POST IT NOTES
**We have a LIVE edition of Rewind-A-SmackDown tonight at 10:15 pm Eastern with Wai Ting and I reviewing tonight’s debut of the WWE ThunderDome. We will also be previewing TakeOver and SummerSlam, as well as taking your phone calls. The show is LIVE for all members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**The latest edition of the British Wrestling Experience is out with hosts Martin Bushby and Benno returning to catch up on lots of news from the past few weeks including how promotions have responded to the Speaking Out movement, promotions added to the WWE Network, and they chat with historian John Lister on the career and legacy of Mark “Rollerball” Rocco, who died last month.
**On Saturday night, Braden Herrington and Davie Portman will have an NXT TakeOver POST Show that will be free for everyone. Braden & Davie will also be doing LIVE Watch Alongs of TakeOver and SummerSlam on the upNXT YouTube channel. The two will also host a SummerSlam Tailgate Party for the upNXT Patrons on Sunday afternoon before the pay-per-view.
**Wai Ting and I will have a separate show Saturday night with Rewind-A-Dynamite going over tomorrow night’s show and our own thoughts after TakeOver.
**On Sunday, we wrap up with our SummerSlam POST Show as Wai and I will be LIVE immediately after the show for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso Patrons.
**The Greatest SummerSlam Game featuring Davie Portman, Braden Herrington, Andrew Thompson, John Siino, and Nate Milton constructing the best SummerSlam card of all-time using past matches:
WEEKEND SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-SmackDown (LIVE at 10:15 pm Eastern for all Patrons)
Saturday: Rewind-A-Dynamite – Special Saturday Night Edition
Saturday: NXT TakeOver XXX POST Show with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Sunday: WWE SummerSlam POST Show with John & Wai (LIVE for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso Patrons)
WRESTLING NEWS
**On Thursday, bail for Phillip Thomas II was denied by Hillsborough Circuit Judge Catherine Catlin in the case involving WWE performer Daria Berenato a.k.a. Sonya Deville. The judge denied an appeal for Thomas to post bail and be monitored with a GPS stating it didn’t give her any peace of mind. The public defender representing Thomas sought bail at $2 million, which was rejected.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that Thomas will remain in a county jail while facing charges of aggravated stalking, armed burglary of a dwelling and attempted armed kidnapping.
Berenato testified on Thursday that she woke up when the alarm went off and awoke the guest in her bedroom (Amanda Saccomanno a.k.a. Mandy Rose). The two fled the home and dialed 911 with authorities arriving on the scene shortly after. Berenato also became aware of “hundreds of messages” sent through her social media channels by Thomas threatening physical violence to members of her family. These were messages she had not seen prior to this week.
WWE has not publicly commented on the story with Deville and Rose still listed for their match this Sunday at SummerSlam.
**Vince McMahon will appear at the start of tonight’s episode of Friday Night SmackDown. It’s his first appearance since April for the 25th anniversary special for Triple H.
**Here are the matches scheduled for tonight’s live edition of Friday Night SmackDown and the first one from the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida:
*AJ Styles vs. Jeff Hardy for the Intercontinental title
*Shinsuke Nakamura & Cesaro vs. Gran Metalik & Lince Dorado for the SmackDown tag titles
*Sheamus vs. Big E.
*Drake Maverick vs. Tehuti Miles on 205 Live
*Tony Nese vs. Jake Atlas on 205 Live
**After tickets went on sale for next Thursday’s episode of AEW Dynamite at Daily’s Place, they sold out the allotment of tickets. They will be running Daily’s Place at 10 percent capacity next week. Tony Khan has addressed issues on the secondary market where re-sellers are attempting to split up pods against AEW’s guidelines:
Thank you to all of the great wrestling fans who support AEW! Here is my full statement regarding the illegal and unethical outdoor seating pod splitting on the secondary ticket resale market, a move by predatory online ticket resellers which won’t work and won’t be tolerated: pic.twitter.com/CTC2ETNviA
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) August 21, 2020
**Ryan Satin at Pro Wrestling Sheet reports that a new episode of WWE Talking Smack will be filmed after tonight’s episode. Satin states that in order to allow SmackDown to air in all its markets first, the episode won’t be released until Saturday most likely. It was first reported by Mike Johnson at PWinsider.com that WWE was looking to revive the talk show, which ran from August 2016 until July 2017 on the WWE Network.
UPDATED: WWE confirmed that Talking Smack will be returning with the show airing Saturday morning on the free tier of the WWE Network. The new hosts of the show will be Kayla Braxton and Xavier Woods.
