POST IT NOTES
**We have a really loaded week on the site with several big shows. On Tuesday, I’ll be releasing an interview with Evan Husney from Dark Side of the Ring and Who Killed WCW? We chat about the development of the series, working with Seven Bucks Productions, and his own thoughts on the Netflix doc series on Vince McMahon. For members of the POST Wrestling Café, Wai Ting and I will be doing weekly reviews of the WCW series beginning this Wednesday immediately after Rewind-A-Dynamite. For episode one, Brian Mann will be stopping by to share his thoughts and these reviews will continue weekly throughout June.
**For the full slate of shows on the POST Wrestling Café this month, we have a listing on the site. This month includes the weekly Double Shot reviews of Who Killed WCW? Two editions of Rewind-A-Wai including a special review of WrestleMania: The Album with Wai Ting, Nate Milton & Kris Ealy, and lots more.
**This Wednesday on Pollock & Thurston, we will be speaking with Professor Alex B. Long to discuss his new book, Professional Wrestling and the Law and we will delve into the Janel Grant case with Long as well. Below is the description of his book, which just came out:
Written by a law professor (who also happens to be a wrestling fan), this book is an entertaining and informative exploration of legal cases involving professional wrestling. Relying upon judicial decisions and court documents, it discusses the legal theories and procedures involved in legal disputes involving professional wrestling and explores how the legal system–an institution devoted to arriving at the truth involved in any conflict–has dealt with the business of professional wrestling, a business with a long history of obscuring the truth. Topics include: the legal issues involved when a wrestler goes into the crowd and beats up a fan; Hulk Hogan’s defamation lawsuit against World Championship Wrestling for statements made during a live pay-per-view event; and race and sex discrimination in professional wrestling.
**Eric Marcotte and I have an hour-long review of UFC 302 discussing Islam Makhachev’s submission win against Dustin Poirier, some terrible scorecards turned in, the first night with the newly designed gloves, and Donald Trump’s appearance at the Prudential Center in Newark.
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw
Tuesday: Interview with Evan Husney, “Who Killed WCW?”
Tuesday: upNXT
Wednesday: Pollock & Thurston
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Wednesday: Double Shot – “Who Killed WCW?” Ep. 1 w/ Brian Mann (POST Wrestling Café)
Thursday: Rewind-A-Wai – G1 Climax from Aug. 4, 2013 (POST Wrestling Café)
Friday: POST Puroresu with WH Park & Karen Peterson
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (POST Wrestling Café)
WRESTLING NEWS
**The four-part “Who Killed WCW?” doc series premieres on Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on VICE TV (and Crave in Canada) and should generate a renewed debate on the collapse and demise of the company in 2001. I have had a chance to view the first episode of the season and the strength of the series includes some incredible camcorder footage from the final night of Nitro, which someone had for all these years. The executives in the decision-making roles are the ones I’m most interested in with former Turner executive Brad Siegel featured in the first episode, and former WWF president Stu Snyder in later episodes. The first episode is largely focused on the doldrums of WCW in the early ‘90s when Eric Bischoff was named executive producer and signed Hulk Hogan and tried to spruce up the product, climaxing with the N.W.O. in 1996 and being off to the races. There is a lot of Bischoff in the first episode, and you can’t tell the story of WCW without him, you also need the balance when it comes to accurately assessing his successes and failures as both lists are long. What I’m hoping for, is a nuanced breakdown of all the factors and not simply, “Turner higher-ups hated wrestling” or “creative sucked” because there are elements of both. Some factors affected WCW from their placement in the corporate structure, but WCW was not getting canceled in the summer of 1998 and the fall in popularity was of their own doing with the fall of business in 1999 and a freefall the next year. For the modern fan, this should demonstrate how harmful it was for WCW to disappear and nearly two decades of one strong national company until the arrival of AEW. Most remarkable is that there is still an audience for WCW-related programming and that goes for ECW, which has its documentary coming up on A&E. Many fans still view 1997-2001 as the golden era of their fandom even as we approach nearly a quarter century removed. This series features the team behind Dark Side of the Ring along with Seven Bucks Productions. The project was planned before Dwayne Johnson’s addition to the WWE’s board of directors and allows for WWE talent to participate just as they did for Tales from the Territories. While I don’t know all the interview subjects throughout the season, the two notable omissions in the first episode are Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan with Flair noting publicly he was not asked but opens a can of works given the Dark Side episode on Plane Ride from Hell and whether he would have participated.
