POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Raw is up with Wai Ting and I reviewing Monday’s show from Seattle and chatting about the major news items over the past few days. We discussed the comments from Daniel Bryan regarding the criticism against Brie Bella, UFC 229 fight week kicks off with a pair of interviews with Conor McGregor, Alberto Del Rio stating he will fight in 2019, the full lineup for King of Pro Wrestling & we take your feedback. You can also listen to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, TuneIn & wherever you listen to your podcasts.
**I have an interview on the site chatting with MMA journalist Marc Raimondi of MMA Fighting. We covered a lot of topics, including UFC 229 this Saturday, the return of Conor McGregor, if 229 could be their most successful PPV ever, the future of streaming platforms, the recent suspension reduction for Jon Jones, the perception of USADA among fighters, media coverage of UFC 229 and the UFC’s policy change regarding USADA violation announcements. It’s always great catching up with Marc and I enjoyed this discussion a lot. It is available on the POST Wrestling RSS feed for all listeners.
**We are running an Instagram contest for your chance to win a copy of the new book “Creating the Mania: An Inside Look at How WrestleMania Comes to Life” by Jon Robinson, courtesy of ECW Press. To enter the contest, simply take a photo of yourself and where you typically listen to your POST Wrestling shows and tag us @POSTwrestlingofficial on Instagram to enter the contest. We will announce the winner next week and will also be giving out some copies on this week’s Ask-A-Wai for the best questions we receive from the POST Wrestling Forum.
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**Wai Ting and I will be back late tonight with Rewind-A-SmackDown to review tonight’s show and will also preview the Super Show-Down event with a quick rundown of the entire card.
**We will also be dropping the Double Shot for Patreon members on the POST Wrestling Café. On tonight’s show, we will have reviews of the latest episode of Being the Elite, I’ll be reviewing Lucha Underground & MLW Fusion, plus Wai’s review of Total Divas. If you sign up for the Café, you will be getting three Patreon shows this week with the Double Shot, Ask-A-Wai on Friday and the WWE Super Show-Down POST Show on Saturday.
WRESTLING NEWS
**The Cruiserweight formerly known as “Neville” (Benjamin Satterley) appeared on today’s Dragon Gate card as a surprise at Korakuen Hall. He appeared alongside Eita and defeated the BxB Hulk and the outgoing Shingo Takagi. He will be wrestling under his old moniker of “PAC” and pinned Takagi following the Red Arrow. He is scheduled to return with the promotion for a six-man tag on November 6th in the same building for a four corners Trios match. PAC will team with Big R Shimizu & Ben-K vs. Kzy & Susumu Yokosuka & Genki Horiguchi vs. Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino & Jason Lee vs. Yamato & BxB Hulk & Flamita. PAC will be a member of the R.E.D. faction (Real Extreme Diffusion).
PAC wrestled for Dragon Gate for five-years with his first tour taking place in September 2007 for the group. At the tail end of his pre-WWE career, PAC had just started working with New Japan Pro Wrestling in their junior heavyweight division before signing with WWE in the summer of 2012.
Despite criticism of 205 Live, there is no question that Neville improved his stock dramatically with his heel work on that show and appears to be one of the more sought out talents in the world. He has kept an extremely low profile since going home last year and recently getting out of his deal and being free to pursue his career elsewhere. Dragon Gate does not have the profile of New Japan but it’s a major acquisition for the promotion, which has dealt with an exodus of talent over the past year and this is a positive to put eyes on their product and streaming service. It should also allow PAC a lot of freedom between tours to takes dates worldwide and I would imagine he will be in heavy demand in the U.S. and U.K. for every major independent while using Dragon Gate as his home office in Japan.
Today’s tag match was PAC’s first in-ring appearance since September 26th, 2017.
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**The WWE is in Portland, Oregon tonight at the Moda Center for the SmackDown, 205 Live & Mixed Match Challenge tapings. Here is what has been announced for tonight:
*Daniel Bryan vs. Shelton Benjamin on SmackDown
*Andrade Cien Almas & Zelina Vega vs. R-Truth & Carmella on SmackDown
*Rusev & Lana vs. Jimmy Uso & Naomi on the Mixed Match Challenge
*Jinder Mahal & Alicia Fox vs. Finn Balor & Bayley on the Mixed Match Challenge
**Joey Janela announced Tuesday that he met with his surgeon, who told him his knee injury is really bad and will require surgery next week. Janela has been told he will be unable to wrestle “for atleast a year”. Janela suffered the injury two weeks ago during a match with Psicosis when he executed a high cross off the turnbuckle to the floor and came down badly on his left knee.
