Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/16/pollocks-news-update-aew-and-nxt-to-begin-commercial-free/
POST IT NOTES
**Our WWE TLC POST Show is available on the site & YouTube with Wai Ting and I joined by Mike Murray for the entire show. We did an extensive rundown of WWE TLC and where the show fell apart, plus a review of NWA’s Into the Fire card from Saturday night, thoughts on the Final Battle pay-per-view and we took phone calls and feedback from the POST Wrestling Forum.
**Wai Ting and I are back with Rewind-A-Raw tonight chatting the show from Des Moines, Iowa. We will have a lot of news to discuss and will also take your feedback and questions at the end. You can download the show for free on the site or search & subscribe to POST Wrestling on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
**We have a packed week coming up with some highlights including SummerSlam 2015 on Rewind-A-Wai this Tuesday night, the final Café Hangout of 2019 on Thursday at 3 pm Eastern, Jimmy Korderas and myself will be on The Rocky Maivia Picture Show with Nate Milton discussing ‘The Tooth Fairy’, Daniel Makabe is WH Park’s guest on Thunderstruck, and WH will announce his year-end awards on POST Puroresu this Sunday night.
POST SCHEDULE
*Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
*Tuesday: Rewind-A-Wai #52 – WWE SummerSlam 2015 (Patreon)
*Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
*Wednesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
*Thursday: Café Hangout (LIVE at 3 pm ET for all Café members)
*Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (Patreon)
*Saturday: The Rocky Maivia Picture Show with Nate Milton and guests Jimmy Korderas & John Pollock (The Tooth Fairy)
*Sunday: Thunderstruck with WH Park & guest Daniel Makabe (Jushin Liger vs. Shinjiro Otani, Feb. 1997)
*Sunday: POST Puroresu with John Pollock & WH Park
POST WRESTLING VIDEO
WRESTLING NEWS
**WWE is holding a marathon taping in Des Moines, Iowa with two episodes of Raw. They will be taping tonight’s episode along with next Monday’s show as the crew will have an extended break until the house shows resume December 26th. This Friday’s SmackDown will take place from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the following week SmackDown is in Detroit on December 27th.
Tonight’s episode will feature AJ Styles vs. Randy Orton with no other match announcements, yet. Seth Rollins will be in his hometown so they may have to work for a negative reaction one week after the full turn and alignment with AOP.
**AEW and NXT are both going to begin this Wednesday’s year-end episodes with commercial-free matches. Earlier today, NXT announced that their show will begin with Adam Cole vs. Finn Balor for the NXT title and would not be interrupted by commercials. Hours later, AEW came out stating their show would also begin with a commercial-free match with Kenny Omega & Hangman Page taking on Pentagon Jr. & Rey Fenix. Both matches will benefit from the lack of interruption, which is a necessary evil on television and overall, you’re going to get two great matches at the start of each program. NXT will also feature the Shayna Baszler vs. Rhea Ripley women’s title match while AEW is advertising Chris Jericho vs. Jungle Boy in a non-title match, Cody & Darby Allin vs. The Butcher & The Blade, SCU vs. The Young Bucks for the AEW tag titles, and Awesome Kong wrestling.
**We have not received an update on Kairi Sane following the TLC match where she appeared to be out of it during the ending stretch of the match. It has happened enough this year, and not just in WWE, where a performer has either suffered a concussion or displaying the effects of one that there should be a clear protocol of how you handle the situation. It’s a high-wire act and there is enormous pressure when it’s live television or pay-per-view especially in the main event setting. The call cannot be thrust onto the performers, who will always default to the mentality of getting through the match and gutting it out. That decision has to be made from above and everyone should know that if a potential concussion occurs or a performer cannot physically take care of themselves and their opponent, where this is a cooperative form of entertainment, then either the match is waved off or the performer is removed from the match. Yes, the audience may be upset but it’s one match and it’s a potential head injury.
