Originally published at POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: Canadian viewership for Raw & Battle of the Belts
POST IT NOTES
**If you are in Toronto for Dynamite, Wai Ting and I are doing a special meet-up with listeners at the Tim Hortons inside Liberty Village at 171 East Liberty Street (a five-minute from the arena). We will be hanging out before the show and you’re welcome to join. POST Wrestling Café members that share the secret phrase will be able to leave with a special gift.
**Braden Herrington & Davie Portman will be hosting an afterparty tonight at Sneaky Dee’s (College & Bathurst) with all the information available here.
**Due to attending Dynamite, Rewind-A-Dynamite will start an hour later tonight at 11 p.m. ET on the POST YouTube channel. I will share my live experience while Wai will be watching the televised version, so we can contrast.
**Tickets are on sale now for our POST Wrestling 5-Year Anniversary Show taking place Saturday, November 19th at the QXT Nightclub in Newark, New Jersey. Tickets are available for the Q&A with Wai & I and that includes an opening set from Braden Herrington & Davie Portman of upNXT. We are also offering a limited number of VIP tickets for a POST-meet-and-greet after the show. The venue is minutes away from the Prudential Center where AEW Full Gear is taking place that night. We will be discussing this over the coming weeks and hope to see many of you in Newark.
**The debut of Small Talk with Wai & I chatting on Tuesday about what this show is, different subjects concerning POST Wrestling, and more Dad discussions. This is a special thank you show for our Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**The latest edition of Shot in the Dark covers the go-home edition of Impact Wrestling prior to Bound for Glory, Brandon Cutler returns to AEW, and all the latest pro wrestling shows in less than 15 minutes.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Dynamite with John & Wai (11 p.m. ET)
Thursday: MCU L8R – She-Hulk season finale with Rich Fann, WH Park, Wai Ting & Nate Milton (Patreon)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with John & Wai (11 p.m. ET, Patreon)
Sunday: Wrestlenomics Radio
WRESTLING NEWS
**AEW makes its long-awaited Canadian debut tonight with the first of back-to-back nights at the Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto. AEW put additional tickets on sale on Tuesday with WrestleTix noting that the capacity has increased to over 7,500 (Prior to tickets going on sale, AEW told us that they could scale the arena up to 8,000). The demand has been very high for Dynamite with StubHub listing the cheapest price for a ticket at $92 CDN while Thursday’s Rampage is as low as $9. Between both nights, they will have in excess of 12,000 attending the shows and we’ll see if a big lineup is announced for Rampage and whether that leads to a late surge because no matches are known yet for Thursday. While the secondary market for Rampage has not reflected demand for tickets, they will still have over 5,000 in the building on Thursday.
Dynamite airs head-to-head with Game 2 of the San Diego Padres vs. L.A. Dodgers series.
In terms of Canadian viewership, Dynamite is airing against the Toronto Maple Leafs’ season opener against the Montreal Canadiens, which will be a big game. For this week only, TSN 2 is carrying Rampage on Friday night (it will stream live at 10 p.m. ET and air at 11 on television). TSN told POST Wrestling that this Friday’s airing is a one-off.
Dynamite will feature Chris Jericho defending the ROH Championship with his third match against Bryan Danielson. Jericho is wrestling as “Lionheart” tonight and will come out to White Zombie and save the Judas entrance for Thursday’s show. The story of Jericho beating former ROH champions can go a long time and would make sense to have Samoa Joe at the end of the line with hints dropped by Jericho over the past month that Joe used to be his favorite wrestler.
