POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Tuesday: upNXT
Wednesday: G1 Climax – Day 16 with Wai & Kate from Montreal (POST Wrestling Café)
Wednesday: Pollock & Thurston
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
Thursday: G1 Climax – Quarterfinals with John Pollock & Wai Ting (POST Wrestling Café)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: G1 Climax – Semi-finals with John Pollock & Karen Peterson
Saturday: Collision Course (POST Wrestling Café)
Sunday: G1 Climax – Finals with Bruce Lord, Karen Peterson & WH Park (POST Wrestling Café)
Sunday: The N.W.A. Podcast
MJF SAYS BACKSTAGE ISSUE WITH BRITT BAKER “BLOWN OUT OF PROPORTION”
Cultaholic’s Jack King interviewed MJF over the weekend where the AEW performer addressed the reports of an incident involving Dr. Britt Baker, which led to Baker’s suspension.
Tell me if this passes the smell test. I barge into a woman’s locker room. I scream in the face of an 110-pound woman, and then I physically threaten her by punching a wall in her vicinity…and I don’t get suspended. Does that pass the smell test to you? Almost everything that was written didn’t happen.
The incident is believed to have occurred on July 17 and was reported on in the August 5 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter:
Britt Baker was suspended for either one or two weeks and fined by the company’s disciplinary committee. Details have been kept pretty quiet. It came from something backstage at the 7/17 Dynamite where Baker allegedly said something about MJF and Alicia Atout, MJF’s girlfriend heard it and told him and he confronted Baker. This led to an investigation with HR talking to people on 7/24 and I believe the disciplinary committee that did the investigation recommended that. I don’t know if Tony Khan was or wasn’t involved in this and everyone was attempting to keep this under wraps. This all stems from problems in the past that weren’t addressed and a committee was put together to settle these things quickly. Most of those we heard from were sympathetic to her in this situation.
Additional reporting from Fightful stated:
The word internally was that Baker exercised frustration about MJF within the women’s locker room. Word made it back to MJF, as his girlfriend Alicia Atout was in the room.
The details are “he said she said” at this point, but we’re told that there were confrontations with Britt Bakwr approaching Alicia Atout, as well as MJF and Baker. At one point Will Ospreay also spoke with Baker, but we were told that was not heated. Word was that Baker also took issue with Atout telling MJF about what was said in the locker room. There was a claim from one person in the locker room that Baker cursed at Atout and wanted to kick her out of the locker room for discussing the conversation.
An argument broke out between MJF and Baker which resulted in MJF punching a wall before his hour long match. He had to be taped up more than usual as a result.
Fightful added that MJF never barged into the women’s locker room and knocked before being allowed in.
MJF was not suspended for his involvement. On television, a storyline suspension was introduced to explain Baker’s absence with the explanation that Mercedes Mone got the Young Bucks to suspend Baker after their confrontation at the San Diego Comic-Con panel.
Baker is set to return on this Wednesday’s Dynamite after a taped segment aired last week to announce the end of her suspension.
In MJF’s interview with Cultaholic, he felt the issue was “blown out of proportion” and accused sites of using the story for “clickbait”. He also noted the insecurity that is bred within the industry and made a point to promote Baker’s upcoming match with Mercedes Mone at All In which will be an “epic match”.
G1 CLIMAX NEARING PLAYOFF STAGE
The round-robin portion of the A Block in the G1 has ended. Zack Sabre Jr. won the block and will receive a bye to the semi-finals this Saturday. Shingo Takagi and Great O-Khan finished second and third, so they will meet in the quarterfinals on Thursday to determine who advances. ZSJ ran away with the block, finishing 7-2 with 14 points while only losing to Takagi and Shota Umino. Naito failed to qualify for the playoffs with the IWGP champion losing to EVIL, Takagi, ZSJ, and Great O-Khan. EVIL was in the running until his loss on Monday to Umino and was eliminated due to his prior losses to Takagi and O-Khan in the block.
The B Block wraps up on Wednesday with multiple scenarios. The top three are Jeff Cobb, David Finlay, and Ren Narita with ten points each followed by Hirooki Goto, Yota Tsuji, and Konosuke Takeshita with eight points each and all have one match left. The top three just need to earn one point and they clinch with matches scheduled between David Finlay and El Phantamso, Konosuke Takeshita vs. Ren Narita, Jeff Cobb vs. Yota Tsuji, and Hirooki Goto vs. HENARE.
If Yota Tsuji beats Jeff Cobb, he will have wins over Cobb, Finlay & Narita, and would qualify.
If Takeshita beats Narita, he would be in a strong position as the third one to qualify with wins against Cobb and Narita.
