Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/17/pollocks-news-update-arrest-made-in-connection-to-the-death-of-matt-travis/
POST IT NOTES
**Our POST Wrestling Christmas Jingle Contest is open for submissions until Monday, December 23rd at 9 am Eastern. You can submit your jingles in the POST Wrestling Forum thread and we will go through all the submission on the annual Christmas Show that comes out Christmas Eve.
**Monday’s Rewind-A-Raw is available for download with Wai Ting and I going through the show from Des Moines, Iowa. We discussed the TLC match and how the main event was handled with Kairi Sane, Kofi Kingston signing a new deal, AEW, and NXT starting their shows commercial-free this week, AEW’s latest locations for Dynamite, and more.
**Wai Ting and I are back tonight with Rewind-A-Wai #52 covering WWE SummerSlam 2015 from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. This show was selected by Espresso Executive Producer Gritt Grittner featuring the rematch between The Undertaker and Brock Lesnar, a ‘Winner Take All’ match between WWE champion Seth Rollins and U.S. champion John Cena, Stephen Amell teams with Neville against Stardust and King Barrett, Jon Stewart hosts the show and lots more. Plus, we will look at the major news stories happening that week, the Trivia Gauntlet for our Espresso Executive Producer, and your feedback. This is the third straight Rewind-A-Wai this month and signing up for the POST Wrestling Café gives you access to every Rewind-A-Wai along with early access for our Best of and Worst of shows coming up in January.
POST SCHEDULE
*Tonight: 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
**We have put up the full interview that Jamesie conducted with David Starr reviewing his past year’s worth of matches with tons of stories behind the matches and has received tremendous feedback:
Here is Monday’s edition of Rewind-A-Raw:
WRESTLING NEWS
**The Gothamist has an article on the New York cyclists that were killed in 2019, including House of Glory wrestler Matt Travis. The wrestler died in November when he was cycling in Harlem and a van made an illegal left turn, striking and killing Travis. The reporter stated that hours after they finished their story on Travis, a 48-year old named Luc Vu, was arrested in connection with Travis’ death. Vu is facing charges of reckless driving, failing to yield to a cyclist, failure to obey a traffic signal, failure to exercise due care, and driving to the left of a pavement marking. After Travis’ passing, House of Glory held a tribute show in his memory and AEW presented a match in his memory on Dynamite with Santana & Ortiz vs. Private Party. Travis’ mother, Yolanda Nieves, spoke to The Gothamist and described the financial and emotional struggles the family is going through since Travis passed away.
**Mike Johnson at PWinsider.com reported that Kairi Sane has been pulled from the post-Christmas house shows as far as in-ring is concerned. The original tag team steel cage match at Madison Square Garden on December 26th has been switched to a three-way with Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka.
**Bloomberg recently looked at a problem facing the major upstart streaming services. It is common practice for streaming services to entice sign-ups with the offer of a free trial but it’s a difficult task to retain those subscribers when the trial ends. Using their data, they found that 1/3 of customers leave after a free trial with 10% of members quitting video streaming services each month, which double the exit rate for games, music, and other entertainment services. In the article, they look at the WWE Network that offers one free month when you sign up and declining numbers in Q3 this past year on the network. WWE co-president George Barrios was quoted in the article believing that free trials are a cheap way to attract new subscribers. DAZN took a different approach this year where they no longer offer a free trial. Instead, they are trying to get people to sign up for $99 annually or pay $20 per month – the idea is that if just want to watch a boxing fight or individual event, it will cost $20, which is still way less than a fight on pay-per-view but you’re not giving the fight away for free for someone that will instantly unsubscribe after the fight. WWE Network is not geared the same where a casual fan can sign up for the service over WrestleMania weekend, watch the shows, and then cancel right away and it’s free. UFC Fight Pass offers a one-week trial before you’re billed with a $9.99 per month price along and discounts if you commit at six or twelve-month periods.
**Friday Night SmackDown finished with 2,330,000 viewers last week on Fox and was down 5% in viewers from the week prior. They did a 0.7 in the 18-49 demo and 0.4 with 18-34s, which were both #1 among network programs that night.