**New Japan Pro Wrestling announced their full lineup for next Monday’s King of Pro Wrestling card at Sumo Hall. There are no big surprise announcements with some curiosity regarding the mystery partner for LIJ in the eight-man tag match. Here is the full card:
*Kenny Omega vs. Kota Ibushi vs. Cody for the IWGP heavyweight title
*Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jay White for the IWGP title shot at Wrestle Kingdom
*KUSHIDA vs. Marty Scurll for the vacant IWGP junior heavyweight title
*EVIL vs. Zack Sabre, Jr.
*Kazuchika Okada, Toru Yano & Roppongi 3K vs. Tetsuya Naito, Sanada, Bushi & “X” (a mystery partner)
*Taichi, Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka vs. Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto & Will Ospreay
*Guerrillas of Destiny, Taiji Ishimori & Bad Luck Fale vs. The Young Bucks, Hangman Page & Chase Owens
*Juice Robinson & Toa Henare vs. Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma
*Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Tiger Mask for the IWGP junior heavyweight tag titles
**The English commentary for King of Pro Wrestling will be feature Kevin Kelly with Chris Charlton.
**A big story in the Canadian media landscape is that Rogers Sportsnet president Scott Moore is stepping down from his role with the Canadian media giant. Moore was one of the executives that oversaw the enormous NHL rights deal that Sportsnet landed in 2013 with a 12-year deal worth $5.2 billion. Specific to wrestling, Moore oversaw Sportsnet’s renewal with the WWE in 2014 for the rights to Raw and SmackDown and becoming the Canadian distributor of the WWE Network. To see where the WWE’s programming rights have escalated to in the U.S., it was an enormous coup for Sportsnet to lock up both properties for a decade when they did in 2014.
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**On the WWE Network’s schedule, they are listing a timeslot of 5 – 10 am Eastern for the Super Show-Down event this Saturday from Melbourne.
**Due to Joey Janela’s left knee injury that will keep him out for the rest of 2018, WWN has announced they have stripped him of the WWN championship. The company will be holding a tournament on Sunday, October 28th on the EVOLVE card in Ybor City, Florida. They have not announced any details or participants yet.
**EVOLVE has announced that they have amicably parted ways with Tracy “Hot Sauce” Williams. He had been working for the promotion since September 2014 and held the tag titles twice with partners Drew Gulak and Fred Yehi as members of Catch Point.
**The full list of participants for the NWA’s National title tournament on October 21st are Colt Cabana, Mike Parrow, Scorpio Sky, Sam Shaw, Jay Bradley, Ricky Starks, Willie Mack, and Sammy Guevara. The one-night tournament will be broken down into two four-way matches and the winners will meet in a singles match for the title.
**Game Changer Wrestling has announced “Joey Janela’s L.A. Confidential” card will take place from Los Angeles on Friday, November 16th (the weekend of Survivor Series in the city) with tickets going on sale tonight. Janela will not be wrestling on the show.
**Big Show, Bayley, and Curt Hawkins will be at MetLife Stadium this Sunday for New York Jets Kids Day and promoting next April’s WrestleMania at the stadium.
**Below is the tremendous commercial spot that 2K has produced for the WWE 2K19 game that comes out next week:
MMA NEWS
**It was first reported by Brett Okamoto of ESPN that the UFC had finally secured a main event for the UFC 230 event on November 3rd at Madison Square Garden. The fight would see Valentina Shevchenko inserted onto this card to fight Sijara Eubanks for the vacant UFC flyweight title. The UFC had previously announced that the vacant title would be decided in a December fight in Toronto between Shevchenko and former strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk. To put it mildly, the reaction to the new fight for November was negative. For such a major venue, which was headlined by Eddie Alvarez and Conor McGregor in 2016 and Georges St-Pierre’s return in 2017, this fight has no drawing power behind it. None.
Eubanks was a finalist on TUF last year and was scheduled to fight Nicco Montano for the title in the finals, however, Eubanks was hospitalized during her weight cut and removed from the fight. She is 1-1 as a flyweight and brings with her the concern whether she can even make weight for the fight. It’s not only that the fight doesn’t appear competitive on paper, but that you’re removing a fight people were anticipating heavily between Shevchenko and Jedrzejczyk. It is also the most transparent example at how the UFC just cannot fathom the idea of a pay-per-view headlined without a title fight. There was obvious resistance to Nate Diaz and Dustin Poirier’s campaign to launch a 165-pound weight class and fight for a title, but even moving Diaz and Poirier to a non-title five round fight would have been exponentially bigger than the new main event.
When the fight was announced, Joe Rogan was live on his podcast with Brendan Schaub and his real-time reaction was one for the ages. Schaub was negative towards the fight as Rogan was just trying to comprehend the decision, leading to Rogan stating, “No offense but I don’t even know who Sijara Eubanks is and I’m the UFC commentator”, which will go down as one of the most repeated sound bytes ever leading up to the fight.
