POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Dynamite will be live at 10:05 p.m. ET tonight with Andrew Thompson joining me to review Blood & Guts and chat about all the news. Plus, your feedback & more.
**Former co-host of The Bump Matt Camp was our guest on Pollock & Thurston to speak about his nearly five years at the company and his new channel The Wrestling Matt.
**We will have our next G1 Climax podcast coming out on Thursday with Eric Marcotte joining me to chat about the Day 3 & Day 4 matches on the POST Wrestling Café.
**Rich Fann & WH Park will be reviewing “Deadpool 2” on Thursday’s edition of MCU L8R with guest Wai Ting as their countdown to “Deadpool and Wolverine” continues.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Dynamite with John Pollock & Andrew Thompson
Thursday: G1 Climax – Day 3 & 4 with John Pollock & Eric Marcotte (POST Wrestling Café)
Thursday: MCU L8R – “Deadpool 2” with Rich Fann, WH Park & Wai Ting (POST Wrestling Café)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: Collision Course with John Siino & Kate from Montreal(POST Wrestling Café)
Sunday: G1 Climax – Day 5 & 6 with Karen Peterson & Kate from Montreal (POST Wrestling Café)
WRESTLING NEWS
**AEW presents Blood & Guts from the Bridgestone Arena tonight in Nashville, Tennessee. There will be a major impact on the first hour after President Joe Biden announced he would address the country at 8 p.m. ET. The political discourse has been amplified since Biden’s withdrawal from the race and endorsing Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee and while a presidential address would already have a large audience, tonight’s speech will likely be much more significant. The Blood & Guts match itself should take up the lion’s share of the program and will make the second week in a row where they have presented a lengthy match presentation. Unlike last week, the audience knows Blood & Guts is going long one would assume they won’t begin the match until Biden’s speech ends.
WrestleTix last report lists over 4,200 tickets distributed, so it’s a satisfactory number given what AEW has been drawing. They should surpass the 4,500 mark they drew in Calgary two weeks ago but fall short of the 5,200 figures in Chicago earlier this month.
Below is the lineup:
*Blood & Guts: Team AEW (Swerve Strickland, Mark Briscoe, The Acclaimed & Darby Allin) vs. Team Elite (Kazuchika Okada, Young Bucks, Hangman Page & Jack Perry)
*FTW Championship: Chris Jericho © vs. Minoru Suzuki
*Dr. Britt Baker vs. Hikaru Shida
*The debut of “The Glamour” Mariah May
*MJF to appear
**The NBA issued a statement today formally rejecting WBD’s matching offer to the Amazon bid. The NBA stated, “Warner Bros. Discovery’s most recent proposal did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offer and, therefore, we have entered into a long-term arrangement with Amazon”.
WBD has not responded yet but it could very well end in legal action with WBD arguing the merits of its matching offer. Most pundits see this as a losing scenario for WBD with the NBA not wanting to be in business with TNT any longer and it’s only a question of when this conflict resolves itself.
**Pat McAfee confirmed on Wednesday he is returning to ESPN’s College Game Day this fall.
I can't wait to get back on the road with the entire @CollegeGameDay crew #PMSLive https://t.co/II5altOdAK pic.twitter.com/ola2BhvFFT
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) July 24, 2024
**The origin story of AEW was repeated on The Rich Eisen Show on Tuesday when Tony Khan was promoting Blood & Guts. All In 2018 was brought up by host TJ Jefferson and Khan clarified that the idea of AEW preceded that show by several months. Khan retold the story of running into his friend and head of TNT & TBS, Kevin Reilly, at a party in April and pitching him on the idea of having pro wrestling return to the network. This was during the period when WWE was negotiating its television rights and the figures being reported represented a massive upgrade with their five-year contracts with NBC Universal and Fox. In the interview, Khan said he first spoke with Matt & Dana Massie on July 3, 2018, and then began negotiating with Chris Jericho’s agent, Barry Bloom. It was multiple factors and incredible timing that laid the foundation for AEW and it shouldn’t be discounted that All In in September 2018 was a very important show because it was the proof in the pudding of what this idea could materialize into. The fact that the Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, and Hangman Page had deals coming up with ROH over the final months of 2018, Kenny Omega’s was expiring in early 2019 with New Japan, and Jericho was a free agent provided the nucleus of a start-up promotion. But the key was Reilly and having television distribution in the fall of 2019, not to mention ripping up the original deal in early 2020 for more favorable terms, which were a great cushion for the unforeseen pandemic that would wipe out live event revenue for over a year.
**WWE Raw saw an eight percent increase in its viewership this week averaging 1,793,000 viewers and a five percent uptick in its 18-49 audience with 778,000 viewers (0.58). Last week’s episode aired against MLB’s Home Run Derby whereas the competition was reduced this week. The show averaged 1,805,000 (0.58 in the demo) in the first hour and grew to 1,905,000 (0.63) in the second hour led by the CM Punk and Drew McIntyre segment kicking off that hour, which was the peak in overall viewers and the core demo. The final hour averaged 1,675,000 (0.56) including the main event of Sami Zayn & Jey Uso beating Finn Balor & JD McDonagh. Overall, it was Raw’s largest audience and 18-49 figure since July 1. (Wrestlenomics & PW Torch)
**Raw ranked first among sports programming in Canada on Monday with 246,300 viewers and 79,100 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360. It was a rare Monday night with a Toronto Blue Jays game with Raw beating out the NBA Summer League, and two other MLB games for the top spot.