**WWE Raw is at the GIANT Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania with WrestleTix’s latest report stating over 8,800 tickets have been distributed. The following matches and segments are listed:
*Non-title match: Damian Priest © vs. Rey Mysterio
*Sheamus vs. Ludwig Kaiser
*New Day vs. AOP
*Finn Balor vs. Dragon Lee
*Ricochet vs. Bron Breakker
*Natalya vs. Kiana James
*Liv Morgan to appear
**WWE has no NBA or NHL playoff competition tonight which should lead to the program topping all of cable. Raw will air against the NBA Finals if the series between the Celtics and Mavericks goes to Game 5. Raw will air against Game 2 of the Edmonton Oilers vs. Florida Panthers next Monday (which will be a major factor for its Canadian viewership) and will air against the Stanley Cup Finals if it goes to a seventh game on June 24. SmackDown airs against Game 4 of the NBA Finals on June 14 and Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. AEW Dynamite airs against Game 3 of the NBA Finals on June 12 and AEW Collision airs against Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final on June 15.
**Friday’s episode of SmackDown averaged 223,700 viewers and 72,500 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360 in Canada. The show ranked sixth among sports programming, which was led by the Oilers vs. Stars with approximately 1.67 million viewers and the Toronto Blue Jays vs. Pittsburgh Pirates.
**The KOPW Championship match between Yuya Uemura and Great O-Khan at Dominion this Sunday will be contested under ‘Storm Catch Rules’. The fan vote was 58.3 percent in favor of this stipulation with a fifteen-minute time limit and each participant is allowed two rope breaks during the match. O-Khan’s proposal was for a two-of-three fall match with a 61-minute time limit and received 41.7 percent of the votes.
**TNA has released a new series called Immersed with the first episode focusing on Mike Santana’s return at Rebellion against Steve Maclin.
**GCW’s Cage of Survival 3 card on Sunday culminated with Mance Warner leaving as the promotion’s champion after the Gauntlet of Survival match. There were a bunch of false finishes beginning with Broski Jimmy (Jimmy Lloyd) supposedly winning the title and the graphic appearing as they are about to go off the air when Joey Janela returned from being injured to claim his spot in the gauntlet and won the title. Then, Cole Radrick cashed in his brass ring where he could get any match he wanted and lost quickly to Janela. Finally, Mance Warner used his Call Your Shot opportunity and pinned Janela in nine seconds to go off the air as the champion. Last week, heel commissioner Matt Cardona stripped Blake Christian of the title due to Christian being booked in the Best of the Super Juniors tournament and the vacant title became the focus of Sunday’s show. Earlier in the show, Effy beat Warner in a Cage of Survival match, which GCW has been promoting for a long time and should set up a rematch with Warner’s title on the line based on how it was booked.
**During MLW’s Battle Riot VI event, the company announced its major events will be streaming on YouTube for its members. MLW will stream its Anniversary card for free on beIN Sports and YouTube on June 22 followed by membership-only events on YouTube with Blood & Thunder on July 12 in Tampa, Summer of the Beasts on August 29 in New York City, and Fightland on September 14 in Atlanta. MLW was previously offering its events on TrillerTV+ until recently with Battle Riot streaming free on YouTube.
**Cyndi Lauper has stated that her upcoming tour will be her final one in North America. The singer, who was an integral part of WWE’s first WrestleMania and the crossover with MTV, is set for a 23-city tour beginning in October and running until early December. The connection began with Lou Albano being cast as Lauper’s father in the music video for
“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, and opened the door for an on-screen feud.
