POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: Buddy Matthews, Royal Quest, latest on DiBiase/welfare scandal

Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2022/09/26/pollocks-news-update-buddy-matthews-royal-quest-latest-on-dibiase-welfare-scandal/

POST IT NOTES

**Rewind-A-Raw is live at 11 p.m. ET tonight on the POST YouTube channel and available to download immediately after on your podcast app. Wai Ting and I will discuss Raw in Edmonton, Buddy Matthews, SmackDown & Rampage ratings, Royal Quest, Tanahashi & Muto & take your feedback at the end of the show.

**On Tuesday night, it’s the monthly ASK-A-WAI Mailbag Show with Wai & I answering all your questions from the POST Wrestling Forum (you can post questions until Tuesday night and we will get to all of them). The show will be available exclusively to members of the POST Wrestling Café.

**Our members-only section on YouTube can now be accessed at video.postwrestling.com. All video content of POST Wrestling Café exclusive shows will live here.

**On the latest POST Puroresu, WH Park and I discuss the Burning Spirit card headlined by Will Ospreay and David Finlay, Kaito Kiyomiya winning the GHC title for the second time, All Japan’s 50th Anniversary card, a fantastic match the next night at Korakuen Hall, the Stardom 5-Star Grand Prix standings & more.

**This week on Wrestlenomics, Brandon Thurston is joined by Chris Gullo and Jesse Collings to chat Logan Paul’s involvement at Crown Jewel and the value of celebrities in the modern age, Amazon’s Thursday night football package and the first set of streaming numbers, and all the latest news & notes from the past week.

**The N.W.A. Podcast with Nate Milton, Andrew Thompson & Kris Ealy covers the fallout from the AEW All Out press conference and potential outcomes, the futures of Sasha Banks & Naomi as it relates to pro wrestling, ACH’s recent announcement, and The Acclaimed winning the AEW tag titles at Arthur Ashe Stadium from Swerve in Our Glory.

POST SCHEDULE

Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting (11 p.m. ET)
Tuesday: ASK-A-WAI Mailbag Show with John & Wai (Patreon)
Tuesday: Andrew Thompson interviews Leon Slater
Tuesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Wednesday: Shot in the Dark with John Siino
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite (10 p.m.)
Thursday: MCU L8R with Rich Fann & WH Park (Patreon)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with John & Wai (Patreon)
Saturday: The Long & Winding Royal Road with WH Park & Gareth Hodgson
Sunday: Wrestlenomics Radio

WRESTLING NEWS

**WWE Raw returns to Canada once again with a show at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta with several matches announced in advance. While Raw is only airing against one NFL game tonight compared with two last week, it’s a big game as the Dallas Cowboys are playing the New York Giants. Below are the matches announced for tonight:
*Kevin Owens & Johnny Gargano vs. Chad Gable & Otis
*AJ Styles vs. Sami Zayn
*Matt Riddle vs. Damian Priest
*Bianca Belair vs. IYO SKY
*Seth Rollins vs. Rey Mysterio

**ESPN 2 will have the return of the ManningCast tonight and Pat McAfee will be one of the featured guests throughout the broadcast along with Jimmy Johnson and Tracy Morgan.

**From a live perspective, the show is going to have a huge number in attendance over 12,100 tickets distributed, per WrestleTix. This follows last month’s edition of Raw in Toronto that drew over 14,000 total at Scotiabank Arena.

**Fite TV confirmed to POST Wrestling that the Royal Quest cards will not be airing on the service this weekend and are scheduled to air on demand on New Japan World sometime in October (they have not listed the release dates). The two-night event at Crystal Palace features FTR defending the IWGP tag titles against Aussie Open on the first night and Tetsuya Naito vs. Zack Sabre Jr. on the second night to determine the next challenger for the IWGP U.S. title. In 2019, the Royal Quest show from the Copper Box Arena in London was marred by live streaming issues but it feels very antiquated in today’s marketplace to be unable to stream the shows live and a small window to have relevance for the average consumer that has so many shows to grab their attention weekly.

**One of the major stories concerns the status of Buddy Matthews (Matthew Adams) with AEW. This comes several weeks after Malakai Black was removed from television and confirmed that he asked for his release. Since All Out, Matthews had been teaming with Brody King with Julia Hart in their corner and still referred to as the House of Black. The two lost a No Disqualification match to Sting & Darby last Wednesday at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Over the weekend, Matthews gave a speech at Fight Life Pro Wrestling and stated that, like Black, needs to “go away for a while” and needs to “recalibrate” and “figure out some things” adding that it’s not goodbye but “see you later”. The Wrestling Observer has reported that Matthews wants out of his AEW contract and his status with the company is unknown. Matthews joined AEW this past February after being released by WWE in June 2021. Matthews has not commented on his status beyond the promo he gave in Rhode Island on Saturday night but did tweet out a GIF from Seinfeld with the caption “Fake” but not adding addressing what it relates to.

**Anna Wolfe at Mississippi Today, who has been doing incredible work covering the welfare scandal in the state, has a story on Ted DiBiase Jr. alleging that he was a witness to Governor Phil Bryant instructing someone to cut welfare funding to a non-profit organization in 2019 because the director of the non-profit supported the Democratic candidate in that year’s Governor race. The DiBiase family is deeply tied to the welfare scandal with Ted and his father attached to a civil case launched by the state to receive funds that were misspent. The article by Misssippii Today provides a timeline of events involving Ted DiBiase Sr., and his sons Ted Jr. and Brett.

