POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Raw is LIVE tonight at 11:15 p.m. ET with a review of WWE Raw, the latest news items, and your feedback. The show will be live for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**The Extreme Rules POST Show is available for everyone to download or watch on the YouTube channel with Wai Ting and I sharing our thoughts on Sunday’s event from Columbus, Ohio, and taking calls.
**The ASK-A-WAI Mailbag Show will be released Tuesday afternoon with Wai and I taking your questions from the POST Wrestling Forum thread.
**Nate Milton makes his projections for this Thursday’s World Transfer Window on the British Wrestling Experience:
Who will win the BWE World Transfer Window? @N8Mozaik gives his prediction.
Bushby v Benno v Thompson v Kate v Ting v Jamesie
Thursday on The British Wrestling Experience #BWETransferhttps://t.co/37Vm1rgWWU pic.twitter.com/lqyEFm8673
— POST Wrestling (@POSTwrestling) September 27, 2021
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting (11:15 p.m. ET, Double Double+ Patrons)
Tuesday: ASK-A-WAI Mailbag Show (Patreon)
Wednesday: Shot in the Dark with John Siino (upNXT)
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite (10:15 p.m. ET, Double Double+ Patrons)
Thursday: G1 Climax Day 6 & 7 (Patreon)
Thursday: The BWE presents “The World Transfer Window”
Thursday: MCU L8R with Wai Ting & WH Park (Patreon)
Friday: G1 Climax Day 8 (Patreon)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown – WWE Draft/Rampage (Live at 11:15 p.m. ET for all Patrons)
Sunday: G1 Climax Day 9 (Patreon)
Sunday: POST Puroresu with WH Park & Karen Peterson
WRESTLING NEWS
**WWE Raw takes place from the Heritage Bank Center in Cincinnati, Ohio tonight following Extreme Rules. The show is being promoted around the WWE Championship rematch between Big E. and Bobby Lashley, which will start the show at 8 p.m. ET while getting a jump on Monday Night Football with tonight’s game between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles. Last week’s formula was starting off with the big six-man tag and then shooting an angle to build for something later in the show, and that would make sense in this instance to try and keep the audience around. It’s also the final episode before the two-night draft, which begins Friday and continues next Monday, so they can push the potential of several matches for the last time, potentially.
**AEW has confirmed multiple dates and cities for the month of November after changing its pay-per-view date from November 6th to November 13th. The company will be running the following dates, which were made official on Monday:
*Friday, November 5th – Rampage from the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, Missouri
*Wednesday, November 10th – AEW Dynamite from the Indiana Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis
*Friday, November 12th – AEW Rampage from the Target Center in Minneapolis
*Saturday, November 13th – AEW Full Gear from the Target Center in Minneapolis
**WWE won’t have another Sunday night pay-per-view until Survivor Series on November 21st. The Crown Jewel event will be a Thursday afternoon card on October 21st from Saudi Arabia, which is their next major show featuring Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar for the first time since SummerSlam 2018.
**The Broken Skull Sessions released its latest episode where Steve Austin spoke with Seth Rollins. One of the most-discussed points was Rollins’ sharing his anger over the Hell in a Cell match with The Fiend from October 2019. The match was an utter disaster and was voted the worst match of 2019 in the Observer awards. The match featured the awful red lighting, The Fiend popping up from countless stomps, and then the referee waved off the match when Rollins threatened to use a sledgehammer as the audience in Sacramento vocally rejected the match. Rollins voiced his displeasure with the match and interactions with Vince McMahon afterward:
Look, I put a positive spin on it now that I can look back a year-and-a-half later but at the time – I came through that curtain and I was ready to strangle Vince McMahon, I’m not kidding you. Tyson Kidd/T.J. Wilson was there to hold me back.
I stared right into Vince’s eyes; you know where he sits in that chair over there. I looked at him, he looked at me, we didn’t say a single word to each other, and he walked out, and I sat down there with Paul Heyman, who at the time was creative director of Raw. So, I sat down with him and we had a conversation, you know, he was ‘Paul Heyman-ing me’ if you will and then, the next day I went into Vince’s office, I was much calmer and said, ‘let’s talk about this, we need to figure out what we’re doing here because that can’t happen again’ and it was civil but it took me a night to, but I was ready to go.