**NXT averaged 80,400 viewers and 27,800 in the demo on Sportsnet 360 on Tuesday, which ranked sixth among sports programming.
**The G1 Climax has its fourth day on Thursday at 5:30 a.m. ET on New Japan World. The B Block is led by Henare, Konosuke Takeshita, and Yuya Uemura with four points each and 2-0 records with Takeshita and Uemura headlining Thursday’s show in a match that could be spectacular. Below is the full card:
*B BLOCK: Konosuke Takeshita (2-0) vs. Yuya Uemura (2-0)
*B BLOCK: HENARE (2-0) vs. David Finlay (0-2)
*B BLOCK: El Phantasmo (0-2) vs. Yota Tsuji (1-1)
*B BLOCK: Jeff Cobb (1-1) vs. Ren Narita (1-1)
*B BLOCK: Hirooki Goto (0-2) vs. Oleg Boltin (1-1)
*Tetsuya Naito & Shingo Takagi vs. EVIL & Dick Togo
*Gabe Kidd & Jake Lee vs. Zack Sabre Jr. & Kosei Fujita
*Shota Umino, Tomoaki Honma & Shoma Kato vs. Great O-Khan, Callum Newman & Francesco Akira
*SANADA & Taka Michinoku vs. Toru Yano & Katsuya Murashima
**The G1 has an off day on Friday and resumes on Saturday in Nagasaki and back-to-back nights in Fukuoka on Sunday & Monday.
**WWE kicks off its three-show tour of Japan on Thursday at Edion Arena in Osaka followed by back-to-back shows at Sumo Hall. The tour includes Cody Rhodes, Shinsuke Nakamura, Meiko Satomura, Sami Zayn, and Damage CTRL among the talent listed.
**Trevor Lee (formerly Cameron Grimes in WWE) will be facing Eli Isom on Black Label Pro’s “Old Habits Die Screaming” event on Friday at the Logan Square Auditorium in Chicago.
**The Wrestling Classic spoke with MJF about his injury at Full Gear last November where he suffered a torn labrum in his left shoulder and a dislocated hip. He also spoke about going to wrestle for CMLL next week against Templario.
**Tyler Nichols of JoBlo recently interviewed Chris Jericho about his upcoming role in the horror film Dark Match. The plot centers around a small wrestling company that runs a show in a community run by a cult leader.
MMA NEWS
**The Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC) held its annual meetings this week and voted on two rule changes that will go into effect later this year. The first is removing the rule that prohibits downward elbow strikes (the “12 to 6” elbow) where fighters have more freedom with the angles of which to deliver downward elbows. This was always a contentious ruling due to the allowance of elbows from different angles but not straight down. Famously, this ruling is attached as an asterisk on the record of Jon Jones, who was disqualified in a December 2009 fight with Matt Hamill for breaking this rule and is the only loss on his record. The other rule is clarifying the language of what constitutes a grounded opponent. The new language states:
A fighter shall be considered grounded and may not be legally kneed or kicked to the head when any part of their body other than their hands or feet is in contact with the canvas (ground).
There are several caveats to the rule changes. These changes are recommendations from the ABC and still have to be adopted by the individual state commissions and would not go into effect until November 1. This is where it becomes very tricky as we’ve seen with past rule changes where some states adopt the changes and others don’t resulting in different rules for different parts of the country.
**Front Office Sports has a story on the FTC’s decision to outlaw noncompete clauses and what impact it could have on UFC fighters. Lawyer Jason Cruz of MMA Payout argues that it could have an impact on middle or lower-tier fighters but would make less sense for some of the bigger name fighters to leave the UFC and their earning power in the top organization.
**Episode 2 of UFC Embedded before this Saturday’s card in Manchester, England.
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POLLOCK & THURSTON
Matt Camp joins John Pollock and Brandon Thurston to speak about his tenure at WWE.
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upNXT
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review WWE NXT from July 23rd, 2024 featuring Brooks Jensen vs Josh Briggs in a No Disqualification match.
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REWIND-A-RAW
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Raw as CM Punk announces his medical clearance and Dominik Mysterio delivers some harsh words to Liv Morgan.
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G1 Climax 34 Night 1 & 2
G1 coverage begins at POST! Bruce Lord & Karen Peterson review and rate all 19 matches of the opening weekend including Tetsuya Naito vs. Shingo Takagi and Yota Tsuji vs. Konosuke Takeshita.
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THE N.W.A. Podcast
The Nubian Wrestling Advocates are back to discuss Joe Biden’s presidential race exit, “Terry from Florida”, SummerSlam, and more.
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TNA Slammiversary Review
John Pollock reviews TNA Slammiversary featuring Moose vs. Nic Nemeth vs. Josh Alexander vs. Joe Hendry vs. Frankie Kazarian vs. Steve Maclin for the TNA Heavyweight title.
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