes on the February 26 episode of Raw.
**Game Changer Wrestling has added shows for Toronto and Cleveland to coincide with Money in the Bank and SummerSlam. The promotion will return to Toronto on Thursday, July 5 for a card at the Opera House, which they last ran in March 2023. The show will take place before WWE’s three consecutive nights at Scotiabank Arena with SmackDown, Money in the Bank, and NXT Heatwave. GCW will run The Temple in Cleveland on August 2, which is the night before SummerSlam at Cleveland Browns Stadium.
**House of Glory has announced a brother vs. brother match for its Cinco de Mayo event on May 5 with Penta El Zero Miedo vs. Rey Fenix. Fenix has been out of action since October due to an injury. The May 5 show will also include Mike Santana defending the HOG Heavyweight title against Psycho Clown with the show streaming on Triller TV.
**Fuego of CMLL has been added to MLW’s Aztec Lucha event on May 11 at Cicero Stadium in Illinois. The promotion is advertising Mistico, Atlantis, Ultimo Guerrero, El Felino, Barbaro Cavernario, Atlantis Jr., Magnus, Star Jr., Averno, Virus, Villano III Jr., Guerrero Maya Jr., and Okumura.
**WWE has released a Hall of Fame video blog following Paul Heyman throughout the day of his speech. The vlog includes Heyman’s interactions with Paul Levesque, Stephanie McMahon, The Undertaker, Roman Reigns, Madusa, CM Punk, and other talent.
PAST SHOWS
*****
POLLOCK & THURSTON
John Pollock and Brandon Thurston assess the fallout from WrestleMania 40 and WWE’s messaging regarding its new era.
*****
REWIND-A-RAW
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Raw After WrestleMania XL from Philadelphia as new champion Cody Rhodes is confronted by The Rock.
*****
WRESTLEMANIA 40 – NIGHT 2
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WrestleMania XL Night 2 from Philadelphia, PA featuring Cody Rhodes vs. Roman Reigns.
*****
NXT STAND & DELIVER
Davie Portman and John Siino review NXT Stand and Deliver 2024 as well as WrestleMania XL Saturday.
*****
WRESTLEMANIA 40 – NIGHT 1
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WrestleMania XL Night 1 from Philadelphia, PA featuring Cody Rhodes & Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns & The Rock.
*****
Subscribe to POST Wrestling
https://postwrestling.com/subscribe
POST Wrestling Forum
https://forum.postwrestling.com
Support our Patreon – The POST Wrestling Café
http://www.patreon.com/POSTwrestling