It’s funny because whenever there are truly terrible matches and stories, the fanbase is often blamed for being “too negative” and not waiting for things to play out. Yet, many times, the performers directly involved are as mad or even angrier but can’t state it publicly until enough time passes by. The 2019 match was atrocious and there was no defense of it, and it killed Rollins as a babyface, and Rollins acknowledged that without that match he doesn’t get to his present heel character.
**AEW SVP Chris Harrington spoke with Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics. These are always terrific discussions about the state of the wrestling industry, looking towards the future, and Harrington sharing the nuts and bolts of his day-to-day duties with respect to pay-per-view, advertising, and other areas of AEW’s business.
Brandon Thurston asks AEW SVP “Mookie” Chris Harrington to what extent advertisers and networks care if Dynamite beats Raw in 18-49 viewership.
Listen to the full conversation in your podcast feeds now.https://t.co/56uPTmiYbW pic.twitter.com/P0jnFsuEf4
— Wrestlenomics (@wrestlenomics) September 27, 2021
Harrington was asked about AEW’s audience, specifically people of color, and that WWE performs at a higher scale among POC. Thurston asked if AEW was missing out on that audience WWE is reaching more of:
I don’t know if we are missing on that opportunity as much as we are actively working all the time to bring in more fans for wrestling. On top of that, Tony Khan would say he has brought in a lot of incredibly talented, diverse faces and given them prominent roles on our show and earned prominent roles on our show because he has a great interest in reflecting all of that. Whether it’s a match where Red Velvet is in there in the middle, or Jade Cargill or other people like that, who we’re developing new opportunities with, we think that’s great. TNT obviously has the NBA, which has a large African-American population that watches it regularly so we know that we’re on a network that addresses a lot of people that they do have.
We’ll just continue to grow our share of audience of all people. But I’d certainly say it’s something we think about and we care about. We do think there’s maybe not always been as many opportunities given to everyone equally and it’s good to give them that and opportunities to have some mentorship and discussion so it’s great to have leaders like Mark (Henry).
When we put a BLM, Black Lives Matters thing before one of our Dynamites, we had a lot of people say terrible things to us after that, and Tony’s response was really simple, he’s just said, ‘forget them, I have no interest in you if you’re offended by that. I’m setting out on making this statement’. He himself (Tony Khan) who is a child of an immigrant, is from a Pakistani father, that says a lot too about his experience where he thinks about the fact it’s important we give these people opportunities and we reach out to people and say what’s happening and we’re trying to listen, we’re trying to listen that’s for sure.
**Dave Meltzer has a piece at SI.com regarding the television numbers from WWE and AEW throughout September and where the companies have competed closely for ticket sales.
**Below are the matches for AEW Dark: Elevation tonight at 7 p.m. ET, which were taped at Arthur Ashe Stadium last week:
*Paul Wight vs. Rickey Shane Page, VSK & CPA
*John Silver, Alex Reynolds, Alan “5” Angels & 10 vs. TJ Crawford, Eric James, Kevin Tibbs & Dean Alexander
*Thunder Rosa vs. Kayla Sparks
**It was confirmed over the weekend that Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston will face Minoru Suzuki & Lance Archer at the New Japan Showdown card on Sunday, October 17th in a Philadelphia Street Fight. Moxley was originally scheduled for the NJPW Strong event in San Jose on November 13th but “Full Gear” was moved to that night.
**MLW has added a Trios match between Los Parks and 5150 (Danny Rivera, Slice Boogie & Julius Smokes) for this Saturday’s Fightland event at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia. The card is headlined by Jacob Fatu vs. Alex Hammerstone in a Title vs. Title match with a one-hour version of the show airing on Thursday, October 7th on VICE TV.
**MLW has released the opening round matches for the Opera Cup, which begins at Fightland. Below are the opening round pairings:
*Davey Richards vs. Tom Lawlor
*Bobby Fish vs. Lee Moriarty
*TJP vs. Alex Shelley
*Calvin Tankman vs. Matt Cross
**House of Glory has announced a huge match between Will Ospreay and Amazing Red for its ‘Born Again’ card on Friday, November 12th. This is a rematch from their August 2019 match in the Super J Cup tournament that Ospreay won. The card will take place from the NYC Arena and stream on Fite TV for $14.99.