Hindsight will always be 20/20 but after it was apparent Sane was hurt, she should not have taken any additional spots that could compound what she’s dealing with. Had they removed Sane from the match, there was a natural irony that the Kabuki Warriors had destroyed Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair in 2-on-1 handicap matches over the last two weeks and now the tables are turned and they have the advantage against Asuka. Yes, it is two babyfaces outnumbering the heel but there is where your announcers tell the story of Asuka’s comeuppance rather than her being outnumbered.
**We were told that Vince McMahon and Paul Levesque were not at the TLC event on Sunday in Minneapolis, but they did weigh-in prior to the show. Obviously, Levesque’s schedule is way busier now since NXT went weekly in September.
**Primo Colon (Eddie Colon) has come out to defend himself after the news that he was slapped with a 30-day suspension by WWE for a Wellness Policy violation. Primo spoke with the Spanish-language Primera Hora outlet and it was translated by Carlos Toro at Fightful.
Primo stated that he was not on the road with WWE and they contacted him in Puerto Rico and wanted him to travel and have a drug test administered. Primo was unwilling to pay for the travel and offered to have the drug test at a laboratory of WWE’s choosing in Puerto Rico. Primo stated that he didn’t hear back from the company and two months later, he was told he had been suspended for not taking a drug test. He said he wanted to make it clear he did not fail a test; which people were led to believe based on the statement issued last week by the company. Both Primo and Robert Roode were given 30-day suspensions for Wellness Policy issues.
Primo added that his deal with WWE expires in October 2020 and said his situation was like sitting on the bench and not playing but is being paid regardless.
**The NWA is taping at GPB Studios in Atlanta, Georgia tonight. Tuesday’s episode of Power will feature Marty Scurll’s full promo from Into the Fire along with a sit-down interview with Stu Bennett speaking to Scurll about his future.
**After appearing on the Into the Fire pay-per-view, Scurll did return to Baltimore on Sunday for the Ring of Honor television tapings.
**AEW is going to Atlanta, Georgia with the February 19th edition of Dynamite at the State Farm Arena. The company also announced that the February 26th episode will be in Kansas City, Missouri at the Silverstein Eye Centers Arena. Tickets for both shows go on sale this Friday.
**AEW issued a press release on Monday announcing that they have sold over 100,000 tickets this year. After 16 shows this year, the company stated it sold 91,222 tickets for past events with an average of 5,701 per show. When they add in the shows that are currently on sale, which includes episodes of Dynamite up until February 12th, that’s an additional 14,081 tickets sold and brings the total to 105,303. They will grow that number by a decent amount as three shows go on sale this Friday with the episodes of Dynamite in Atlanta and Kansas City along with tickets for the Revolution pay-per-view on February 29th in Chicago.
**Tickets for the NXT TakeOver special in Portland, Oregon on February 16th go on sale this Friday. They have also revealed the logo for the TakeOver special.
**WWE and Supersport in South Africa have announced a multi-year extension on Monday along with the launch of a dedicated WWE channel on DStv. In the release, they stated the new channel will air Raw, SmackDown, NXT, along with programming that includes 205 Live, Ride Along, WWE Chronicle, and Table for 3. The channel will be found on DStv channel 128 and is set to launch on January 1st with Supersport continuing to air Raw, SmackDown, and NXT.
**WWE is advertising several live events in January as a ‘New Year’s Revolution Supershow’. The January 4th and 5th shows in Missouri, along with January 11th in Dayton, Ohio, and January 12th in Corbin, Kentucky will be billed under that title and the following weekend they will run five shows January 17-19 as part of the ‘New Year’s Revolution Tour’. New Year’s Revolution was a January pay-per-view the company added in 2005 and ran three events under the banner from 2005-07.
**The Prime Target special previewing Shayna Baszler vs. Rhea Ripley will air Tuesday night at 8 pm Eastern on the WWE Network. They will also air the latest WWE 365 special this Sunday night at 8 pm featuring Seth Rollins.
