POST IT NOTES
**Wai Ting and I will have a loaded edition of Rewind-A-Raw tonight with a big discussion of the pending deal between the WWE and Fox, what this means for the company, SmackDown and other elements from the deal. We will also review Raw, Wai Ting will chat Total Bellas from Sunday and we will take your feedback & questions.
**This Friday on Rewind-A-Wai, we are reviewing Ring of Honor’s Global Wars 2014 card from Toronto with Adam Cole vs. Kevin Steen for the ROH title. You can watch the show on Honor Club and leave feedback to the show at https://forum.postwrestling.com/t/feedback-roh-global-wars-2014/2541/3.
THIS WEEK AT POST WRESTLING:
*Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw
*Tuesday: Rewind-A-SmackDown
*Wednesday: Keep It 2000 with Brian Mann & Nate Milton (WCW Monday Nitro from July 31, 2000)
*Thursday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
*Friday: Rewind-A-Wai – ROH Global Wars 2014 (Patreon)
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WRESTLING NEWS
**Obviously, the biggest story of the day and one of the year is the pending deal that will place SmackDown onto one of the major networks with Fox expected to inherit the show after the NBC Universal deal expires in the fall of 2019. While Fox was always in the running, most assumed SmackDown would be designated for FS 1 as opposed to big Fox. On top of the enormous increase in rights fees, which places SmackDown at $205 million per year over five-years, is the added exposure of network television and promotion through all the Fox properties that place SmackDown at its strongest position since premiering in August 1999. The on-paper value of SmackDown translates to Fox paying close to $4 million per episode and adds minimal expense on the part of the WWE. The unknown is if this will lead to SmackDown being a live program or revert to its taped format, which is how the show was presented for the first 17 years of its existence. The complication on the WWE’s end is a minor one as it would require keeping the production team on the road over the weekend with SmackDown on Friday nights (which is the new night as reported by The Wrap) and Raw on Monday nights unless you created separate production staffing for each show to avoid the production team being idle each weekend before Raw. The Fox deal completes a transformative move by the company alongside the pending renewal with NBC Universal for Raw, which will land the company around $450-500 million approximately per year for Raw and SmackDown (as a comparison, the company generated $800 million in total revenue for 2017). We will have much more discussion on the Fox deal on tonight’s Rewind-A-Raw.
**The Fox deal has sent the WWE stock soaring again with a close at $57.86, another record for the stock and a 12% jump during the day.
**Chris Harrington has a piece up on Fightful looking at today’s Fox report and big impact the news had on the WWE stock with some statistics on the WWE’s existing television rights fees.
**Tonight’s episode of Raw takes place from the Times Union Center in Albany, New York as the crew comes off the European tour. The segment they are pushing most is Sami Zayn’s reveal of Bobby Lashley involving his sisters, which sounds like a segment that could bomb badly. There are two Raw spots remaining in the women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match, but they haven’t announced any qualifying matches yet.
**The SmackDown and 205 Live tapings are Tuesday in Worcester, Massachusetts with Lana vs. Billie Kay and Naomi vs. Sonya Deville announced as qualifying matches for the Money in the Bank Ladder Match. 205 Live is building towards next week’s show with Cedric Alexander defending the Cruiserweight title against Buddy Murphy on May 29th in Raleigh.
**The WWE has changed their plans for SmackDown as the Big Cass vs. Samoa Joe match is off. They explained Cass cannot compete due to the attack by Daniel Bryan last week and in its place will be a match between Bryan and Jeff Hardy on Tuesday night. The winner will face Joe in a qualifying match for Money in the Bank.
**Following an incredibly busy schedule, the Raw crew will be off for six-days after tonight’s show and return Sunday with a house show in Hampton, Virginia. The SmackDown crew works Tuesday night and are off until next Monday.