**Being the Elite Ep. 275 ‘Grand Slam’. This week’s episode began with a promo from Christopher Daniels stating he lost everything and let his partner Frankie Kazarian down. Now, Daniels is all on his own and instead of it being the end, it may be the beginning.
**DDT has announced four big matches for the opening night of its Grand Prix 2021 on Wednesday, November 3rd at Ota Ward Gymnasium. The line-up will feature Konosuke Takeshita vs. Yuji Okabayashi, Jun Akiyama vs. Yuki Ueno, Tetsuya Endo vs. Yuji Hino, and Harashima vs. Kazusada Higuchi.
**This week’s episode of Dark Side of the Ring will cover the history of the FMW promotion. The series revealed that FMW historian @BAHUFMW was a consultant for the episode and is a huge authority on the history of that group, so the episode should be very thorough. The episode airs Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET.
**Game Changer Wrestling is releasing a special countdown show for the Jon Moxley vs. Nick Gage match. The countdown will air this Friday on the promotion’s YouTube channel with the match taking place Saturday, October 9th from Atlantic City, New Jersey.
G1 CLIMAX 31
A BLOCK: The Great O-Khan (8 points), Zack Sabre Jr. (6), KENTA (6), Toru Yano (6), Shingo Takagi (4), Kota Ibushi (4), Yujiro (4), Tomohiro Ishii (2), Tanga Loa (2), and Tetsuya Naito (0, withdrawn)
B BLOCK: Jeff Cobb (4 points), Kazuchika Okada (4), Taichi (4), Tama Tonga (2), EVIL (2), SANADA (2), Hiroshi Tanahashi (2), Hirooki Goto (0), Chase Owens (0), and YOSHI-HASHI (0)
The G1 has a break until Wednesday before a stretch of five events in six days including Wednesday, Thursday & Friday cards at Korakuen Hall and Hamamatsu.
After one week, the A Block is producing the top-tier matches of the tournament from the usual suspects and the compelling nature of Zack Sabre Jr. as the submission wizard tapping out Naito, Takagi, and Ibushi. However, the block is balanced out by the lower-rung matches where the likes of Yujiro, Loa, Great O-Khan, and Yano have dragged the A Block down and present a stark contrast to those shows. The A Block is reeling from the loss of Naito that must have thrown the tournament into disarray from a standings perspective figuring Naito was due a minimum of 8-10 points. In his absence, Yuji Nagata had a decent match with Tanga Loa and a fantastic one with Takagi over the weekend.
Aside from Okada vs. Tanahashi, the B Block has not produced the high-end level of matches out of the gate, but the shows are consistent from start to finish with good to above average and sometimes bordering on great. Jeff Cobb is being groomed for big things and has started the tournament 2-0 while Taichi, SANADA, YOSHI-HASHI, and Goto are delivering strong outings to round out those shows.
I would peg the top matches as Takagi vs. Ishii, Okada vs. Tanahashi, Takagi vs. Zack Sabre Jr., and Naito vs. Zack Sabre Jr. after the first week.
After five events, the G1 is averaging 1,700 fans with the top attendance being Sunday’s show in Kobe with 2,250 (which was originally scheduled to feature Takagi vs. Naito) and the low point was 816 at Ota Ward Gymnasium for the B Block card on Friday.
Below are the line-ups for the next two shows:
Wednesday, September 29th at 5:30 a.m. ET at Korakuen Hall (Block B)
*Kazuchika Okada vs. YOSHI-HASHI
*Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tama Tonga
*Jeff Cobb vs. Hirooki Goto
*SANADA vs. Chase Owens
*EVIL vs. Taichi
Thursday, September 30th at 5:30 a.m. ET at Korakuen Hall (Block A)
*Shingo Takagi vs. KENTA
*Kota Ibushi vs. Toru Yano
*Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Great O-Khan
*Tomohiro Ishii vs. Tanga Loa
*Non-tournament: Yujiro vs. BUSHI
MMA NEWS
**The UFC 266 card on Saturday drew an announced attendance of 19,029 to the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas with a gate of $5,609,906. The gate would rank as the 13th largest among MMA cards in the state of Nevada. The Fight of the Night bonus obviously went to the main event between Alexander Volkanovski and Brian Ortega while the two Performance of the Night bonuses were given to Merab Dvalishvili and Chris Daukaus for $50,000 each.
