Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/02/19/pollocks-news-update-2-19-jeff-jarrett-to-be-inducted-into-the-wwe-hall-of-fame/
POST IT NOTES
**Wai Ting and I are back late tonight with a new edition of Rewind-A-Raw to go through tonight’s episode of Raw, Jeff Jarrett going into the Hall of Fame, and take your questions and feedback from The POST Wrestling Forum.
**This past weekend, we released our second POST Roundtable show and this time Wai Ting and I were joined by VICE’s Damian Abraham. You can download the 75-minute discussion at https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/02/18/post-roundtable-2-w-vices-damian-abraham/ and it is free for everyone. If you are a Patreon “Double Double” or higher member, you can also access a video version of the show at https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-post-2-w-17046350. I really enjoyed this show a lot and hope you check it out as we will be doing more roundtable shows with other guests coming up.
**The feedback and question thread for this week’s Rewind-A-Wai covering WCW SuperBrawl III is posted on The POST Wrestling Forum.
SHOWS THIS WEEK:
*Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw
*Tuesday: Rewind-A-SmackDown
*Thursday: British Wrestling Experience with Martin Bushby, Oli Court, and Benno
*Friday: Rewind-A-Wai - WCW SuperBrawl III (Patreon only)
*Sunday: WWE Elimination Chamber Post-Show
WRESTLING NEWS
**The latest addition to this year’s WWE Hall of Fame class is Jeff Jarrett. Jarrett will join Bill Goldberg, The Dudley Boyz, and Ivory as part of this year’s class and will be inducted on Friday, April 6th in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The announcement of Jarrett’s inclusion follows a WWE sponsored rehabilitation stay in 2017 after a series of public incidents with Jarrett where he appeared to be intoxicated. Last October, Jarrett was booked on a pair of events in Alberta for Real Canadian Wrestling where a video surfaced of Jarrett looking to be in no condition to perform during a match in Calgary. Jarrett left the following day and did not make it to the show the following night in Edmonton. Shortly after these events, Impact Wrestling officially ceased ties with Jarrett.
Since leaving rehab, Jarrett has kept a very low profile until today’s announcement regarding the Hall of Fame.
Jarrett’s entire life has been immersed in professional wrestling through his father, Jerry Jarrett, who was co-owner of the Continental Wrestling Association out of Tennessee. The younger Jarrett was brought into the industry as a teenager as a referee and later as a wrestler. He wrestled for his father through the infancy of his career for the CWA and then it would morph into the USWA following the purchase of World Class Championship Wrestling.
Jarrett received a national spotlight when he entered the World Wrestling Federation in 1993 with the character of a country singer that was using the WWF as a stepping stone. He served as a mid-card heel throughout this run, winning the Intercontinental title for the first time in January 1995 at the Royal Rumble from Razor Ramon. The first run culminated with an In Your House pay-per-view event in Nashville in July 1995, which would feature a live concert by Jarrett and a title defense against Shawn Michaels. Jarrett would lose the title and the singing gimmick was exposed with his lackey, “The Roadie” / Road Dogg revealed to be the one with the actual vocal talent and Jarrett was lip syncing.
Jarrett spent a year with World Championship Wrestling from the fall of 1996 until the fall of 1997. During this run, he was presented as a protégé of Ric Flair as a member of the Four Horseman that feuded with the other members, including Steve McMichael. It was in WCW that Debra McMichael was first paired with Jarrett and then the two would be packaged together as a unit during Jarrett’s next run with the World Wrestling Federation that immediately followed his WCW stay.
Jarrett returned to the WWF with a sit-down interview taking shots at WCW and calling Steve Austin’s use of the “Austin 3:16” phrase blasphemous and led to tension on the side of Austin, who years later showed minimal interest in working a program with Jarrett. Following a weak NWA invasion storyline within the WWF, Jarrett was given a million gimmicks and ideas ranging from a manager in Tennessee Lee (Robert Fuller), a live concert at the Unforgiven 1998 with Sawyer Brown, a stretch involving shaving people’s heads that led to a Hair vs. Hair match with Sean Waltman, two bodyguards in the form of Southern Justice (the former Godwinns) and eventually a character that fought and attacked women. The Jarrett character was consistently an effective mid-card heel that always struggled when attempting to push him any higher on the card. When he was paired with Debra, she quickly became the star of the act with the constant teases of Debra stripping on television or pay-per-view and Jarrett shutting down the exhibition. In early 1999, he formed a tag team with Owen Hart with the two winning the tag titles in January and holding them until March.