**The following clip was released Friday afternoon by WWE with a look at the ThunderDome set-up:
**Randy Orton was part of a conference call with media members to promote SummerSlam. Kenny McIntosh of Inside the Ropes asked about the recent segment with Ric Flair and Orton revealed that Flair’s promo was not originally planned:
That segment, that was hard to do. There were so many things I could’ve said that would’ve been nasty and would’ve even made that segment better. It was hard to look him in the eye, no matter how much we wanted it to come across that way, it was hard to be mean to that man after how he’s treated me for the past twenty years especially. But ya know, business is business. Ric knows that and I know that and I’ll tell you what he was never supposed to grab the microphone from me that night. He was just supposed to say a few things under his breath that the handheld camera in the ring may or may not pick up. You were supposed to see our facial expressions and get an idea that he was bringing me back in & eventually we had the hug and I turned on him but when he grabbed the mic I was thinkin ‘Ah, come on Ric you’re not supposed to grab the mic’ but then he went on to cut that promo and it was very touching. The thing is he meant everything he said. That’s why he’s so special to this business, he’s always left his heart out there in the ring and every emotion you get out there from Ric Flair, it’s real and that’s one of the reasons he’s the best.
**Orton added that he’s honed in on his promos since 2018 and noted he isn’t scripted any longer. During the lead-up to WrestleMania, he said there were times Vince McMahon didn’t know what he was going to say and was impressed with them. He believes he can wrestle into his late ‘40s and said he now has a new understanding of what constitutes a good promo where before it meant nailing all the words or hitting your time. He has also lost 15-18 pounds since WrestleMania to be quicker.
**Seth Rollins spoke with Andreas Hale of The Sporting News to promote the match with Dominik Mysterio at SummerSlam. He gave the following answer on the creation and evolution of the Monday Night Messiah character:
It’s been a work in progress that started after Survivor Series last year and the seeds were really planted after Hell in a Cell. It was an idea between myself and Paul Heyman. It went under different iterations where we had heavy religious overtones in the beginning but I didn’t really want that. It’s been a work in progress from the clothes and my purpose. It’s been fulfilling in an artistic sense.
When asked about the whereabouts of Austin Theory, who has been off television since June, Rollins said:
He had some personal issues that came up so he took some time off to sort through them for the past month or two. It’s hard right now but we hope everything’s good for him so we hope to have him back sooner than later.
**WWE’s SVP of Event Technical Operations Duncan Leslie spoke with Eric Fisher of SportsBusiness about the creation of the WWE ThunderDome and the utilization of a virtual fanbase. Leslie spoke about what they learned from other traditional sports presentations during the pandemic:
We’re looking to use our technical and design prowess to creatively enrich the experience for the fans. To me, having been here a while now, this almost feels like a mini-WrestleMania setup. We’ve used so much of the available space to us because there are no physical fans here, and we’ve replaced them with artistic elements. The videoboards surround the ring almost in the same way the fans did when they were here in person.
But to answer your question, we didn’t want to go down the road of cardboard [cutouts] in empty seats. We wanted to fill our arena, as “normally” as we could.
**A correction from earlier this week, last Friday’s episode of SmackDown finished with 1,940,000 viewers and a 0.53 rating in the 18-49 demo. The numbers reported earlier this week at Showbuzz Daily of 2,002,000 viewers and a 0.6 rating monitored all the markets, some of which carried live sports and boosted the number that SmackDown got credit for.
**Yaz Jung has an excellent story on Drew McIntyre with comments from the performer prior to this Sunday’s match at SummerSlam with Randy Orton.
**NJPW Strong airs tonight at 10 pm Eastern on New Japan World featuring the finals of the #1 contender’s tournament for a future shot at the IWGP United States title currently held by Jon Moxley. Below are the matches listed for tonight:
*KENTA vs. David Finlay in the finals of the tournament
*Jay White & Chase Owens vs. Brody King & Flip Gordon – This will be White’s first match since February
*Rocky Romero & Adrian Quest vs. Danny Limelight & The DKC
**GCW runs its Tournament of Survival 5 event on Saturday at 4 pm Eastern from The Sandlot at The Showboat in Atlantic City, New Jersey. On Sunday, it’s Jimmy Lloyd’s Jersey Shore at 5 pm and they have just added a match between AR Fox and Cole Radrick for Sunday. For both events, fans must wear a mask, there is reduced capacity and a staggered seating chart with social distance measures in effect and hand sanitizer stations. Both shows are available on Fite TV.
