POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-SmackDown is live tonight at 10:05 p.m. ET. Wai Ting and I will go through the news including Tony Khan’s comments on the ROH media call, the WBD suit against the NBA, Blood & Guts ratings & more. Plus, your calls and feedback after the review of SmackDown.
**We have a special edition of the audio news update, which all members (including the free tier) of the POST Wrestling Café can access. In addition to my obit on Leo Burke, Jack Wannan previews UFC 304 and goes over the recent rule changes voted on by the Association of Boxing Commissions. If you join the free tier, you will be able to hear today’s update.
**Kate from Montreal & Karen Peterson will have a G1 Climax podcast this Sunday to recap the weekend cards in the tournament.
**MCU L8R’s review of Deadpool & Wolverine will be live next Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on the POST Wrestling Café.
POST SCHEDULE
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: POSTmarks with Bruce Lord & David Meyers
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
**Warner Bros. Discover and Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), Inc. filed a lawsuit on Friday in the New York Supreme Court against the NBA and a summons has been issued to the league to respond within twenty days. WBD is fighting the NBA’s deal with Amazon Prime, which is believed to be worth $1.9 billion per year, and WBD attempting to match the offer. The NBA responded on Wednesday that WBD did not match the offer and was formally announcing its new deals with Disney, NBC, and Amazon Prime to commence with the 2025-26 season. WBD’s stock did not react well on Thursday falling under $8 but is trading higher on Friday. Over the last year, the WBD stock has fallen by 35 percent and there is a lot of concern over how the network will be impacted by the loss of the NBA due to carriage fees and advertiser losses despite the savings.
TNT Sports issued the following:
“Given the NBA’s unjustified rejection of our matching of a third-party offer, we have taken legal action to enforce our rights. We strongly believe this is not just our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans who want to keep watching our industry-leading NBA content with the choice and flexibility we offer them through our widely distributed WBD video-first distribution platforms – including TNT and Max.”
**Tony Khan continues to be bullish on AEW’s negotiations with WBD while speaking on the ROH Death Before Dishonor media call on Thursday. After taking a question from Brandon Thurston where Khan denied having a deal in principle with WBD, he brought up that a media member informed him that WWE PR is privately stating that AEW’s TV deal is done and it’s for the same amount as the previous deal. Khan flatly denied this and had no idea why WWE PR is speaking about his business. This is when Khan doubled down on the negotiations and stated, “It’s going to be a great deal with a big increase, over what we’ve been doing.”
**Friday Night SmackDown is a taped episode from Omaha last week due to the Japanese tour. The show features a gauntlet match to determine the next challengers for DIY’s tag titles. The following matches are part of tonight’s show:
*WWE Tag Team Championship #1 Contenders Gauntlet Match: Tama Tonga & Tonga Loa vs. Pretty Deadly vs. Apollo Crews & Baron Corbin vs. Angel & Berto vs. Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows vs. Street Profits
*LA Knight vs. Santos Escobar
*Bayley & Michin vs. Tiffany Stratton & Nia Jax
**ROH presents Death Before Dishonor on Honor Club tonight from the Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Multiple matches have been added to the show with the latest lineup:
*ROH Championship: Mark Briscoe © vs. Roderick Strong
*ROH Women’s Championship: Athena © vs. Queen Aminata
*ROH Women’s Television Title: Billie Starkz © vs. Red Velvet
*ROH Pure Championship: Wheeler Yuta © vs. Lee Moriarty
*ROH Tag Team Titles: Matt Taven & Mike Bennett © vs. Kyle O’Reilly & Tomohiro Ishii
*ROH Television Title – Survival of the Fittest Elimination Match: Atlantis Jr. © vs. Brian Cage vs. Lee Johnson vs. Lio Rush vs. Shane Taylor vs. Johnny TV
*Texas Death Match: Leyla Hirsch vs. Diamante
*Komander vs. The Beast Mortos
*Mansoor & Mason Madden vs. TBA (pre-show)
**Friday night’s episode of AEW Rampage will include the Royal Rampage battle royal to determine the AEW title challenger at Grand Slam in September. The following matches were taped this week in Nashville for tonight’s show at 10 p.m. ET:
*Royal Rampage Battle Royal
*Kyle Fletcher & Rush vs. Private Party vs. The Righteous vs. The Outrunners
*Leyla Grey vs. Kris Statlander
*Lance Archer in action
**Death Triangle will headline tonight’s CMLL card at Arena Mexico when they take on Mascara Dorada, Volador Jr., and Mistico. It isn’t the first time the Lucha Bros. have wrestled for CMLL, but it’s been many years since they have appeared. The show airs live for members at the top level of CMLL’s YouTube channel with a card that includes Rocky Romero & Ultimo Guerrero vs. Titan & Templario (who will be challenging MJF next Friday).