Hart tragically passed away in May that year and Jarrett continued with Debra as a singles performer and won the Intercontinental title shortly after Hart’s passing. During the summer of 1999, Jarrett began a new gimmick of attacking women and led to a feud with Chyna that stretched over two pay-per-views in September and October 1999. When Jarrett’s deal came due in October, he opted to leave the company and return to WCW shortly after head writers Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara made the jump earlier that month.
His final match with the company is one of legend at the No Mercy event on October 17th in Cleveland, Ohio. Jarrett was the current Intercontinental champion with his contract expiring prior to that Sunday and received a healthy payment to work the show and drop the title to Chyna. Jarrett defended his stance as ensuring he would be paid future royalties and made a business agreement, although it was believed that his way of handling his exit led to the company showing no interest in working with him when WCW went out of business in March 2001. Jarrett dropped the title in a professional manner and put Chyna over effectively. The following night he appeared on Russo and Ferrara’s first episode of Monday Nitro.
Jarrett became a major player within WCW as a time when the company from free falling and would be out of business shortly thereafter. It was a mess of a company with Jarrett left with few options when the company folded.
The decision by the WWF to not offer Jarrett a deal (which spoke volumes when you consider that just about every major name made their way into the company at some point) led to a major development with the launch of NWA TNA in June 2002 by Jarrett and his father. At the height of TNA, the promotion had two hours of weekly prime time television on Spike TV, provided lots of opportunity to talent that was not on the WWE’s radar and was ahead of the curve in 2004-2006 when it came to talent they were showcasing and consistently presenting strong pay-per-view cards that benefited from word-of-mouth among hardcore fans. Jarrett was effectively left without any power within the company he founded in 2009 when a secret relationship with Karen Angle became known after Jarrett initially denied it to company president Dixie Carter. Jarrett returned to the company he launched in the summer of 2015 and would ascend in power, becoming an executive with the company once again under the ownership of Anthem Sports and Entertainment before his dismissal in the fall of 2017.
**Tonight’s episode of Raw takes place from the Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix, Arizona. This is the last episode before Sunday’s Elimination Chamber card and will have to fill out the matches for Sunday. Below are the matches that have been announced for Raw:
*Roman Reigns vs. John Cena vs. The Miz vs. Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor vs. Braun Strowman vs. Elias in a Gauntlet Match
*Alexa Bliss, Sonya Deville, and Mandy Rose vs. Mickie James, Sasha Banks, and Bayley
**The SmackDown Live crew has a house show tonight in El Paso, Texas. The television tapings are also in Phoenix on Tuesday in the same arena that Raw is taking place from. The following matches have been announced for Tuesday’s television:
*Charlotte, Naomi, and Becky Lynch vs. The Riott Squad (SmackDown Live)
*Jack Gallagher vs. Mustafa Ali (205 Live)
*Buddy Murphy vs. Ariya Daivari (205 Live)
*Bobby Roode and Charlotte vs. Apollo Crews and Nia Jax (Mixed Match Challenge)
**Ring of Honor launched their “Honor Club” streaming service on Monday morning to coincide with the relaunch of their website. The current version of the service is only available on desktop and mobile with plans to make it accessible for iOS and Android, as well as Roku, Apple TV, and Android TV in the future. The first live event they will be offering is the Saturday, March 3rd “Manhattan Mayhem” event, which they are promoting as an interactive show that the audience can control and sounds like a similar idea to the WWE’s Taboo Tuesday / Cyber Sunday shows. The service is available for $9.99 a month or $99.99 for the entire year and that includes 50% off all pay-per-views, 15% off ROH Pro Shop purchases, access to historical footage (I have not signed up and cannot see how far back the archives go, but it seems from others that have looked it goes back to 2011 when Sinclair purchased the company, although the site specifically mentions HD Net content), weekly television episodes and the ability to watch live events. There is also an option to pay $119.99 for the year and that includes the pay-per-views as part of that price (this offer doesn’t apply to your local pay-per-view provider and the shows must be streamed through Honor Club). If you have signed up for the service and have any feedback, please leave us your feedback in the comments section below.