In 1984, Lauper participated in The Brawl to End it All at Madison Square Garden, which drew a 9.0 rating on MTV featuring Lauper in the corner of Wendi Richter, who defeated Fabulous Moolah for the Women’s Championship. WWF and MTV followed with The War to Settle the Score in February 1985 to set up the main event of the first WrestleMania, which drew a 9.1 rating. The second special drew much better at The Garden due to the 1-on-1 match between Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper with Lauper getting involved in the match. This set the stage for WrestleMania 1 with Hogan teaming with Mr. T against Piper & Paul Orndorff while Lauper appeared in Richter’s corner for her match with Leilani Kai.
In the third season of “Young Rock”, WWE performer Becky Lynch portrayed Lauper for a recreation of her involvement in the mid-’80s.
Lauper’s final North American date is scheduled for December 5 in Chicago at the United Center.
MMA NEWS
**It was very strange for UFC to postpone today’s UFC 303 press conference and indicates it had to have been a significant issue they were dealing with. On Saturday night after the pay-per-view, Dana White said he was flying straight to Dublin for the press conference, and by Sunday morning, Michael Chandler was alerted that the presser was off before he got a flight to Ireland. Naturally, people are going to speculate about Conor McGregor and what’s going on, which is fair given his track record. It was an unfortunate deal for the fans in Ireland because there was so much demand to see McGregor and Chandler in person as the 3Arena made 10,000 tickets available to attend for free and they were immediately snatched up. While UFC is using the term “postponed”, it’s hard to imagine they can pull off an international press conference this close to the fight and interrupt the final weeks of hard training for the fighters. On The MMA Hour, Ariel Helwani reported that the postponement of the press conference had nothing to do with any drug testing violation or anything salacious, criminal, etc.
McGregor has released a statement:
In consultation with the UFC, todays press conference was cancelled due to a series of obstacles outside of our control. I apologize to my Irish fans, and fans around the world, for the inconvenience and appreciate all your passion and support. I can’t wait to put on the greatest all-time show in the Octagon.
**The TKO stock closed at $108.17 on Monday.
**The next season of The Ultimate Fighter premieres on Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN, ESPN Deportes, and ESPN+. This season’s coaches are UFC flyweight champion Alexa Grasso and former champ Valentina Shevchenko. The season will male featherweights and middleweights with the following fighters set to participate:
Men’s Featherweights:
-Edwin Cooper Jr. (6-1)
-Nathan Fletcher (8-1)
-Zygimantas Ramaska (9-2)
-Roedie Roets (7-1)
-Mairon Santos (13-1)
-Kaan Ofli (11-2-1)
-Bekhzod Usmonov (12-4)
Men’s Middleweights
-Omran Chaaban (6-1)
-Paddy McCrorry (4-1)
-Giannis Bachar (9-2)
-Thomas Theocharis (9-5)
-Ryan Loder (6-1)
-Shamidkhan Magomedov (8-1)
-Robert Valentin (10-3)
-Mark Hulme (12-3)
****
UFC 302
John Pollock and Eric Marcotte review UFC 302 with Islam Makhachev defending the lightweight title against Dustin Poirier.
****
COLLISION COURSE
Kate From MTL is joined this week by Bruce Lord for a look at AEW Collision, featuring Will Ospreay vs Kyle O’Reilly.
****
THE LONG & WINDING ROYAL ROAD feat. Daniel Makabe
Daniel Makabe joins WH Park to review one of the most famous tag matches in 90s AJPW history: Doug Furnas & Dan Kroffat vs Kenta Kobashi & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi from May 25th, 1992.
****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown featuring AJ Styles making a big announcement. Plus, Brandon Thurston joins us.
****
MCU L8R: X-Men (2000)
This week’s free MCU L8R looks back at 2000’s X-Men. Brent Chittenden returns to bring his thoughts to the table for the film that started it all.
****
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