**Denise Salcedo spoke with CM Punk at San Diego Comic Con about his pending return at SummerSlam and his decision to go to WWE last year. Punk stated that Vince McMahon being out of the picture helped to “illuminate the way” and clarified that it went both ways and that there was a lot of history and having one out of the equation helped. McMahon was still a key figure at TKO when Punk returned in November of last year and didn’t resign for another two months. He said if WWE was the way it is today, he never would have left ten years ago. On positive memories at AEW, he cited the return match with Darby Allin in September 2021 at All Out, which remains the most purchased event in the company’s history.
**Alex McCarthy interviewed Paul Levesque and Nick Khan briefly while they were in London meeting with Mayor Sadiq Khan.
**House of Glory has its High-Intensity card at the NYC Arena tonight featuring Swerve Strickland taking on Amazing Red along with Mike Santana vs. Steve Maclin in a NY Street Fight for the House of Glory heavyweight title, Gringo Loco vs. Kevin Knight for the Cruiserweight title, Carlos Ramirez vs. Zilla Fatu for the Crown Jewel title, The Mane Event vs. Charles Mason & Nolo Kitano for the tag titles, The Ultra Violette vs. Megan Bayne for the women’s title, and the Matt Travis Memorial Battle Royal. The card will stream on Triller TV+ at 7 p.m. ET.
**Black Label Pro presents Old Habits Die Screaming tonight at 8:30 p.m. ET on Triller TV+ including Trevor Lee’s first match since leaving WWE when he takes on Eli Isom.
**The TKO stock closed at $107.61 on Friday.
**The G1 Climax continues with shows on Saturday & Sunday. After four shows, the standout performers have been Konosuke Takeshita and Yuya Uemura at the top of the list. The two had an incredible match on Thursday and might be the best of the tournament, so far. It’s been an enjoyable tournament so far with very good matches (and several exceptions). The attendance figures have been subpar as the opening night generated a good number topping 4,100 but the follow-up shows are much lower. Zack Sabre Jr. and EVIL lead the A Block with six points each and are undefeated, the B Block is led by Yuya Uemura with a 3-0 record and six points as he sits alone on top. Great O-Khan is the only one with any points and a 0-3 record after the first week. This year’s format allows the top three point earners in each block to advance to the playoff round and the top point earner in each block gets a bye to the semi-finals.