**On Sunday’s Ring of Honor television tapings in Philadelphia, they set up a rematch between PCO and Rush for the ROH title on January 11th at Center Stage in Atlanta. The commentary team consisted of Ian Riccaboni and Caprice Coleman.
**Ring of Honor has released a promo announcing that Australia star Slex is coming to the promotion.
**Hiromu Takahashi was interviewed by New Japan about his 2018 injury during the match against Dragon Lee and recent return. He said that after he wasn’t going to return for the Best of the Super Juniors tournament this past spring that it had to be Osaka where he returned at Power Struggle and setting up the match with Will Ospreay for Wrestle Kingdom. He described the injury from July 2018 in San Francisco and thought his career might be over. Referee Marty Asami asked if he wanted to stop the match and Takahashi continued and thought it was adrenaline that got him through it. When he went to the hospital, he had to wait eight hours for a CT scan after the injury. The return at Power Struggle was kept a surprise with Takahashi that few knew, including people in the company. His first match back is this Thursday at Korakuen Hall teaming with Bushi against Will Ospreay and Robbie Eagles and is doing multi-person tags on Friday and Saturday.
**New Japan has added several pre-show matches prior to the two Wrestle Kingdom cards on January 4th and 5th with the following additions:
*Jan. 4th: Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura vs. Toa Henare, Karl Fredericks, Clark Connors & Alex Coughlin
*Jan. 4th: Satoshi Kojima & Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs. Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi
*Jan. 5th: Togi Makabe, Toru Yano & Ryusuke Taguchi (champions) vs. Tomohiro Ishii, Yoshi-Hashi & Robbie Eagles vs. EVIL, Shingo Takagi & Bushi vs. Taichi, El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro & Chase Owens in a Gauntlet Match for the NEVER Openweight titles
**Daniel Cormier recently spoke to BT Sport about past talks with WWE. The former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion stated he was offered a spot on the WWE Backstage show asked to participate in the press conference in Las Vegas involving Cain Velasquez and Brock Lesnar. Cormier said due to UFC’s relationship with ESPN that the Backstage deal couldn’t work and his scheduling prevented him from being appearing at the press conference:
“I’ve talked to WWE on a number of occasions, they want to work together”
“I had an offer to work #WWEBackstage on @WWEonFOX.”@dc_mma LOVES this business and we hope we get to see him involved 🙌
Imagine DC vs Brock and the battle on the mic with @HeymanHustle 🤤 pic.twitter.com/nUm2BWY2Pi
— BT Sport WWE (@btsportwwe) December 14, 2019
**Kenny Herzog from The Ringer has a lengthy feature on Tessa Blanchard heading into next month’s Hard to Kill pay-per-view match with Sami Callihan for the Impact title. The piece was very interesting, notably with Blanchard, Scott D’Amore and others tight-lipped regarding Blanchard’s contract status, although Herzog noted in the piece that it is expected to expire in mid-2020. In July 2018, Impact announced the performer had signed a ‘long-term deal’ with Dave Meltzer reporting at the time that the term was for two-years.
The Ringer spoke with Blanchard, her father Tully, stepfather Terry ‘Magnum TA’ Allen, Scott D’Amore, Gail Kim, David Starr, and others for the piece. Tully was very candid about dealing with the divorce he went through, not seeing his children regularly, and his resistance to appearing with Allen in public. The piece also goes into Blanchard’s future with the many options that will be on the table from other promotions, breaking into the industry and losing contact with her family during a period, her appearance in the Mae Young Classic in 2017 and not being signed, as well as the role she has grown into at Impact Wrestling and competing stances on intergender wrestling from those interviewed.
**The WWE stock closed at $63.69 on Monday.
**Jinny won the Progress women’s title on Sunday from Meiko Satomura at the Chapter 99 card from Sheffield, England. It is Jinny’s second reign as champion after holding the title for seven months in 2018. The show was headlined by Eddie Dennis retaining the Progress title over David Starr.