Below are the announced matches and segments for Dynamite tonight:
*ROH Championship: Chris Jericho (champion) vs. Bryan Danielson
*All-Atlantic Championship: PAC (champion) vs. Orange Cassidy
*Jungle Boy vs. Luchasaurus – This will be an interesting crowd response for Jungle Boy given Christian Cage will be in the opposite corner
*Swerve Strickland vs. Billy Gunn
*Toni Storm & Hikaru Shida vs. Dr. Britt Baker & Jamie Hayter
**Wrestlenomics has the quarter-hour performances for AEW Rampage & Battle of the Belts IV on Friday night on TNT. Each quarter over the two hours lost viewers except for 11:30 – 11:45 p.m. ET for the ending of Jade Cargill vs. Willow Nightingale, several backstage promos, and the start of the main event for the ROH tag titles. The quarter had a small gain of 5,000 viewers and the same amount in 18-49. The first quarter was far and away the highest performing of the night featuring The Blackpool Combat Club against Rush & Private Party while the lowest was the main event of Battle of the Belts with FTR against The Gates of Agony that averaged 288,000 viewers and 130,000 in 18-49.
**Canadian viewership for WWE Raw was its highest in the country since September 5th with the season premiere averaging 258,100 viewers and 148,400 in the 25-54 demographic. It ranked second among sports programs in the country on Monday behind Monday Night Football and topped the CFL game in the afternoon.
**In Canada, Battle of the Belts IV aired from 11 p.m. ET until Midnight on TSN 2 and averaged 22,000 viewers and 15,000 in the 25-54 demographic.
**NXT is loading up next Tuesday’s episode, which airs head-to-head with Dynamite. They are building the show around several mystery opponents and partners with the idea that multiple members of the main roster will be wrestling on the show. Roxanne Perez will be attending SmackDown on Friday to determine an opponent for Cora Jade next week and then, Jade will appear on Raw to find an opponent for Perez for the “Pick Your Poison” series on Tuesday. Cameron Grimes will also find two partners and indicated they were not from NXT when he takes on Joe Gacy & The Dyad next week. Dynamite will be live from Cincinnati with Jon Moxley defending the AEW Championship against Hangman Page. While Vice TV will not be airing the Vince McMahon documentary that night, the network will be airing its latest episode of Tales from the Territories focusing on the AWA.
**Daniel Cormier spoke about his experience at Extreme Rules on his DC & RC show for ESPN. Cormier joked about how he looked in the referee’s shirt and is using that image to motivate him to lose weight. He reiterated that if he were to do anything more with WWE, he would have to get in shape first. Matt Riddle came on the show to reflect on the Fight Pit and hit the senton to Seth Rollins near the end of the match. Riddle said Rollins was hurting the next day but did so in a joking manner. They also spoke about Riddle’s amateur wrestling victories against Jon Jones with Cormier joking that Riddle did something he couldn’t. Cormier tried to goad Riddle into suggesting Jones may have been on performance-enhancing drugs during those wrestling matches but Riddle didn’t take the bait and was very complimentary towards Jones and noted he also failed some drug tests and wasn’t going to throw rocks in a glass house.
**WWE returns to Madison Square Garden on 12/26 with the pre-sale beginning today and on sale to the rest of the public this Friday.
**New Japan kicks off its Battle Autumn tour this Friday and will air the card from Korakuen Hall free on New Japan World. The card will feature the first two tournament matches for the World Television Championship with Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Alex Zayne and David Finlay vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru with fifteen-minute time limits for each. The rest of the card has Shingo Takagi, Hiromu Takahashi & SANADA against El Phantasmo, Taiji Ishimori & KENTA, Tetsuya Naito & BUSHI & Titan against TJP, Francesco Akira & Gideon Grey, Aaron Henare & Jeff Cobb & Great O-Khan against Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI & Toru Yano, EVIL & SHO & Yujiro against Ryusuke Taguchi & Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Jado, El Desperado & Taichi & DOUKI & Taka Michinoku against Rocky Romero & Master Wato & Tomoaki Honma & Togi Makabe, and Ren Narita & Ryohei Oiwa against Tomohiro Ishii & Yuto Nakashima. The card will stream live at 5:30 a.m. ET on New Japan World.
**There is a tremendous thread that uncovered a diary from Jinsei Shinzaki during his year working for the World Wrestling Federation in 1995 as Hakushi with insight into working in a different country and his struggles, which he relayed back to Japan.
