POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Raw will be back tonight for a packed show as Wai Ting and I will go through a news-heavy edition of Raw, all the major stories from the past days and will also be taking your feedback & questions at the end. The show will be up late tonight on the site and available wherever you listen to your podcasts. We will also have some additional information on our POST Wrestling LIVE in New York show for those tuning in tonight.
**I’ll be filling in for Davie Portman this Thursday on upNXT with Braden Herrington.
**On Saturday’s POST Puroresu, WH Park and I will have a full review of the recent Giant Baba Memorial card, we will go through the New Japan Cup with some predictions and tackle all the news going on in Japan. If you have any topics you will like us to discuss, please post in the comment section below and I’ll make note of them.
POST WRESTLING SCHEDULE
*Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock and Wai Ting
*Tuesday: Rewind-A-SmackDown
*Tuesday: The Double Shot, including a review of “Fighting with My Family” (Patreon)
*Thursday: upNXT with Braden Herrington and John Pollock
*Thursday: Café Hangout LIVE at 3 pm Eastern (Double Double + Patreon members)
*Friday: Rewind-A-Wai covering WWF Raw is War and WCW Monday Nitro from July 13, 1998 (Patreon)
*Saturday: POST Puroresu with John Pollock and WH Park
*Saturday: UFC 235 POST Show
WRESTLING NEWS
**Tonight’s episode of Raw takes place from the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia. The show is being promoted around Roman Reigns appearing on the show to provide a medical update on his fight with leukemia. The show will also feature Ric Flair’s birthday party that has been advertised for three weeks and is set to feature guests and probably an angle coming out of it. I do expect a strong number tonight, especially in the first hour as there is a lot of curiosity over Reigns. As of this writing, they have not announced any matches for the show.
**Good Morning America is promoting the appearance of Roman Reigns for Tuesday morning’s show with “an announcement you can’t miss.”
**Reigns was training at his alma mater Georgia Tech on Monday, prior to tonight’s Raw.
**In its first weekend of national release, “Fighting with My Family” finished fourth at the box office bringing in $8 million across the 2,711 theatres it was released in. The film finished behind “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” that opened with $55.5 million, “Alita: Battle Angel” at $12 million, and third was “The LEGO Movie 2” that grossed $10 million over the weekend.
**The SmackDown crew has a house show in Savannah, Georgia tonight with AJ Styles, Randy Orton, and Rey Mysterio advertised as the top talent on the show. The television tapings are Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina with the contract signing between Daniel Bryan and Kofi Kingston, Johnny Gargano vs. Cesaro, and Shinsuke Nakamura & Rusev vs. Ricochet & Aleister Black announced.
**New Japan announced that this year’s New Japan Cup tournament will feature 32 participants as they have doubled the field from previous years. This will feature the return of Kota Ibushi after the injuries he sustained at Wrestle Kingdom in January as well as Michael Elgin returning from a knee injury. The latest addition to the roster is Mikey Nicholls, formerly of TMDK and TM61, who left NXT last year and will be joining the New Japan roster as a member of CHAOS. Nicholls will face Hikuleo in the first round of the New Japan Cup.
The big match in the opening round is Kota Ibushi vs. Tetsuya Naito on March 10th and should be excellent. On that same card, Hiroshi Tanahashi will face Shota Umino, which is an obvious win for Tanahashi but is the biggest match of Umino’s career and should be an extended length for Umino to showcase his talent. The tournament begins March 8th at Korakuen Hall with the main event between Tomohiro Ishii and Yuji Nagata, which are originally scheduled for the U.S. tour.
**Colt Cabana will also be in the New Japan Cup and given that the tour runs through March 24th, would mean that Cabana is missing the next Ring of Honor pay-per-view on March 15th in Las Vegas.