**The Best of the Super Juniors tournament had the day off and resume on Tuesday with their third tournament show at Korakuen Hall. The event will be streaming at 5:30 am Eastern on New Japan World with the following lineup:
*Taiji Ishimori & Chase Owens vs. Flip Gordon & Tomoyuki Oka
*Minoru Suzuki & El Desperado vs. ACH & Shota Umino
*Will Ospreay & Gedo vs. YOH & Yoshi-Hashi
*Tetsuya Naito & Bushi vs. Tiger Mask & Toa Henare
*Chris Sabin (1-0) vs. SHO (0-1) – BLOCK B
*Ryusuke Taguchi (0-1) vs. Dragon Lee (1-0) – BLOCK B
*KUSHIDA (0-1) vs. Marty Scurll (0-1) – BLOCK B
*Hiromu Takahashi (1-0) vs. El Desperado (1-0) – BLOCK B
**Lindsay Cappotelli, the wife of former wrestler Matt Cappotelli, posted an update on her husband’s battle with brain cancer. She stated they have agreed to discontinue his radiation treatments and there doesn’t appear to be anymore they can do. Matt is having trouble communicating in full sentences with trouble chewing and eating. Cappotelli was one of the winners of the third season of “Tough Enough” in 2003 alongside John Hennigan and was assigned to Ohio Valley Wrestling and thought to be a future breakout star. In 2006, Cappotelli stepped away from pro wrestling after the discovery of a brain tumor, which was operated on in April 2007 and was OVW champion at the time of the diagnosis. Last summer, the tumor returned and Cappotelli underwent another surgery to have a large portion of it removed.
**A new episode of “Table for 3” will air on the WWE Network tonight following Raw with The Hardys, Edge, and Christian.
**Keith Lee had his send-off at EVOLVE 105 on Sunday night in Livonia, Michigan. It was billed as “The Final War” with EVOLVE champion Matt Riddle retaining the title over Lee with a running knee strike. Riddle wished Lee the best as the audience was chanting during the post-match. It was reported in March by Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Lee had been offered a deal with PW Torch confirming that Lee has signed with the company.
**EVOLVE will be running their next shows on Friday, June 23rd in Queens and Saturday, June 24th in Melrose, Massachusetts.
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**Ring of Honor is traveling to Europe this weekend with their Honor United events, beginning on Friday in Edinburgh, Scotland and continue in London and Doncaster on Saturday and Sunday. Below is the lineup for Friday’s card in Edinburgh:
*The Briscoe Brothers vs. Cody & Hangman Page for the ROH tag titles
*Silas Young vs. Joe Hendry for the ROH Television title
*EVIL & Sanada vs. Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian
*Shane Taylor vs. Scorpio Sky
*Kenny King vs. Punishment Martinez
*Dalton Castle, Hiroshi Tanahashi & Jay Lethal vs. Matt Taven, Vinny Marseglia & TK O’Ryan
*Sumie Sakai & Tenille Dashwood vs. Kelly Klein & Chardonnay
*The Young Bucks vs. Nick Aldis & Mark Haskins
*Toru Yano & Delirious vs. The Boys
**Ring of Honor has announced they are opening the Ring of Honor Dojo in Baltimore with a two-day camp scheduled for June 23rd and 24th. The members that are invited to train will be learning under Delirious, Joey Mercury, Jonathan Gresham, BJ Whitmer, and Will Ferrara. They are planning to hold 3-4 training seminars/tryouts each year.
**DEFY Wrestling is holding a card this Saturday at the Hawthorne Theatre in Portland, Oregon. They have announced Matt Riddle vs. Matt Sydal, Shane Strickland vs. Darby Allin, Joey Ryan vs. Randy Myers, and Nicole Matthews vs. Xia Brookside (the daughter of NXT trainer Robbie Brookside).
**MLW’s next television taping on June 7th will feature a “Boiler Room Brawl” between Sami Callihan and MVP, which would be the first time the match has been done since the WWF did one in April 1999 at the Backlash event between Mankind and Big Show. They have also announced a singles match with Tom Lawlor and Jake Hager (formerly Jack Swagger) pitting a UFC fighter against a Bellator fighter. The tapings take place at the Gilt Nightclub in Orlando and tickets are $15.