**Chris Jericho spoke with Mike Beauvais of TSN about tonight’s Canadian debut and the decision to stick with “Judas” as his entrance despite being a heel:
Even though I’m a heel, it’s a very organic reaction when people sing along to ‘Judas,’ so why would you want to stop that even when you’re a bad guy because it’s a very unique part of the show? And it’s one of the highlights. I get tweets and people commenting all the time with people saying ‘Ah, I’m so excited to sing ‘Judas’ tonight. I can’t wait!’ To take that away would be kinda stupid. So I think that’s the same when you’re in your home country or hometown. Let people enjoy the moment. How many times do you get to come to Canada? AEW fans have been waiting for us, so why would you want to – proverbially – shit on them and try to get them to boo? So if people want to cheer Chris Jericho or if people want to cheer Bryan Danielson or boo either one of us, it doesn’t really matter as long as they’re making noise or as long as they’re excited and engaged and invested in the match that we’re doing. That’s really all that matters in any way, shape or form.
**Christian Cage spoke with The Canadian Press about his role in AEW:
Taking this company that’s still in its infancy and helping it grow, watch it grow, be part of it grow. I think it’s a good mix of veteran presence and up-and-coming young talent. All of the ingredients are there to to be successful. I just wanted to be a part of building something great.
**Kevin Michie of Sportsnet spoke with Tony Khan and The Bunny prior to tonight’s AEW Dynamite in Toronto. From Khan:
I want to do various cities all over Canada. There’s so many good markets and wrestling cities in Canada, and Toronto, for us, had to be the first. It’s one of the best wrestling cities in the world, in my opinion.
**CBC has a story on AEW’s Canadian debut and spoke with Ethan Page, Christian Cage, The Bunny, and Evil Uno.
**Shawn Michaels appeared on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani and spoke about mending fences with Bret Hart and the clip that aired on A&E earlier this year:
ON THIS DATE
Bret Hart won his first of five WWF championships beating Ric Flair in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan at a non-televised event, which was filmed for Coliseum Video. The move came weeks after Hart dropped the Intercontinental title to Davey Boy Smith at Wembley Stadium and signaled a change for WWF as Flair would wrap up in early 1993 and return to WCW. Hart held the title until the following year’s WrestleMania where he dropped it to Yokozuna, and moments later, Hulk Hogan won the title. Hart was under the impression he would have a big match with Hogan to regain the title and a photo shoot was done with the two having a tug-of-war with the belt and expected for SummerSlam, but Hogan dropped the title to Yokozuna and never lost to Hart.
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK
John Siino reviews this week’s editions of AEW Dark, AEW Dark: Elevation, IMPACT Wrestling, Women of Wrestling, NXT Level Up, NJPW Strong, NWA USA, NWA Powerrr, and WWE Main Event in under 15 minutes on Shot In The Dark.
*****
upNXT: Strong Medicine
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman chat all about WWE NXT from October 11th, 2022 headlined by Ilja Dragunov vs Grayson Waller.
*****
REWIND-A-RAW: Season premiere
John Pollock and Wai Ting chat about the season premiere of WWE Raw from Brooklyn with the 25th anniversary of DX, the return of Brock Lesnar and The Good Brothers, and a new United States champion.
*****
NJPW Declaration of Power POST Show
John Pollock is solo for a review of NJPW’s Declaration of Power from Sumo Hall where the main event is set for Wrestle Kingdom 17, and the company honors the late Antonio Inoki.
*****
WRESTLENOMICS: Jon Moxley re-signs with AEW, Extreme Rules, WOW TV ratings
Brandon Thurston, Jesse Collings talk about the latest wrestling business news, including Jon Moxley re-signing with AEW, Extreme Rules business and more.
*****
WWE Extreme Rules POST Show
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Extreme Rules 2022 featuring the return of “The White Rabbit” Bray Wyatt, Fight Pit feat. Daniel Cormier, Liv Morgan vs. Ronda Rousey, an I Quit Match, and more!
*****
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