**New Japan Pro Wrestling has released the full card for its Anniversary show on Wednesday, March 6th from Tokyo and streaming live on New Japan World:
*Guerrillas of Destiny, Bad Luck Fale, Chase Owens & Hikuleo vs. Togi Makabe, Toru Yano, Ayato Yoshida, Shota Umino & Ren Narita
*Tomohiro Ishii and Yoshi-Hashi vs. Yuji Nagata and Toa Henare
*Minoru Suzuki, Taichi, El Desperado, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Taka Michinoku vs. Dragon Lee, Satoshi Kojima, Tomoaki Honma, Ryusuke Taguchi & Tiger Mask
*Shingo Takagi and Bushi vs. Roppongi 3K for the IWGP junior heavyweight tag titles
*Taiji Ishimori vs. Jushin Thunder Liger for the IWGP junior heavyweight title
*Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada & Hirooki Goto vs. Tetsuya Naito, EVIL & Sanada
*Jay White vs. Will Ospreay
**The tag match involving The Young Bucks against Pentagon Jr. and Fenix is now official for Double or Nothing on May 25th.
**Mike Johnson at PWinsider.com has a lengthy rundown of Jeff Jarrett and Global Force Wrestling’s amended lawsuit against Anthem Sports & Entertainment. In the new suit, the plaintiffs are arguing that they are unable to file copyrights on the GFW Amped! Series, which was a series of shows produced amounting to 16 hours. Anthem responded to the initial suit back on November 30th, by acknowledging that the master copies had been in their possession but have been deleted:
The sixteen one-hour Episodes of Global Force Wrestling Amped content sought in this question no longer exist. It was deleted in the normal course of business, long prior to the onset of this litigation, in order to free up storage space on Anthem Wrestling’s systems.
Jarrett and GFW are claiming losses of $4.8 million with each episode valued by GFW at $300,000. Anthem attempted to have the suit dismissed last year claiming that Jarrett and GFW were not able to state an adequate claim of copyright infringement.
**Business reporter Darren Rovell of the Action Network reports that a lawsuit has been filed by Robert Vanech against the Alliance of American Football and Charlie Ebersol. In the suit, Rovell reports that the AAF was originally going to market itself under the XFL name and attempted to purchase the rights to the XFL’s assets from the WWE and NBC for $50 million. Rovell stated that the AAF met with Vince McMahon and the WWE chairman opted to start is own league, although Rovell didn’t provide a timeline of when the meeting occurred.
Charlie Ebersol was behind ESPN’s 30 for 30 on the XFL, which premiered in 2017 and featured Vince McMahon and Dick Ebersol in the documentary. The final scene included McMahon and Ebersol discussing the possibility of the XFL returning and McMahon leaving the door open. Towards the end of 2017, McMahon sold just under $100 million worth of WWE stock to help finance his startup group Alpha Entertainment and formally announced the return of the XFL in January 2018. The AAF subsequently announced its own formation as a spring league, which launched earlier this month while the XFL will begin to play in February 2020.
**Following her title defense against Konami this past weekend for Stardom, Mayu Iwatani will defend the Women of Honor championship against former champion Kelly Klein. The rematch takes place at ROH’s 17th-Anniversary pay-per-view on Friday, March 15th in Las Vegas at Sam’s Town Casino.
**Sami Callihan has signed a multi-year deal with Impact Wrestling. The company is hinting at additional announcements of talent re-signing and a former world champion returning.
**DDT has announced their entire card for their first U.S. date during WrestleMania week at La Boom in Queens, New York. Below is the lineup for their show on Thursday, April 4th at 8 pm:
*Daisuke Sasaki vs. Konosuke Takeshita
*Sanshiro Takashi vs. MAO in a Weapon Rumble
*Kazusada Higuchi and Harashima vs. Akito and Ethan Page vs. Shigehiro Irie and Jason Kincaid
*Tetsuya Endo and Soma Takao vs. Yukio Sakaguchi and Masahiro Takanashi
*Iron Man Heavy Metal Title Battle Royal feat. Saki Akai, Makoto Oishi, Kazuki Hirata, Colt Cabana, Yoshihiko, Kikutaro
*Danshoku Dino and Antonio Honda vs. Joey Ryan and Royce Isaacs
*Maki Ito vs. Miyu Yamashita
**Impact has added Dante Fox and Pat Buck to the Ultimate X match at the United We Stand show on Thursday, April 4th in Rahway, New Jersey. Fox and Buck join Jake Crist, Kotto Brazil, and Jack Evans.