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**Conor McGregor was a guest on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show on Monday to promote his fight with Khabib Nuramgomedov this Saturday at UFC 229. McGregor was more open in this interview than many and acknowledged some of his mistakes over the past year, stating that he’s come into a lot of money and surrounded by many people but also said in some examples there was justification on his part. On the bus incident in Brooklyn this past April, he believed he was defending his friend Artem Lobov and could not say enough positive things about Lobov and what he has meant to his career. The biggest item most took from the interview was his interest in fighting Anderson Silva despite the major size discrepancy. While Silva did fight at welterweight early in his career, he isn’t making that weight now and it’s hard to envision McGregor going that far up in weight to meet Silva at middleweight nor does it seem like the highest priority for the UFC to target that fight for McGregor when there are countless options between featherweight, lightweight, and welterweight fighters that could match up with McGregor and draw.
**The UFC has announced that Max Holloway will return on December 8th to defend the UFC featherweight title against Brian Ortega at UFC 231 in Toronto. The news of the fight was first reported by MMA Junkie and officially announced by the promotion Monday night. Holloway was forced to withdraw from two fights this year during fight week in March prior to UFC 223 and in July heading into UFC 226. This will be Holloway’s first fight since December 2017 with Holloway and Ortega originally set to fight in July. Holloway has won his last 12 fights going back to August 2013 and became the undisputed featherweight champion in June 2017 when he defeated Jose Aldo. Ortega is 14-0 with 1 no contest for a failed drug test where a win was overturned. He last fought in March knocking out Frankie Edgar at UFC 222. The UFC has also announced a light heavyweight bout between Jimi Manuwa and Thiago Santos and a middleweight fight with Eryk Anders taking on Elias Theodorou for the UFC 231 card in Toronto.
**Bellator has released their first countdown show for Bellator 208, which is headlined by Fedor Emelianenko and Chael Sonnen in the semi-finals of the Heavyweight Grand Prix on Saturday, October 13th:
**Erick Silva has been forced to withdraw from his upcoming welterweight bout with Lorenz Larkin at Bellator 207 on October 12th. Silva and Larkin were scheduled for the alternate bout of the ongoing Welterweight Grand Prix. No replacement has been named for the fight. The two were scheduled to fight on the main card of the event from Uncasville, Connecticut.
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*****
INTERVIEW: Marc Raimondi of MMA Fighting
John Pollock chats with MMA journalist Marc Raimondi about Conor McGregor’s return, UFC 229 fight week, Bellator’s card in San Jose this past weekend, streaming services, the ESPN deal, USADA’s perception & lots more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/10/02/interview-marc-raimondi-of-mma-fighting/
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 10/1/18: Seattle Super Audience, ‘Taker & Kane attack Hunter & Shawn Michaels
John Pollock & Wai Ting review Monday’s Raw from Seattle featuring a closing segment with Shawn Michaels, the incredible reaction to Elias & Kevin Owens, Ronda Rousey’s match with Ruby Riott, a discussion of the major news items & your feedback.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/10/02/rar-10-1-18-seattle-super-audience-taker-kane-attack-hhh-shawn/
*****
NJPW FIGHTING SPIRIT UNLEASHED POST SHOW
John Pollock is joined by guest co-host Mike Murray to review Sunday’s card from Long Beach, discussing a terrific card from New Japan, the main event for KOPW, a discussion on the Death Before Dishonor show, feedback & lots more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/10/01/njpw-fighting-spirit-unleashed-post-show-with-john-pollock-mike-murray/
*****
EGGSHELLS PODCAST COMPANION: 2003 with Jonathan Snowden
Chris Charlton is joined by Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden to chat 2003 with four cards at the Tokyo Dome, the first Ultimate Crush event, the rise of Hustle, Bill Goldberg’s involvement, the influence of Pride & K-1 on the wrestling scene & lots more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/29/eggshells-podcast-companion-2003-w-jonathan-snowden/
*****
REWIND-A-WAI – WWF In Your House: International Incident (Patreon)
John Pollock & Wai Ting review the WWF’s IYH event from Vancouver in July 1996 featuring a six-man tag with Shawn Michaels, Ahmed Johnson & Sid vs. Vader, Owen Hart & British Bulldog as chosen by Espresso Executive Producer Zubin Sundar.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/21693210
*****
upNXT & Forever Young 9/27/18: Genius of the Sky
Braden Herrington & Davie Portman review this week’s NXT episode, the Mae Young Classic with Io Shirai vs. Xia Brookside and Davie’s 205 (approximate) second review of 205 Live.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/09/27/upnxt-forever-young-9-27-18-genius-of-the-sky/
*****
DOUBLE SHOT 9/26/18: Total Divas, July ’96 Raw, Jeff Hardy & Slammiversary features
John Pollock & Wai Ting provide additional reviews of the season premiere of Total Divas, a review of the July 15th, 1996 episode of Raw leading into “International Incident”, reviews of the Jeff Hardy & Slammiversary features, Ten Pounds of Gold & more.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/21648948
*****
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