Goto has the toughest path of the ones with 4-4 records. Chris Samsa from Sport of Pro Wrestling shared the path for Goto to qualify:
The cleanest way for Goto to go through is with this scenario:
- Cobb d. Tsuji
- ELP d. Finlay
- Narita d. Takeshita
- Goto d. HENARE
That lands Narita and Cobb at 12, and Goto would be tied at 10 with Finlay and win the tiebreaker. Everyone else would still be at 8.
Chris Charlton of NJPW posted a comparison of attendance figures for this year’s G1 to last year’s in the same arenas.
Counting a +/-5% as significant, a continuing trend of big year on year increases for #g1climax34 attendance when in the same venues as last year, which indicates a seal of approval on the action we’re seeing and the stars within. Still four more great events to go! pic.twitter.com/ubVUcKk7Fs
— chris charlton (@reasonjp) August 12, 2024
This year’s show at Edion Arena in Osaka outdrew last year’s by 148, Hiroshima was down by 34 this year, Nagoya was down by 340, Korakuen Hall drew 32 more this year, Yokohama Budokan drew 546 more this year, Xebio Arena in Sendai drew 974 more this year, and today’s show in Aore Nagaoka was up by 661 over last year. The last three days of the G1 showed significant increases over 2023 while the others were not significant in either direction.
It comes to this weekend’s final two nights at Sumo Hall to see how the tournament peaked and if there is any noticeable increase. Last year’s final two nights at Sumo Hall drew 6,579 featuring Tetsuya Naito vs. Will Ospreay and the final night drew 8,283 with Naito vs. Kazuchika Okada. The entire 2023 tournament averaged 2,804.
Wednesday’s show streams at 5:30 a.m. ET from Shizuoka with the following tournament matches (New Japan has not released the match order yet):
*B BLOCK: Konosuke Takeshita (4-4) vs. Ren Narita (5-3)
*B BLOCK: Yota Tsuji (4-4) vs. Jeff Cobb (5-3)
*B BLOCK: Hirooki Goto (4-4) vs. HENARE (3-5)
*B BLOCK: El Phantasmo (3-5) vs. David Finlay (5-3)
WRESTLING NEWS
**WWE Raw returns to the USA Network after the Olympics forced the show onto Syfy for two weeks. The network change didn’t affect the program too heavily and scored an incredible audience last week after SummerSlam drawing its largest 18-49 audience since WrestleMania in April.
WrestleTix lists nearly 12,000 tickets distributed at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas for tonight’s show, and the following is advertised:
*2-of-3 Falls for the Intercontinental Title: Bron Breakker © vs. Sami Zayn
*Damian Priest vs. Carlito
*Kairi Sane & IYO SKY vs. Shayna Baszler & Zoey Stark
*The Creeds vs. Otis & Akira Tozawa
*Randy Orton to appear
*Odyssey Jones to appear
*Rhea Ripley kicks off the show
**TKO is riding a wave after last week’s quarterly earnings report. The stock is up for $120 at Monday’s close increased by two percent during the day and has jumped by nearly 11 percent over the past week.
**There was a meeting several weeks ago involving Turki Alalshikh with WWE president Nick Khan and UFC COO Dana White. A photo was posted on July 30 by Alalshikh, which was days before UFC held its card in Abu Dhabi. The photo included filmmaker Zack Snyder and his wife without any further information. Back in June, Alalshikh was interviewed on the UFC broadcast and mentioned his desire to have Snyder direct a movie focusing on the UFC.
**Stardom held two shows on Monday at the Light Cube in Utsunomiya with the continuation of the 5 Star Grand Prix. The first show drew 508 fans with Hanan beating Risa Sera, Saori Anou over Syuri, Saya Kamitani beat Thekla, Xena over Koguma, Suzu Suzuki over Saki Kashima, and Starlight Kid beat Anna Jay in the tournament matches. The next show drew 410 featuring Saya Iida over Tam Nakano, Ruaka and Manami wrestling to a 15-minute draw, Mei Seira over Momo Watanabe, Konami over Hazuki, AZM beat Tomoka Inaba, and Natsupoi beat Yuna Mizumori. (Courtesy: Purolove.com)
There are four blocks this year with the Red Stars having an A & B Block and the same for the Blue Stars. In the Red Stars, Maika is tied with Konami and Hazuki at four points for the lead and the B Block is led by Mayu Iwatani, Tomoka Inaba, AZM & Mei Seira with four points each. In the Blue Stars, the A Block has a logjam involving Syuri, Xena, Anna Jay, Saori Anou, and Miyu Amasaki with two points each and the B Block has Saya Kamitani alone in first place with four points.