**Impact Wrestling has announced that they will be replaying each week’s episode on Mondays at 6 pm Eastern and will be available on the Global Wrestling Network each Tuesday.
**Jimmy Havoc has been announced for MLW’s events at the Melrose Ballroom on Thursday, April 4th and Friday, April 5th during WrestleMania week. The first night will be headlined by Pentagon Jr. vs. LA Park and the second night will feature MLW’s Battle Riot battle royal.
**WWE co-president George Barrios will be giving a speech at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on Tuesday in San Francisco at 5 pm Eastern.
**MLW will be holding television tapings on Saturday, June 1st in Milwaukee at the Waukesha County Expo Center. Tickets will go on sale on Monday, March 11th at 11 am Eastern. MLW was going to be running the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia on June 1st but have moved that date to December 21st for a taping that will be called “Dream Arena” in the city.
**In addition to Ric Flair, today is also the birthday of Maria Kanellis.
**Future Stars of Wrestling has announced that Johnny Mundo/Impact/Nitro/Morrison will be facing Teddy Hart in the main event of their Mecca IV card on Sunday, March 17th in Las Vegas at Sam’s Town Live. This card will be taking place at the same arena Ring of Honor is running on the Friday and Saturday that weekend with their pay-per-view and television tapings.
**The WWE stock closed at $85.12 on Monday.
**A significant Japanese women’s match took place on this date in 1981 that signaled the end of one era for All Japan Women. Jackie Sato was one half of the Beauty Pair and was an enormous star during this time for her crossover marketability. She dropped the WWWA title for the final time to the promotion’s new star, Jaguar Yokota. The title change took place in Yokohama with Yokota anointed the new star at the age of 19 as the promotion moved Sato out. It was three months later that Sato was pushed into retirement at the age of 23 to have Yokota thrive without being in the shadow of the previous star. Sato would come out of retirement five years later for the JWP group and would retire for good after a match with Shinobu Kandori in 1987.
**On this date in 2001, the World Wrestling Federation presented the No Way Out pay-per-view from the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was the company’s last pay-per-view before the huge WrestleMania X-7 show in April. The card featured The Rock defeating Kurt Angle to win the WWF championship and set up the big ‘Mania match with Royal Rumble winner Steve Austin and a card that would draw in excess of 1 million buys.
In a unique booking choice, Austin lost on this card in a 2-of-3 falls match to Triple H despite headlining WrestleMania. On the surface, it seemed like a smart choice as Austin was bulletproof and it immediately set up a challenger for Austin post-Mania. However, with Austin’s heel turn at WrestleMania, instead of becoming his babyface foil, Hunter joined forces with Austin as the Two Man Power Trip to feud with The Undertaker and Kane and never paid off the feud.
MMA NEWS
**A big announcement was made on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show Monday that the PFL has signed a television deal with ESPN for their upcoming second season. The two-year deal will see most of the events follow a format of the preliminary fights streaming on ESPN+ and the main card on ESPN2 along with pre and post-fight shows. The first card to kick off the second season will take place Thursday, May 9th with the playoffs beginning October 11th and the finals airing live on ESPN2 on December 31st. The cards will also be available in Canada through TSN.
**In addition, the PFL will be introducing a 155-pound women’s division in the second season. A tournament will take place, which will include their standout fighter at the weight in Olympic Gold Medalist Kayla Harrison.
**The Nevada Athletic Commission issued a suspension and fine to Bellator fighter Dillon Danis for his involvement in the post-fight brawl at UFC 229 following the fight between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor at the T-Mobile Arena. Danis has been fined $7,500 and issued a seven-month suspension that is retroactive to the night of the fight on October 6th. Danis will eligible to compete again in early May.
