POST IT NOTES
**We have a big edition of Rewind-A-Wai out tonight covering the WCW World War III event from November 1995 for members of the POST Wrestling Café. This was a great show diving into WCW from this era after Monday Nitro had launched and discussing the major stories at the time. This was selected by Espresso Executive Producer Ryan Charkow and below is the lineup from the show at the Norfolk Scope:
*60-man Battle Royal for the vacant WCW title
*Ric Flair vs. Sting
*Randy Savage vs. Lex Luger
*Kensuke Sasaki vs. Chris Benoit for the WCW U.S. title
*Cutie Suzuki & Mayumi Ozaki vs. Bull Nakano & Akira Hokuto
*Big Bubba Rogers vs. Jim Duggan in a Taped Fist Match
*Johnny B. Badd vs. Diamond Dallas Page for the WCW Television title
**The latest edition of Rewind-A-Raw features our review of the go-home Raw with some fantastic promos building up WrestleMania. We also chat Roman Reigns’ video addressing his decision, Edge’s interview with ESPN about his return, Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Tony Ferguson appears to be off, the disaster that is UFC 249, and we review Go Shiosaki vs. Kazuyuki Fujita from NOAH’s empty arena show at Korakuen Hall this past Sunday.
**On Wednesday, we will have our regular shows with Rewind-A-Dynamite and upNXT with Davie Portman & Davie Portman.
**This Thursday’s Café GRANDE Hangout is LIVE & FREE at 2 pm Eastern at YouTube.com/POSTWrestling. There will several friends stopping by, and lots of calls.
POST VIDEO
WRESTLING NEWS
**Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer site reports that AEW has moved their tapings from Daily’s Place this week to an undisclosed location. In Meltzer’s report, he states that it’s believed they are taping content today and tomorrow, which was the same schedule they had last week. They have kept the location unknown for concern that fans would show up if they found out.
**WWE and Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) announced a five-year extension along with an expanded broadcast agreement. SPN will have the rights to air WWE Raw, SmackDown, NXT, and pay-per-views in English, Hindi, and regional languages. There is also a digital component to the deal where SPN will have the rights to the WWE Network in India to stream exclusively through their OTT platform SonyLIV.
**Fite TV has announced a deal to carry WrestleMania for both nights for streaming in the United States and select international territories. In addition to the U.S, the show can be ordered through Fite TV in Germany, France, and Italy. Both nights of WrestleMania are available for $34.99 each and $59.99 for both. The streaming service will also air the kickoff shows for free.
**The Fite deal is in addition to the Fox Sports deal where consumers can buy WrestleMania and stream it on the Fox Sports and Fox NOW apps.
**A match between Kenny Omega and Trent has been added to AEW Dynamite for Wednesday night.
**The replay of WrestleMania 32 did a 0.4 and averaged 720,000 viewers on ESPN this past Sunday night. The four-hour special did a 0.25 in the 18-49 demographic representing 326,000 viewers. This compares with the prior week’s airing of WrestleMania 30 that did 839,000 viewers and a 0.31. WrestleMania 35 from MetLife Stadium last year runs this Sunday at 3 pm Eastern.
**Friday Night SmackDown finished a 1.45 rating with 2,367,000 viewers on Fox last Friday. The show did a 0.7 in the 18-49 demo or 885,000 viewers. In the key demo, they were behind ABC’s Shark Tank and CBS’ airings of Hawaii Five-O and MacGyver while equaling the rating from 20/20. The viewership was SmackDown’s lowest of 2020 and least since the December 13th episode last year.
**Tonight’s episode of Dark Side of the Ring focuses on New Jack (Jerome Young) and the line between fact and fiction and attempting to decipher any difference between the character of New Jack with the individual. The episode features interviews with New Jack, Jim Cornette, The Sandman, D-Lo Brown, and wrestler Tiny the Terrible, who was part of Erich Kulas a.k.a. ‘Mass Transit’. The episode features a collection of frightening incidents that Jack been part of in wrestling from the balcony fall with Vic Grimes at Living Dangerously 2000 and his retaliation at an XPW show, attacking 72-year old Gypsy Joe during a match, and a major focus on the Mass Transit incident from 1996 in Revere, Massachusetts and legal fallout from that attack. The episode airs at 10 pm Eastern on Vice TV and available on Crave in Canada.