**The WWE fell almost 3 percent on Friday closing at $42.73.
**There will be a new episode of WWE 24 premiering this Sunday on the shooting of WrestleMania 36. The clip being circulated to promote the special features Vince McMahon leaping off the balcony onto a crash pad to demonstrate for Rob Gronkowski:
**Ring of Honor has released a tribute for the late John Bedoya a.k.a. Xavier, who died this past week at the age of 42:
**Here are the results from Thursday’s Pro Wrestling NOAH card at Korakuen Hall:
*Mohammed Yone over Kinya Okada
*Tadasuke over YO-HEY
*Naomichi Marufuji, Yuko Miyamoto & Masaaki Mochizuki over Manabu Soya, Nioh & Haoh
*Kenoh, Yoshiki Inamura & Masa Kitamiya over Kaito Kiyomiya, Daiki Inaba & Shuhei Taniguchi
*Kotaro Suzuki, Yoshinari Ogawa & HAYATA over Atsushi Kotoge, Seiki Yoshioka & Hajime Ohara
*Takashi Sugiura, Kazushi Sakuraba & Kaz Hayashi over Go Shiozaki, Daisuke Harada & Katsuhiko Nakajima when Sakuraba submitted GHC champion Shiozaki with the 39th Lock
POLL RESULTS
What are your viewing plans for Saturday night? (1,024 votes)
Watch AEW Dynamite live: 47 percent
Watch NXT TakeOver live: 42 percent
Switch back-and-forth: 11 percent
LINE-UPS FOR THIS WEEKEND
AEW Dynamite at 6 pm Eastern on TNT (or when the NBA ends):
*TNT Championship: Cody (champion) vs. Brodie Lee
*Allie & Brandi Rhodes vs. Diamante & Ivelisse in the finals of the AEW Women’s Tag Team Cup Tournament
*Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks vs. Alex Reynolds, John Silver & Alan Angels
*Pentagon Jr., Rey Fenix, The Butcher & The Blade vs. Luchasaurus, Jungle Boy, Dustin Rhodes & QT Marshall
*FTR vs. Private Party
*Darby Allin in action
*An Orange Cassidy interview
NXT TakeOver: XXX at 6:30 pm on WWE Network
*NXT Championship: Keith Lee (champion) vs. Karrion Kross
*Ladder Match for the North American Championship: Johnny Gargano vs. Damian Priest vs. Bronson Reed vs. Cameron Grimes vs. Velveteen Dream
*NXT Women’s Championship: Io Shirai (champion) vs. Dakota Kai
*Adam Cole vs. Pat McAfee
*Finn Balor vs. Timothy Thatcher
*Pre-show #1 Contender’s Match: Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch vs. Breezango vs. Joaquin Wilde & Raul Mendoza
WWE SummerSlam at 6 pm (kickoff) on the WWE Network
*WWE Championship: Drew McIntyre (champion) vs. Randy Orton
*WWE Universal Championship: Braun Strowman (champion) vs. The Fiend Bray Wyatt
*Raw Women’s Championship: Sasha Banks (champions) vs. Asuka
*SmackDown Women’s Championship: Bayley (champion) vs. Asuka
*United States Championship: Apollo Crews (champion) vs. MVP
*Raw Tag Team Championship: The Street Profits (champions) vs. Andrade & Angel Garza
*Street Fight: Seth Rollins vs. Dominik Mysterio w/ Rey Mysterio
*Hair vs. Hair Match: Mandy Rose vs. Sonya Deville
ON THIS DATE
*****
BRITISH WRESTLING EXPERIENCE: Mark “Rollerball” Rocco, WWE Network, RevPro Return
Martin is back with Benno to chat the last month of news in Euro wrestling including Progress, ICW and wXw being added to the WWE Network. Wrestling historian John Lister also drops in to talk about the life and career of Mark “Rollerball” Rocco.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/08/20/british-wrestling-experience-mark-rollerball-rocco-wwe-network-revpro-returns/
*****
upNXT 8/19/20: “Talk Thirty To Me”
The BDE chat this week’s “Go Home” edition of NXT featuring Finn Balor vs Velveteen Dream and Johnny Gargano vs Ridge Holland to determine the last two spots in the North American Championship Ladder Match at TakeOver: XXX.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/08/20/upnxt-8-19-20-talk-thirty-to-me/
*****
BONUS SHOW 8/19/20: Renee Young-WWE, NXT Media Call, Raw Ratings
John Pollock and Wai Ting present a special bonus show going over the news of the day including Renee Young’s pending departure from WWE, Paul Levesque’s call with the media, the latest on Sonya Deville & this week’s Raw ratings.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/08/19/bonus-show-8-19-20-renee-young-wwe-nxt-media-call-raw-ratings/
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #68: WWF Royal Rumble 2001 (Patreon)
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWF Royal Rumble 2001 featuring a 30-Man Royal Rumble, Kurt Angle vs. Triple H for the WWF title, and Chris Benoit vs. Chris Jericho in an IC title ladder match.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/40609329
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 8/17/20: HB-Kicked, WWE ThunderDome, Sonya Deville
John Pollock and Wai Ting discuss the go-home edition of WWE Raw leading into SummerSlam. Plus, the WWE ThunderDome, Jon Jones vacates the light heavyweight title, and lots of other news.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/08/18/rewind-a-raw-8-17-20-hb-kicked-wwe-thunderdome-sonya-deville/
*****
UFC 252 POST SHOW: Miocic vs. Cormier 3
John Pollock is joined by Phil Chertok to review UFC 252 from Las Vegas featuring Stipe Miocic retaining the UFC heavyweight title against Daniel Cormier.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/08/16/ufc-252-post-show-stipe-miocic-vs-daniel-cormier-iii/
*****
TRMPS #20: “Ballers” Pilot (2015) w/ Stephen Gutteridge & MJ from NJ
This month on The Rocky Maivia Picture Show, Nate Milton welcomes first-time guests Stephen Gutteridge (Mid-South Moments) & MJ From NJ into the theater to review the 2015 pilot episode for HBO’s “Ballers”!
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/08/15/trmps-20-ballers-pilot-2015-w-stephen-gutteridge-mj-from-nj/
*****
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