**WWE has secured a licensing deal with the SEC to produce custom-made championship belts for the fourteen teams in the conference, according to Sports Business Journal. WWE Raw women’s champion Bianca Belair appeared on College GameDay over the weekend and displayed a custom championship with the Tennessee colors and side plates displayed.

**The annual Cauliflower Alley Club Reunion takes place over the next three days in Las Vegas at the Plaza Hotel and culminates with the annual banquet with various awards being handed out. This year’s Iron Mike Mazurki Award is going to be presented to John Layfield with other honorees including Jerry Lawler, The Rock ‘N’ Roll Express, Kevin Sullivan, Tommy Rich, Jacqueline Moore, Christine Jarrett, Konnan, Billy Silverman, and others.

**AEW Dark Elevation only has two matches airing tonight, which were taped at Arthur Ashe Stadium prior to Dynamite and Rampage. The matches include Ortiz vs. Serpentico and Kip Sabian & Penelope Ford vs. Shawn Dean & Skye Blue streaming a 7 p.m. ET on the AEW YouTube channel.

**Stardom’s 5-Star Grand Prix ends this Saturday with the final round-robin matches to determine the winners of the two blocks followed by the finals taking place in the main event.

In the Red Stars block, there is a six-way tie between Utami Hayashishita, Himeka, Syuri, Maika, AZM & Tam Nakano with 14 points each. Maika and Himeka have a match together on Saturday, which could end in a draw allowing for one of the other four to win the block outright with 16 points. Hayashishita, Syuri, AZM & Nakano are all facing opponents that are mathematically out, so could be spoiled. Risa Sera has 13 points and could technically end with 15 points but that would mean the block ends in a major logjam and that’s unlikely.

In the Blue Stars, Giulia leads the block with 15 points while Hazuki, Starlight Kid, and Suzu Suzuki have 14 points each. If there is a tie, Giulia has lost to Hazuki. Giulia’s final match is with Suzu Suzuki while Himeka faces Momo Watanabe and Starlight Kid faces Mayu Iwatani on the final day. Giulia winning the block seems a likely outcome.

**Tuesday’s episode of NXT is another taped show from two weeks ago with the following matches set to air at 8 p.m. ET on USA:
*Brooks Jensen & Josh Briggs vs. Gallus
*Ilja Dragunov vs. Xyon Quinn
*Damon Kemp vs. Brutus Creed
*Mandy Rose vs. Fallon Henley
*Wes Lee vs. Tony D’Angelo (the match was originally taped with Tony D’Angelo, who was reportedly injured and the match was called off)
*Nikkita Lyons vs. Kayden Carter
*Sol Ruca vs. Amari Miller
*Cameron Grimes vs. Joe Gacy

**A Monster’s Ball match between Masha Slamovich and Allie Katch will air this Thursday on IMPACT Wrestling as part of Jordynne Grace’s “Pick Your Poison” stipulation as they lead into the title match at Bound for Glory.

**Drew McIntyre was interviewed by Steve Fall of NBC Sports Boston and discussed how Vince McMahon came up with the idea of using the sword for his entrance.

**Kento Miyahara’s next Triple Crown defense will be against Takao Omori on Saturday, October 22nd. Miyahara won the Triple Crown for the sixth time last weekend beating Suwama at Nippon Budokan. The following night at Korakuen Hall, he had an incredible match with Naoya Nomura and won with the Shutdown German suplex.

**New Japan will be posting the full Capital Collision event from this past to its YouTube channel tonight at 8 p.m. ET. The show was headlined by a four-way match involving Hiroshi Tanahashi, Jon Moxley, Juice Robinson, and Will Ospreay for the IWGP United States Championship as well as Tomohiro Ishii vs. Eddie Kingston and Minoru Suzuki vs. Brody King.

**DEFY Wrestling has announced Ultimo Dragon & Nick Wayne vs. Gringo Loco & La Estrella for Saturday, October 29th at Washington Hall in Seattle and streaming live on FITE TV.

**WWE has posted a 52-minute video of all of Bill Goldberg’s wins throughout the streak that began in September 1997 and lasted until Starrcade 1998.

**The WWE stock closed at $67.69 on Monday.

**The card for the season finale of Dana White’s Contender Series streaming on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET from the Apex in Las Vegas:
*Bo Nickal (2-0) vs. Donovan Beard (5-1)
*Sam Patterson (8-1-1) vs. Vinicius Cenci (6-1)
*Jack Jenkins (9-2) vs. Freddy Emiliano Linares (8-1)
*Rafael Ramos Estevam (10-0) vs. Joao Elias (4-0)
*Ashiek Ajim (3-1) vs. Mateus Mendonca (9-0)

ON THIS DATE

Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Dr. Death Steve Williams & Tracy Smothers in 1993 in All Japan:

WWF’s Unforgiven event from 1999 featuring a Six-Pack Challenge for the vacant WWF championship involving Triple H, The Rock, Mankind, Kane, Big Show, and The British Bulldog with Steve Austin as the outside enforcer:

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