**CBC Kids has a story on WrestleMania and interviews several kids about this year’s show taking place without a crowd.
**John Ourand at Sports Business Journal reports that DAZN has informed sports leagues they will withhold rights fees on games that have been suspended or content that has not been delivered during the pandemic. Ourand said that DAZN is believed to be the first media company to take this tact, which has been a major subject given the massive rights deals for sports leagues that are currently suspended. In an e-mail to employees at DAZN, CEO Simon Denyer stated that an unspecified number of employees would be furloughed, where their jobs would be available to them after the crisis. Denyer added that it’s the biggest disaster to hit the sports world in 75 years and the biggest challenge DAZN has ever faced. It is unknown if this would apply to Bellator, who did cancel their last show the day of and have postponed their three shows that were scheduled for May.
**Here is the latest card that WWE is promoting for WrestleMania this weekend along with additional notes:
*Brock Lesnar vs. Drew McIntyre for the WWE title
*Bill Goldberg vs. Roman Reigns for the Universal title – it’s just egregious they are still advertising this compounded by Reigns already addressing it. The new match is Goldberg vs. Braun Strowman and hopefully will be clear after Friday’s show
*Edge vs. Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing match
*The Undertaker vs. AJ Styles in a Boneyard Match – It’s essentially been explained it’s a street fight in a graveyard
*Becky Lynch vs. Shayna Baszler for the Raw women’s title – Lynch stated last week she believes this will be on Saturday
*Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair for the NXT women’s title
*John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt in a Firefly Fun House match
*Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens – this was mentioned by Owens on Raw as being on Saturday night
*Bayley vs. Sasha Banks vs. Lacey Evans vs. Naomi vs. Tamina in a Five-Way Elimination match for the SmackDown women’s title
*Sami Zayn vs. Daniel Bryan for the Intercontinental title
*The Street Profits vs. Angel Garza & Austin Theory for the Raw tag titles – The angle with Theory replacing Andrade aired on Monday night
*The Kabuki Warriors vs. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross for the WWE women’s tag titles
*The Miz & John Morrison vs. The Usos vs. New Day in a Ladder match for the SmackDown tag titles – This match is not happening in its current form as The Miz was removed due to being sick. It’s believed this will be a three-way ladder match with John Morrison against a member of each team
*Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley
*Elias vs. King Corbin
*Dolph Ziggler vs. Otis
**New Japan Pro Wrestling has canceled five more ‘Road to Dontaku’ events from April 12th until April 18th that were scheduled for Shizuoka, Yamanashi, Fukui, Ishikawa, and Kanagawa. The company has not run a show since February 26th due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
**MLW has announced a broadcast agreement with the Wataaa Fight Channel in the Middle East North African (MENA) region to carry MLW Fusion. MLW CEO) Court Bauer was quoted in the release stating:
Now more than ever there is a demand for sports content and MLW’s distinct combat sport-centered programming is a perfect fit for Wataaa. MLW’s global reach continues to grow with this deal putting us in more than 20 countries. We’re very excited about introducing the league to more fights fans around the world.
**MLW middleweight champion Myron Reed spoke with Andrew Thompson for the site about the reaction from Teddy Hart when dropping the title to Reed, working with Jordan Oliver and Kotto Brazil, becoming a father, re-signing with MLW, and the promotion’s handling of their recent card in Tijuana as the COVID-19 outbreak had begun to shut down events. MLW did go ahead with their show on March 13th including having fans but have since suspended operations:
Definitely. I’m gonna be real, they’re [MLW] awesome. They were literally telling us like, ‘We understand if you don’t wanna go out there’ but me being me, not only is that a paycheck but this is my dream. In high school, kids were going out, they were smoking and drinking and partying. I mean, I’m in the cut, filming f*cking backyard wrestling shows and sh*t. It works full circle bro. This is my dream. I’ve been wanting to do this all my life. I’m going to do this. If there’s a little virus, ah… I’m gonna hand sanitize, I’m gonna wash my ass and make sure I’m good, keep up with my hygiene and all that stuff and make sure I’m clean so that when I come back home, I ain’t spreading it or nothing. I just felt like it wasn’t as bad then either. But they definitely gave us the option not to do it if we didn’t want to.