**MLW has added a match between Marshall Von Erich and MJF for the January 11th tapings in North Richland Hills, Texas. The stipulation is that if MJF wins, The Dynasty gets a rematch against The von Erichs for the tag titles and if MJF loses, he never challenges The von Erichs again for the titles. The tapings will also feature Jimmy Havoc vs. Mance Warner in a No Ropes Barbed Wire match as well as Tom Lawlor vs. Ross Von Erich.
**The WWE Network has added 14 new episodes of Confidential from 2003.
POLL RESULTS
What was your opinion of WWE TLC? (644 votes)
Thumbs Down: 50.6%
Thumbs in the Middle: 35.7%
Thumbs Up: 13.7%
*****
WWE TLC 2019 & NWA INTO THE FIRE POST SHOW
John Pollock & Wai Ting are joined by Mike Murray to review WWE TLC 2019 headlined by Roman Reigns vs. King Corbin in a TLC match. We also review NWA’s Into The Fire PPV featuring Nick Aldis vs. James Storm for the NWA Heavyweight Championship.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/15/live-link-for-tonights-wwe-tlc-2019-nwa-into-the-fire-post-show-1030pm-et/
*****
THUNDERSTRUCK: JUSHIN LIGER VS TAICHI
WH Park talks with Sarah Flann (Sarah & Sarah, Journey Through Guerrilla Island) to discuss Jushin Liger’s sole appearance under the WWE banner as he takes on Tyler Breeze at NXT Takeover: Brooklyn on August 22, 2015.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/15/thunderstruck-8-jushin-liger-vs-tyler-breeze-8-22-15-w-sarah-flann/
*****
UFC 245 POST SHOW
John Pollock & Phil Chertok review the UFC 245 card with three title fights including Kamaru Usman vs. Colby Covington, Alexander Volkanovski wins the featherweight title & more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/15/ufc-245-post-show-kamaru-usman-vs-colby-covington/
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN, FINAL BATTLE REVIEW
John Pollock and Wai Ting deliver a special double-review of WWE SmackDown featuring Roman Reigns UNCHAINED and ROH Final Battle 2019 headlined by Rush vs. PCO for the ROH Championship.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/14/rewind-a-smackdown-12-13-19-tlc-go-home-show-roh-final-battle-review/
*****
BRITISH WRESTLING EXPERIENCE: David Starr Interview
Jamesie is joined by David Starr for a near 2-hour interview discussing his incredible 2019 including matches against Walter & Jordan Devlin in OTT, appearances in PWG, wXw, RevPro, Progress and more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/13/british-wrestling-experience-david-starr-interview/
*****
Café Hangout: Weekends Previews, AEW-NXT Ratings, Phone Calls
John Pollock and Wai Ting open the phone lines all show long and preview a busy weekend of events with WWE TLC, UFC 245, NWA Into the Fire and ROH Final Battle 2019. Plus, we have our first TIE in the AEW-NXT Wednesday Night Wars.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/12/cafe-hangout-weekend-previews-aew-nxt-ratings-phone-calls/
*****
upNXT 12/11/19: In The Arms of an Angel
Braden Herrington & Davie Portman review the December 11th edition of WWE NXT featuring a triple threat number one contenders match between Finn Balor vs. Tommaso Ciampa vs. Keith Lee, Lio Rush defends his Cruiserweight title against Angel Garza, plus Mia Yim vs. Dakota Kai, and much more!
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/12/upnxt-12-11-19-in-the-arms-of-an-angel/
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE 12/11/19: Texas Street Fight, AEW’s next PPV
John Pollock and Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite featuring a Texas Street Fight between the Young Bucks against Santana & Ortiz with the winners receiving a tag title match on next week’s show.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/12/rewind-a-dynamite-12-11-19-texas-street-fight-aews-next-ppv/
*****
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