**Dan Hardy has joined SiriusXM’s Fight Nation. Hardy will join co-host RJ Clifford each Tuesday night on MMA Tonight. Hardy will also be co-hosting a UFC 235 Post-Fight Live show this Saturday after the pay-per-view with Jimmy Smith.
**Herb Dean has been selected as the official for this Saturday’s light heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Anthony Smith. Marc Goddard will handle the officiating duties for the welterweight title fight between Tyron Woodley and Kamaru Usman.
**Here is the first episode of this week’s UFC Embedded series heading into Saturday:
**The UFC has released the Countdown to UFC 235 preview show for this Saturday’s pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas:
*****
Café Hangout: Ariel Helwani on GSP’s Retirement
John Pollock and Wai Ting are joined by ESPN’s Ariel Helwani to discuss the retirement of Georges St-Pierre. We also take your calls and discuss this week’s news including Tye Dillinger requesting his WWE release.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/22/ariel-helwani-on-gsps-retirement-cafe-hangout-live-2-21-19/
*****
ASK-A-WAI: Ask Us Anything! (March 2019)
John Pollock and Wai Ting cover over 50 questions in this 95 min podcast, discussing their favourite announcers, Weezer, Pedro Morales, NXT call-ups, AEW, Tyron Woodley, AJ Styles, Dean Ambrose, factions, Chris Benoit, Impact and more in the March 2019 edition of Ask-A-Wai.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/24873017/
*****
upNXT 2/21/19: Gargan-LEGO Escape
Braden Herrington is joined by POST Wrestling’s Wai Ting to review this week’s edition of WWE NXT including Johnny Gargano vs. Velveteen Dream for the NXT North American Title, Roderick Strong vs. Aleister Black, Matt Riddle calls out Brock Lesnar, Mia Yim vs. Xia Lee, and they chat all the talk about the HUGE main roster call ups from this week!
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/21/upnxt-2-21-19-gargan-lego-escape/
*****
BWE 2/20/19: Rev Pro High Stakes, OTT Homecoming 2, NXT UK, PCW in Blackpool
Martin and Benno are joined by Lee Malone of Voices Of Wrestling to talk Revolution Pro Wrestling High Stakes (Will Ospreay vs. PAC), Over The Top Homecoming 2 (Starr vs. Devlin, PAC vs. Walter) and Benno’s trip to Blackpool for Preston City Wrestling Road To Glory.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/20/bwe-2-20-19-rev-pro-high-stakes-ott-homecoming-2-nxt-uk-pcw-in-blackpool-wxw-icw/
*****
DOUBLE SHOT 2/20: Mark Henry documentary, OTT Homecoming 2, Total Bellas, BTE
John Pollock and Wai Ting review World’s Strongest Man: The Mark Henry Story, the latest Total Bellas feat. Liv Morgan’s injury, Being the Elite and matches from OTT’s Homecoming 2.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/24828807
*****
RASD 2/19/19: #KofiFastlane, NXT Talent Return, Mandy Rose pins Asuka
Tuesday’s episode of SmackDown featured the announcement of Daniel Bryan’s next title challenger at Fastlane along with a six-man tag involving the members of Sunday’s Elimination Chamber match.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/20/rasd-2-19-19-kofifastlane-nxt-talent-return-mandy-rose-pins-asuka/
*****
RAR 2/18/19: NXT-Tease, DX into the Hall of Fame, Rousey-Riott rematch
Following Elimination Chamber, Raw featured four big NXT call ups with NXT champion Tommaso Ciampa, North American champion Johnny Gargano, Ricochet and Aleister Black all wrestling on the show. Plus, Ronda Rousey defended her title in a rematch against Ruby Riott, “The Brock Lesnar Story” narrated by Paul Heyman, the first official inductees into the WWE’s Hall of Fame 2019 class & more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/02/19/rar-2-18-19-nx-tease-dx-into-hall-of-fame-rousey-riott-rematch/
*****
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