**It was on this date in 2001 that Triple H tore his quad during one of the best matches in Raw history. Hunter and Steve Austin were the tag champions and defending against Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit in San Jose with the plan to elevate the latter two and segue into singles programs with Jericho challenging Austin for the WWF title and Benoit for Hunter’s Intercontinental title. It has become a legendary match in company history because of who was injured, the incredible comeback videos produced and replaying of the match throughout the years. Jericho applied the Walls of Jericho to Austin, Hunter went to break it up and planted his leg, causing the quad to tear. The legend of the match grew because Hunter gutted his way through the match, which was one of the reasons Daniel Bryan was so angry when a match with Randy Orton was ended in 2013 when Bryan suffered a stinger. Hunter had surgery, moved to Alabama to rehab and returned in January 2001 to one of the loudest reactions of the era at Madison Square Garden on an episode of Raw. The blueprint was written on how to handle a returning star with a series of videos to U2’s “Beautiful Day” and led to a very successful Royal Rumble number on pay-per-view built around Hunter’s Rumble win.
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MMA NEWS
**This Friday’s Bellator 200 card has lost its main event with Gareth Davies of The Daily Telegraph reporting that Mirko Cro Cop has pulled out of the fight due to injury. Cro Cop was scheduled to have a rematch with Roy Nelson in the main event of the SSE Arena card from London, England. It is expected that the middleweight fight between champion Rafael Carvalho and Gegard Mousasi will serve as the new main event. Below is the current main card lineup:
*Rafael Carvalho vs. Gegard Mousasi for the Bellator middleweight title
*Michael Page vs. David Rickels
*Linton Vassell vs. Phil Davis
*Aaron Chalmers vs. Ash Griffiths
**Saturday’s UFC Fight Night event in Santiago, Chile drew 11,082 to the Movistar Arena. The Fight of the Night bonus went to Andrea Lee and Veronica Macedo and the two Performance bonuses went to Gabriel Benitez and Claudio Puelles for $50,000 each.
**The UFC will hold their first event in Liverpool, England this Sunday with an early morning card for North Americans. The show is headlined by an important welterweight fight between undefeated Darren Till and former title challenger Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson. The winner of this fight could be next for Kamaru Usman as these welterweights all appear stuck while the title situation figures itself out with the addition of an interim championship next month when Rafael dos Anjos fights Colby Covington at UFC 225 in Chicago. The Liverpool card begins at 10 am Eastern with the Fight Pass prelims and the main card starts at 1 pm on FS1 and TSN 5 in Canada.
**BBC Radio 5 live sports extra will be broadcasting the main card of Sunday’s UFC event from Liverpool, which is the first time they have provided coverage for the UFC. The BBC Radio 5 coverage will be hosted by OJ Borg and Nick Peet alongside Malcolm Martin and former UFC & WEC fighter Brad Pickett. Layla Anna-Lee will be providing backstage coverage on the broadcast.
*****
POST MOVIE REVIEW – Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18878778/
*****
upNXT 5/17/18: “Oney” Brits Allowed
https://upnxt.podbean.com/mf/download/i34qra/upNXT-MAY17-2018.mp3
*****
BWE 5/16/18: WWE UK, SSS16, Epic Encounter, Wrestle Queendom, World of Sport
https://britishwrestlingexperience.podbean.com/mf/download/xrp7k4/180516_BWE.mp3
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 5/15/18: Styles vs. Nakamura, Royal ‘Mellabration
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/gexuce/180515_RASD.mp3
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 5/14/18: Ronda vs. Nia, All In Sold Out, Cena & Nikki
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/qw8wde/180514_RAR.mp3
*****
POST ROUNDTABLE #5 FEAT. ARDA OCAL https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/b9tvqh/180513_ROUNDTABLE_ArdaOcal.mp3
*****
UFC 224 POST SHOW WITH JOHN POLLOCK
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/3ixksb/UFC-224-POST-SHOW.mp3
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #10: WWF Survivor Series 1996 (Patreon)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18736543
*****
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