**If you missed UFC 266, there were two strong contenders for ‘Round of the Year’. The third round of Volkanovski and Ortega was incredible as Ortega clamped on a tight guillotine that Volkanovski somehow survived. Ortega moved to a triangle that the champion also escaped before Volkanovski poured it on and ended up winning the round by getting on top and destroying Ortega with strikes. Ortega was dominated in the fourth round but came back to win the fifth round in a terrific fight. The other big round was the opening one between Merab Dvalishvili and Marlon Moraes in the prelims. Moraes cracked him and landed several big shots as Dvalishvili was retreating and trying to regain his composure but Moraes continued to strike, went for a choke, and then gave up on it to resume his strikes. It was about to become a solid 10-8 round when Dvalishvili came alive and unloaded with hammer fists on top and it appeared Moraes was on the verge of going out. I scored it 10-9 for Moraes but he was done after the round and was stopped in the second.
**UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling is unable to fight Petr Yan at UFC 267 on Saturday, October 30th. MMA Fighting reported that Sterling would be unable to fight on that date as he is still recovering from neck surgery from earlier this year. The UFC has yet to decide regarding Yan’s status for the October card in Abu Dhabi and whether they will add an interim championship while Sterling recovers. Sterling won the title from Yan this past March at UFC 259 after Yan connected with an illegal knee strike and Sterling was unable to continue and won the championship by disqualification. The UFC 267 card is scheduled to feature Jan Blachowicz defending the light heavyweight title against Glover Teixeira.
**This Saturday, UFC is back at the Apex for a Fight Night card headlined by a light heavyweight bout between Thiago Santos and Johnny Walker.
**Bellator 267 airs this Friday from Wembley Arena in London, England, and airs on Showtime with a rematch between Douglas Lima and Michael “Venom” Page. The two previously fought in May 2019 with Lima stopping Page by knockout.
ON THIS DATE
G1 CLIMAX PODCAST
Day 5 – Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Kota Ibushi
Day 4 – Kazuchika Okada vs. EVIL [FREE SHOW]
Day 3 – Shingo Takagi vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
Day 2 – Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada
Day 1 – Shingo Takagi vs. Tomohiro Ishii
*****
WWE EXTREME RULES POST SHOW
John Pollock and Wai Ting discuss results from WWE Extreme Rules 2021 featuring Roman Reigns vs. “The Demon” Finn Balor and Becky Lynch vs. Bianca Belair.
*****
UFC 266 POST SHOW: Volkanovski vs. Ortega, Diaz vs. Lawler 2
Phil Chertok is joined by Eric Marcotte to review the UFC 266 card from Las Vegas where Alexander Volkanovski retained the featherweight title, Valentina Shevchenko continued her streak, and Nick Diaz returned.
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN: AEW Rampage Grand Slam, Extreme Rules Go-Home
John Pollock & Wai Ting discuss WWE SmackDown’s go-home show before Extreme Rules and AEW Rampage Grand Slam from Arthur Ashe Stadium.
*****
MCU L8R: What If…? Ep. 7 “Thor Were an Only Child?” (w/ Brent Chittenden)
Wai Ting & WH Park are joined by Brent Chittenden (True North Nerds) to review What If…? Episode 7: “What If… Thor Were an Only Child?”
*****
BTWA #13: Pro Wrestling Guerrilla – Black Cole Sun
Martin Bushby & Andrew Thompson are back with another round of Wrestling Adventure. This month they are joined by Chinyere Okafor to go back to 2014 and the Pro Wrestling Guerilla show, Black Cole Sun.
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE GRAND SLAM: Omega vs. Danielson
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite Grand Slam from Arthur Ashe Stadium featuring Kenny Omega vs. Bryan Danielson in front of the largest audience in the promotion’s history.
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK: Tanahashi & Ishii NJPW Strong debuts, Janela vs. Kiss
John Siino reviews this week’s editions of AEW Dark, AEW Dark: Elevation, NXT UK, 205 Live, NJPW Strong, NWA Powerrr, Ring of Honor, and Main Event in under 15 minutes on Shot In The Dark.
*****
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