**Michael Elgin appeared as a surprise on Saturday’s AAW event in Illinois and was met with boos and several fans turning their back to the ring for Elgin’s match with Myron Reed. Elgin also worked for Pro Wrestling Revolver over the weekend against Tetsuya Naito (and received negative chants prior to his match), although Revolver did advertise the fact Elgin would be on the show and AAW did not. This comes with Elgin in the middle of ongoing issues with “Moses Malone” and just days after Elgin filed a lawsuit against her for the accusations she has made and posting a series of private text messages between the two, which has placed Elgin in a very negative light among a lot of fans, as seen on Saturday. Below is a statement that AAW owner Danny Daniels issued on Sunday as a response to the backlash for booking Elgin:
To those that were upset that Michael Elgin was on the show. I apologize. My goal from day one was to put on the best shows possible and that was my sole intention. Obviously l let people down. Elgin made this whole weekend w/ Naito possible for 3 groups so I wanted to be loyal.
Elgin is a friend of mine & I know his family has been going through a difficult time. So I wanted to help him out as he’s done numerous times for us. It was a poor decision by my part. Again this was strictly my call as I thought the fans would like the outcome, I was wrong.
This wasn’t a who’s right and who’s wrong decision on his personal issues. That’s his business. I just wanted to put the best product out there as my main concern is the fans. We put out 9 matches with the best talent from around the world, and it didn’t work.
Just read other Chicago groups putting out there that fans should support them because they are good people. I didn’t know me and my partner mike were bad human beings now.
Want to make it clear that it was my choice to put Elgin on the show. He didn’t force me, I just wanted to give the fans as many great matches as I possibly could. Naito-Elgin tore it up on friday so I made the decision in the morning. He was going to be there regardless.
That being said. @AAWPro will not have Michael Elgin on the shows. This company was built on listening to our audience. Again I apologize to all that were offended. My intention has always been to give extra on every show as a thank you for the fans spending their money on us.
It’s not the first mistake I’ve made doing this gig, as it’s challenging. Again if you choose to not support us, I fully understand and want to thank you for helping us grow throughout the years. We don’t take paydays, we do this for the fans. So again I apologize for my mistake.
**Paige (Saraya-Jade Bevis) has announced that she will be opening a clothing store called “The Saraya Store” on February 26th in Anaheim, California. Paige and Noelle Foley are modeling some of the store’s clothing on the store’s Instagram page.
**Jim Ross’ one-man show during WrestleMania Week is scheduled to take place at the Hilton Garden Inn inside the LakeTown Room at the New Orleans Airport on Friday, April 6th at 10 am local time. The venue is next door to the Pontchartrain Civic Center, which is where the WWN Live shows and events are taking place that week. Tickets will go on sale this Friday at 10 am central at Ticketfly.com. The show will only be limited to 100 fans and tickets are $85, which includes the Q&A, a signed copy of his autobiography and a cell phone photo.
**Following his WWE departure last week, Rich Swann will be working for The Crash on Saturday, March 17th in Tijuana at Auditorio Fausto Gutierrez. He has also been added to the House of Hardcore events on March 23rd and 24th in St. James, New York at on April 7th for the group in New Orleans over WrestleMania weekend.
**Impact Wrestling has announced that Scott Steiner has been added to the promotion’s live event at WrestleCon on Friday, April 6th at The Sugar Mill in New Orleans, Louisiana at 9 pm.
**The WWE website is simply referring to Apollo Crews as “Apollo” so it appears the Crews surname is being dropped.
**Tickets for this year’s Survivor Series at the Staples Center in Los Angeles will go on sale Friday, March 16th at 1 pm Eastern. The Staples Center will host four consecutive nights of WWE events with NXT Takeover on Saturday, November 17th, the Survivor Series on Sunday, Raw on Monday, and SmackDown Live on Tuesday.