**Alexa Bliss will be the guest on tonight’s edition of WWE Backstage at 11 pm Eastern on FS 1.
**After Monday’s marathon taping of two episodes, the Raw crew now has ten days off and don’t resume shows until December 26th. The SmackDown crew has a live show this Friday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and are off for five-days resuming on the 26th, as well and go live on Fox the following Friday from Detroit. The following matches were taped in Des Moines last night for next week’s episode of Raw:
*Kevin Owens vs. Mojo Rawley
*Bobby Lashley vs. Cedric Alexander
*Zack Ryder vs. Drew McIntyre
*Aleister Black vs. TBA
*Buddy Murphy vs. TBA
*Charlotte Flair vs. Chelsea Green
*Randy Orton & Viking Raiders vs. The OC
*Erick Rowan vs. TBA
*Rusev vs. No Way Jose
*Rey Mysterio vs. Seth Rollins for the United States title
**The second season of NWA Power begins tonight with a new episode streaming at 6:05 pm Eastern on the promotion’s YouTube and Facebook channels. The tapings took place Sunday and Monday and will lead into their next pay-per-view on Friday, January 24th. Tonight’s episode is being promoted around Marty Scurll with his promo from Into the Fire and a sit-down interview conducted by Stu Bennett about his future. They taped six episodes of Power over two days in Atlanta, which would seem to indicate they will run weekly shows through the holidays and into the next pay-per-view.
**Here are the matches for tonight’s edition of AEW Dark that streams at 7 pm Eastern on their YouTube channel featuring Vickie Guerrero on commentary:
*Pac, Jack Evans & Angelico vs. Best Friends & Orange Cassidy
*Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky vs. Private Party
*Kris Statlander vs. Bea Priestley
*Britt Baker vs. Machiko
**The Melrose Ballroom set of tapings continues to air tonight with a new episode of Impact Wrestling. The show runs at 8 pm Eastern on AXS TV, Fight Network in Canada and Twitch with the following:
*Tenille Dashwood vs. Jordynne Grace
*TJP vs. Daga
*Ace Austin vs. Petey Williams in a non-title match
*Joey Ryan vs. Acey Romero
*Ethan Page vs. Rich Swann
**WWE has released the Prime Target special promoting Wednesday night’s NXT women’s title match between Shayna Baszler and Rhea Ripley:
**The former Sin Cara (Jorge Arias) is attempting to switch his name to Cinta de Oro. After appearing at AAA’s Guerra de Titanes this past weekend as Sin Cara, he has now announced the new name, which is a tribute to his trainer. Lucha Blog reports that there may be opposition to the name that Arias is attempting to trademark. Lucha Blog is reporting that a woman named Maria Zarate is claiming ownership of the name.
**Kenny Omega spoke to Justin Barrasso at SI.com to promote the Capcom Cup he is co-hosting this weekend. During the interview, he reflected on 2019 and not being as featured on AEW as some may have expected at the beginning, not preparing for Wrestle Kingdom this year, and getting outside his comfort zone with his recent matches in Mexico and Lights Out match with Jon Moxley at Full Gear that generated both praise and criticism.
**New Japan’s final shows of 2019 take place Thursday through Saturday with three cards at Korakuen Hall featuring Hiromu Takahashi’s first matches since his neck injury in July 2018. It will also be Liger’s final matches in the building. The cards will stream live each day at 4:30 am Eastern on New Japan World with Thursday’s card as follows:
*Jushin Thunder Liger, Tiger Mask, Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura vs. Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma, Ryusuke Taguchi & Rocky Romero
*Guerrillas of Destiny & Bad Luck Fale vs. Juice Robinson, David Finlay & Toa Henare
*EVIL & Sanada vs. Zack Sabre Jr. & Taichi
*KENTA, Taiji Ishimori, El Phantasmo & Yujiro vs. Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto & Roppongi 3K
*Kota Ibushi & Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tetsuya Naito & Shingo Takagi
*Kazuchika Okada & Yoshi-Hashi vs. Jay White & Chase Owens
*Will Ospreay & Robbie Eagles vs. Hiromu Takahashi & Bushi
**The greatest album concept is being released by New Japan this week. They are putting out a piano collection of various New Japan themes of Hiroshi Tanahashi, Ryusuke Taguchi, Jushin Thunder Liger, Kazuchika Okada, Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii, Tetsuya Naito, Sanada, Hiromu Takahashi, Minoru Suzuki, Taichi, and Kota Ibushi. They will be holding a release party on Wednesday, January 8th in Tokyo at HMV with Milano Collection A.T. and announcer Haruo Murata, which is free to attend.
**Ethan Page’s Body Guy Extravaganza over WrestleMania week will be headlined by Brian Cage vs. Scott Steiner in a 3 Stages of Hell match. Stage one is a live debate, stage two is a pose off, and stage three is a match with Page as the special referee. The show is taking place on Friday, April 3rd in Tampa as part of Wrestlecon at 3 pm that day.