The next 5 Star Grand Prix card is Thursday at Korakuen Hall with Maika vs. Konami, Natsupoi vs. Ruaka, Yuna Mizumori vs. Manami, Mayu Iwatani vs. Momo Watanabe, AZM vs. Tam Nakano, Saya Iida vs. Tomoka Inaba, Starlight Kid vs. Saori Anou, Syuri vs. Anna Jay, Koguma vs. Miyu Amasaki, Risa Sera vs. Suzu Suzuki, Hanan vs. Saki Kashima, and Thekla vs. Ranna Yagami.
**Bobby Steveson (the former Damon Kemp in NXT) has posted that he is officially a free agent after his contract at WWE was not renewed. Steveson posted a message that he wants to wrestle “anywhere and everywhere”, so it appears he is going to attack the independent scene. Like his brother Gable, he wrestled at the University of Minnesota and was signed by WWE three years ago.
**Eric Bischoff is working as a mortgage loan officer for Conrad Thompson’s Save with Conrad company. Justin Barrasso of SI.com has a story on Bischoff’s new career. After working with Thompson on refinancing, Bischoff asked about becoming a loan officer and went through the requisite class and testing to become licensed before Thompson hired him. The story includes comments from Bischoff, Thompson, and Hulk Hogan.
**Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling has launched a YouTube channel and is uploading footage of matches from Maple Leaf Wrestling. The promotion, which is being re-launched by Scott D’Amore, has added a match between The Sheik (Ed Farhat) and Angelo Mosca, Ric Flair & Dewey Robertson vs. Roddy Piper & Jimmy Snuka from 1981, Edouard Carpentier against Steve Stanlee from 1957, and a match between the late Leo Burke and Bret Hart (billed as Buddy Hart).
**Renee Paquette and television producer Andria Parides are pitching a panel at SXSW next March titled, “From Screen to Stadium, Women Breaking Boundaries”. They are asking people to vote for them to get a panel at the festival.
**GCW kicked off its shows in Japan on Monday with DDT and continues on Tuesday & Wednesday with the cards airing each night at 8 p.m. ET on Triller TV+. Tonight’s airing will include MAO vs. Alex Zayne for the DDT Universal title, Mance Warner vs. Joey Janela vs. Shunma Katsumata for the GCW title, Effy vs. Danshoku Dino, Tetsuya Endo & Yuki Iino vs. 1 Called Manders & Gringo Loco, Broski Jimmy & Rina Yamashita vs. KANON & Daisuke Sasaki, Allie Katch & Dark Sheik vs. Kazuki Hirata & Antonio Honda, and an eight-person tag with Chris Brookes, Takeshi Masada, Maki Itoh & Marcus Mathers vs. Masha Slamovich, Yuni, Yuki Ueno & Ilusion. Tuesday’s card at Shinjuku Face is headlined by Mance Warner vs. 1 Called Manders along with The Great Sasuke vs. Maki Itoh, and Aja Kong teams with MAO & Masashi Takeda vs. Effy, Allie Katch & Dark Sheik in the top matches.
G1 CLIMAX
Day 13
Bruce Lord and Eric Marcotte review NJPW G1 Climax 34 Night 13 featuring Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Gabe Kidd and Shingo Takagi vs. EVIL.
Day 11 & 12
Wai Ting and Kate from Montreal review NJPW G1 Climax 34 Nights 11 & 12 with Shingo Takagi vs. SANADA and Hirooki Goto vs. David Finlay in the main events.
Day 9 & 10
WH Park and Eric Marcotte review NJPW G1 Climax 34 Nights 9 & 10 featuring Shingo Takagi vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
Day 7 & 8
Bruce Lord and Kate from Montreal review NJPW G1 Climax 34 Nights 7 & 8 featuring Tetsuya Naito vs. SANADA and David Finlay vs. Konosuke Takeshita in the main events.
Day 5 & 6
Karen Peterson and Kate from Montreal review NJPW G1 Climax 34 Nights 5 & 6 featuring Tetsuya Naito vs. EVIL and Hirooki Goto vs. Yota Tsuji in the main events
RECENT SHOWS
COLLISION COURSE
Join John Siino & Kate From MTL as they review this week’s AEW Collision, featuring a #1 Contender’s Match for the Trios titles between The Bang Bang Gang and House of Black.
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REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock & Wai Ting discuss the passing of Kevin Sullivan and review WWE SmackDown with the return of Roman Reigns.
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POLLOCK & THURSTON
John Pollock and Brandon Thurston are back to discuss TKO’s second-quarter earnings report and the Janel Grant case developments.
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REWIND-A-DYNAMITE
John Pollock and Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite from Winston-Salem with an Anything Goes Match between Bryan Danielson and Jeff Jarrett.
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