MMA NEWS
**We have a full report on the main page of Sunday’s UFC Fight Night card from Austin, Texas. The show drew 10,502 and a gate of $794,350 to the Frank Erwin Center. Below is a complete list of the results:
*Donald Cerrone def. Yancy Medeiros by TKO at 4:58 of Round 1
*Derrick Lewis def. Marcin Tybura by TKO at 2:48 of Round 3
*James Vick def. Francisco Trinaldo by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Curtis Millender def. Thiago Alves by KO at 4:17 of Round 2
*Brandon Davis def. Steven Peterson by unanimous decision (30-26, 30-27, 29-28)
*Sage Northcutt def. Thibault Gouti by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Carlos Diego Ferreira def. Jared Gordon by TKO at 1:58 of Round 1
*Geoff Neal def. Brian Camozzi by bulldog choke at 2:48 of Round 1
*Roberto Sanchez def. Joby Sanchez by rear-naked choke at 1:50 of Round 1
*Lucie Pudilova def. Sarah Moras by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-27)
*Alex Morono def. Josh Burkman by guillotine choke at 2:12 of Round 1
*Oskar Piechota def. Tim Williams by KO at 1:54 of Round 1
**The Fight of the Night bonus went to Brandon Davis and Steven Peterson and the Performance bonuses went to Derrick Lewis and Curtis Millender for $50,000 each.
**Below are the main card results from the Bellator 194 event on Friday night in Uncasville, Connecticut:
*Tywan Claxton def. Jose Perez by TKO at 3:39 of Round 2
*Vadim Nemkov def. Liam McGeary by TKO at 4:02 of Round 3
*Heather Hardy def. Ana Julaton by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)
*Patricky “Pitbull” Freire def. Derek Campos by TKO at 2:23 of Round 1
*Matt Mitrione def. Roy Nelson by majority decision (29-28, 28-28, 29-28) to advance in the Bellator Heavyweight Grand Prix
Mitrione will fight the winner of the Ryan Bader vs. Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal fight that is scheduled for Saturday, May 12th in San Jose, California. The next Grand Prix fight will take place on Saturday, April 28th between Frank Mir and Fedor Emelianenko with the winner of that fight taking on Chael Sonnen in the semi-finals.
**Bellator returns on Friday, March 2nd with a card from Thackerville, Oklahoma and will be headlined by bantamweight champion Darrion Caldwell defending against Leandro Higo and a bantamweight fight between former bantamweight and featherweight champion Joe Warren and Joe Taimanglo.
**This Saturday, the UFC has a FOX card from Orlando, Florida at the Amway Center and is headlined by a featherweight fight between Jeremy Stephens and Josh Emmett. The main card also features a strawweight bout between Jessica Andrade and Tecia Torres, Ovince Saint Preux takes on Ilir Latifi in a light heavyweight bout, and Mike Perry meets Max Griffin. Both the main card and televised prelims will be airing on FOX, beginning at 6 pm Eastern. This show is just not going to perform well given the viewership of the Olympics and a card that lacks any star power. Below is the “Road to the Octagon” special for Saturday’s card:
*****
POST ROUNDTABLE #2 (w/ VICE’s Damian Abraham)
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/qfws8k/180218_ROUNDTABLE2.mp3
PATREON BONUS SHOW: WWF “Battle at Royal Albert Hall ‘91” Coliseum Home Video Release
https://www.patreon.com/posts/wwf-coliseum-at-17021263
KEEP IT 2000: Ep. 24 – “Soldberg” with Jordan Breen (June 12, 2000)
https://keepit2000.podbean.com/mf/download/fftmq5/Keep-It-2000-June-12-2000.mp3
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 2/13/18: Dolph Ziggler Wants WM Main Event
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/fymkz7/180213_RASD.mp3
REWIND-A-RAW 2/12/18: Elimination Chamber 2nd Chance Match, Strowman Strums
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/9cyzec/180213_RAR.mp3
UFC 221 POST SHOW WITH JOHN POLLOCK & MMA JUNKIE’S MIKE BOHN
https://postwrestling.podbean.com/mf/download/zjdfy7/UFC-221-POST-SHOW.mp3
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