**The WWE stock closed at $64.10 on Tuesday.
**ICW has announced that Stevie Boy will defend the ICW title against Noam Dar on Sunday, February 2nd in Glasgow at SWG3.
MMA NEWS
**Saturday’s UFC 245 preliminary card on ESPN 2 averaged 865,000 viewers leading into the pay-per-view. The prelims were headlined by Geoff Neal vs. Mike Perry. The prelims went against the Heisman Trophy presentation on ESPN (which is why they were moved to ESPN 2) that did 2,542,000 and the second hour went against the Top Rank boxing card on ESPN that did 1,350,000. UFC was still sixth on the night for cable with a 0.34 with adults 18-49. The UFC 244 prelims last month also aired on ESPN 2 did 910,000 viewers for the pay-per-view headlined by Jorge Masvidal vs. Nate Diaz and the UFC 243 prelims in October also aired on ESPN 2 doing 559,000 leading into the card featuring Robert Whittaker vs. Israel Adesanya.
**For the second straight year, Bellator is running back-to-back cards in Hawaii this weekend at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center. The Friday night show is in partnership with USO and is their ‘Salute to the Troops’ event airing on Paramount Network and DAZN at 10 pm Eastern. Below is the main card:
*Josh Barnett vs. Ronny Markes – This is Barnett’s first fight since September 2016
*Toby Misech vs. Erik Perez
*Veta Arteaga vs. Alejandra Lara
*Braydon Akeo vs. Tywan Claxton
*Joey Davis vs. Chris Cisneros
**The larger card is Bellator 236 on Saturday night at 10 pm Eastern and only airing on DAZN with the following fights:
*Ilima-Lei Macfarlane vs. Kate Jackson for the Bellator flyweight title
*A.J. McKee vs. Derek Campos in the Featherweight Grand Prix Quarterfinals
*Kiichi Kunimoto vs. Jason Jackson – Jackson is a late replacement due to Neiman Gracie suffering an injury
*Bruna Ellen vs. Juliana Velasquez
*Cheyden Leialoha vs. Raufeon Stots
**The UFC will hold its final card of 2019 this Saturday with an early show from Busan, South Korea. The prelims air late Friday/early Saturday at 2 am Eastern and the main card is at 5 am. The main event saw a switch when Brian Ortega has to withdraw due to a knee injury, so the new main event is Chan Sung Jung taking on Frankie Edgar, who had been preparing for his bantamweight debut next month and will take this fight at 145 pounds. The other note on the card is that featherweight sensation Doo Hoo Choi returns for the first time since his loss to Jeremy Stephens almost two years ago when he goes against Charles Jourdain. Below is the complete card:
MAIN CARD (5 am Eastern on ESPN+, Fight Pass)
*Chan Sung Jung vs. Frankie Edgar
*Volkan Oezdemir vs. Aleksandar Rakic
*Doo Ho Choi vs. Charles Jourdain
*Da Un Jung vs. Mike Rodriguez
*Marc-Andre Barriault vs. Jun Yong Park
*Kyung Ho Kang vs. Liu Pingyuan
PRELIMINARY CARD (2 am on ESPN+, Fight Pass)
*Ciryl Gane vs. Tanner Boser
*Suman Mokhtarian vs. Seung Woo Choi
*Dong Hyun Ma vs. Omar Antonio Morales Ferrer
*Matt Schnell vs. Alexandre Pantoja
*Raoni Barcelos vs. Said Nurmagomedov
*Amanda Lemos vs. Miranda Granger
*Ryan Benoit vs. Alateng Heili
**Following last Thursday’s Quintet grappling event in Las Vegas, UFC featherweight Cub Swanson stated he suffered a complete ACL and meniscus tear. The injury occurred during his match against Jake Shields, who noted he heard Swanson’s knee pop. It is unknown how long the 36-year old could be out for. He snapped a four-fight losing streak this past October defeating Kron Gracie by unanimous decision in Tampa.
**The UFC has announced a middleweight fight between Darren Stewart and Marvin Vettori on Saturday, March 21st at the O2 Arena in London, England.
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 12/16/19: Des Moines Day Night Raw
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Raw featuring the fallout from WWE TLC including a United States Championship No. 1 Contender’s Match, Seth Rollins’ next opponent, and Bobby Lashley and Lana’s wedding proposal.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/17/rewind-a-raw-12-16-19-des-moines-day-night-raw/
*****
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/
*****
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