**Impact Wrestling has a new episode tonight at 8 pm Eastern followed immediately by a one-hour ‘TNA’ special at 10 pm airing on AXS TV. Below are the matches/segments for Impact:
*Josh Alexander vs. Eddie Edwards
*Sami Callihan addresses Impact Wrestling
*Rich Swann interview
*Moose addresses ‘TNA’
The TNA special was filmed recently at the Coca-Cola Roxy in Atlanta, which is the show Scott Steiner collapsed at and was rushed to the hospital. Below are the matches from show airing at 10 pm:
*Rhino vs. Madman Fulton
*Hernandez vs. Chase Stevens
*Johnny Swinger & Kid Kash vs. Suicide & Manik
*Scott Steiner ‘uncensored’
**Here are the matches for tonight’s episode of AEW Dark at 7 pm Eastern on their YouTube channel:
*Shawn Spears vs. Shawn Dean
*Sammy Guevara vs. Matt Sells
*Darby Allin vs. Preston Vance
*Jon Moxley vs. Faboo Andre
On the show tonight, they will also reveal the first half of the bracket for the forthcoming TNT Championship title tournament that begins next week.
**Conrad Thompson is hosting a limited series called ‘Dark Side of the Podcast’ with Evan Husney & Jason Eisener from Dark Side of the Ring. Each week, they will do a discussion on that week’s episode with the first covering last week’s two-hour premiere on Chris Benoit. In the discussion, they mentioned wanting to speak with Kevin Sullivan but hinted at issues with the Toffoloni family that made that issue difficult.
**ESPN’s replay of the excellent Zhang Weili and Joanna Jedrzejczyk fight from earlier this month did 467,000 viewers on Saturday night. Later that night, they replayed the Khabib Nuramgomedov vs. Dustin Poirier fight from last September and it did 512,000 viewers.
**The WWE stock closed at $33.93 on Tuesday.
**Here is the BT Sport spot featuring Drew McIntyre:
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 3/30/20: The God Damned Go-Home Show, Bitch!
John Pollock and Wai Ting review the final episode of WWE Raw before WrestleMania 36 this weekend featuring a number of excellent promos from The Undertaker, Edge, Paul Heyman, and Becky Lynch.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/31/review-a-raw-3-30-20-the-god-damned-go-home-show-bitch/
*****
POST ROUNDTABLE: Dr. Alex Patel, Brandon Thurston & Marcus Vanderberg
John Pollock and Wai Ting present a bonus POST Roundtable featuring Dr. Alex Patel, Brandon Thurston and Marcus Vanderberg discussing the latest updates on COVID-19’s effects on professional wrestling and the world.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/29/post-roundtable-dr-alex-patel-brandon-thurston-marcus-vanderberg/
*****
THUNDERSTRUCK: Liger & Tanaka vs. Kikuchi & Kanemaru (4/7/2002) with Alan4L
WH Park and Alan4L from Pro Wrestling Torch’s ProWres Paradise pontificate about many topics including this awesome tag match between Jushin Liger & Minoru Tanaka taking on the NOAH Jr. team of Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/29/thunderstruck-23-liger-tanaka-vs-kikuchi-kanemaru-4-7-02-w-alan4l/
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 3/27/20: Latest on WrestleMania Changes
John Pollock and Wai Ting review Friday Night SmackDown and discuss today’s news as WWE navigates a number of major changes to WrestleMania 36 including Roman Reigns, Miz and Andrade being taken off the show, the latest on Jon Jones’ arrest, Brodie Lee on TIJ, and Dana White speaks.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/28/rewind-a-smackdown-3-27-20-latest-on-wrestlemania-changes/
*****
Café Hangout: Chris Benoit on Dark Side of the Ring, Jon Jones arrested
Join John Pollock and Wai Ting for the Café Hangout as they take your calls and discuss the Chris Benoit episode of Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring. Plus, the latest on today’s arrests of Jon Jones and Teddy Hart.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/26/live-link-cafe-hangout-chris-benoit-on-dark-side-your-calls/
*****
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