Saturday, July 27 at 3 a.m. ET in Nagasaki:
*A BLOCK: Tetsuya Naito (1-2) vs. EVIL (3-0)
*A BLOCK: Zack Sabre Jr. (3-0) vs. Jake Lee (1-2)
*A BLOCK: Shota Umino (1-2) vs. Great O-Khan (0-3)
*A BLOCK: SANADA (1-2) vs. Gabe Kidd (2-1)
*A BLOCK: Shingo Takagi (2-1) vs. Callum Newman (1-2)
Sunday, July 28 at 4 a.m. in Fukuoka:
*B BLOCK: Yota Tsuji (1-2) vs. Hirooki Goto (1-2)
*B BLOCK: David Finlay (1-2) vs. Ren Narita (2-1)
*B BLOCK: Konosuke Takeshita (2-1) vs. HENARE (2-1)
*B BLOCK: Yuya Uemura (3-0) vs. Jeff Cobb (1-2)
*B BLOCK: Oleg Boltin (1-2) vs. El Phantasmo (1-2)
G1 Climax Podcasts
Day 1 & Day 2 with Bruce Lord & Karen Peterson
Day 3 & Day 4 with John Pollock & Eric Marcotte
MMA NEWS
**The UFC 304 card is Saturday from the Co-op Live in Manchester, England. A major issue has been UFC’s decision to maintain its pay-per-view start time in North America and therefore, the main card won’t be starting until 3 a.m. local time. This has caused a lot of unrest among international fighters, who have had to tailor their preparation to fighting at the odd time. There is a precedent as UFC 204 in October 2016 in England had the same format to preserve the North American window. The top fights are Leon Edwards defending the welterweight championship against Belal Muhammad and interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall defending against Curtis Blaydes in a pair of rematches. Edwards and Muhammad fought in March 2021 in a fight Edwards was winning when an errant eye poke to Muhammad caused the fight to end and ruled a no-contest. Muhammad is undefeated in his last ten fights and has been deserving of a title fight for a while. Aspinall and Blaydes fought two years ago in a fight that ended in 15 seconds due to a knee injury to Aspinall. He missed a year of action and became the interim champion last November with Jon Jones remaining the official champion. In seventeen pro fights, Aspinall has only been out of the first round three times and has never gone to a third round.
MAIN CARD (10 p.m. ET on pay-per-view)
*UFC Welterweight Championship: Leon Edwards © vs. Belal Muhammad
*Interim Heavyweight Championship: Tom Aspinall © vs. Curtis Blaydes
*King Green vs. Paddy Pimblett
*Christian Leroy Duncan vs. Gregory Rodrigues
*Giga Chikadze vs. Arnold Allen
PRELIMINARY CARD (8 p.m. on ESPN 2 & ESPN+)
*Nathaniel Wood vs. Daniel Pineda
*Molly McCann vs. Bruna Brasil
*Jake Hadley vs. Caolan Loughran – Hadley missed weight by one pound
*Modestas Bukauskas vs. Marcin Prachnio
EARLY PRELIMS (6 p.m. on ESPN+)
*Oban Elliott vs. Preston Parsons
*Manel Kape vs. Muhammad Mokaev
*Sam Patterson vs. Kiefer Crosbie
*Lukasz Brzeski vs. Mick Parkin
*Shaun Bannon vs. Alice Ardelean
**Dana White stated on Friday that the full card for UFC Noche at The Sphere will be revealed on Saturday.
**Reporter Ariel Helwani is in Paris, France where he is part of the CBC broadcast team for the Paris Olympics. On The MMA Hour this past Monday, Helwani noted that his deals with Vox Media and Spotify are about to wrap up on August 15 and is unsure how things will play out. It is possible that Monday’s show was his last but it’s up in the air. He hopes to figure out his situation by the end of his commitments in France. Helwani launched The MMA Hour in 2009 and became the weekly “go-to” show for MMA news and interviews and lasted until 2018 when he left for ESPN. In 2021, he left ESPN when his contract expired and signed several deals including one with Vox Media to resurrect the show and has been doing the show twice a week for the past three years in addition to Spotify, Showtime, WWE, and BT Sport among the outlets he has worked with.
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MCU L8R: Deadpool 2
This week in their Deadpool & Wolverine ReWatch prep, Rich Fann & WH Park are in the presence of MCU L8R’s Charles Xavier, Wai Ting to review Deadpool 2 from 2018.
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REWIND-A-DYNAMITE
John Pollock and Andrew Thompson review the Blood & Guts edition of AEW Dynamite in Nashville with Team AEW vs. The Elite.
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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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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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