Originally published at POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: Gable Steveson shares WWE details
POST IT NOTES
**I put out a bonus show on Sunday with a review of the ROH Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view from Philadelphia. This show is a solo one as I review the entire card for members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**We are live tonight at 11:15 p.m. ET for Rewind-A-Raw with Andrew Thompson joining me tonight for the entire show to review Raw in Boston and discuss all the major news items coming out of the weekend. The show will be live for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso members of the POST Wrestling Café and available free for everyone early Tuesday morning by subscribing to POST Wrestling.
**This month’s edition of The N.W.A. Podcast is available with Nate Milton and Kris Ealy being joined by Rich Fann from the Pro Wrestling Torch to discuss the AEW signings of CM Punk and Bryan Danielson, the handling of Bianca Belair at SummerSlam, and Andrew Thompson joins them to go through all the major news.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Andrew Thompson (11:15 p.m. ET)
Tuesday: Rewind-A-Wai #94: WWE SmackDown, April 15, 2004 (Patreon)
Tuesday: upNXT with Davie Portman & Braden Herrington
Wednesday: Shot in the Dark with John Siino (upNXT)
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite with John Pollock & John Siino (10:15 p.m.)
Thursday: MCU L8R with WH Park and Scrump & Stank from the PWT Cast (Patreon)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with John Pollock & Kate from MTL (11:15 p.m. ET for all Patrons)
Saturday: G1 Climax – Night 1 with John Pollock (Patreon)
Sunday: G1 Climax – Night 2 with John Pollock & Wai Ting (Patreon)
WRESTLING NEWS
**Monday’s edition of New Day’s Feel the Power podcast was an essential listen. The three tackled the subject of mental health following the passing of Shannon Spruill a.k.a. Daffney. It was a level of openness rarely displayed and all credit to those involved and being so forthcoming with their own struggles.
Big E. (Ettore Ewen) shared his battles with depression including several years that were extremely difficult and led to thoughts of suicide daily. He credited an individual by the name of Marvin Sims with saving his life that was a coach during his football days. It was through Sims that E eventually went to therapy despite his resistance to doing so. At the age of 19, he was diagnosed with major depression with psychotic features and at times, hallucinated. He called it “a daily hell” during these years and didn’t think he could survive.
Xavier Woods (Austin Watson) shared his own struggles while he was in WWE developmental and credited his roommates Tyler Breeze and Rick Viktor discovering he had an issue and addressing it. Woods emphasized that as wrestlers they do so much to train their bodies physically and constantly maintain their physical health that they should all be treating their mental health with just as much care and not waiting until there is a major problem to address ongoing issues.
To say the least, this was a phenomenal discussion of a tricky topic for many to speak about and to listen to and I can’t recommend it enough. These three have significant voices and a major platform and have opted to tackle topics that can, at times, be uncomfortable and difficult to navigate and they have done it with such sensitivity and care that all three should be credited for shining a light and normalizing mental health conversations.
**WWE Raw goes against the first Monday Night Football game of the season tonight with the Baltimore Ravens playing the Las Vegas Raiders. After spending the majority of last week’s episode setting up Bobby Lashley & MVP as the top contenders to challenge Randy Orton & Riddle for the tag titles, the match was scrapped from this week’s show. In its place will be the WWE Championship match between Lashley and Orton, originally announced for Extreme Rules later this month. Raw is also coming off a week where AEW Dynamite edged them out in the 18-49 demographic and could make for some close weeks depending on the strength of the NFL each Monday and how much momentum Dynamite can ride off their recent moves.
On social media, Big E. is pushing that he will cash in his MITB briefcase tonight and become WWE Champion.
For the second week in a row, WWE Raw has multiple matches listed ahead of time with the following announced for tonight’s show at the TD Garden in Boston:
*WWE Championship: Bobby Lashley (champion) vs. Randy Orton
*Non-title: Charlotte Flair vs. Shayna Baszler
*U.S Championship: Damian Priest (champion) vs. Jeff Hardy
*Natalya vs. Rhea Ripley
*Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, Mansoor & Mustafa Ali vs. AJ Styles, Omos, T-Bar & Mace
**Gable Steveson appeared on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani and discussed his decision to sign with WWE and the circumstances behind it:
*After the Olympics, he had a pretty solid idea he would be joining WWE despite his public courting of various promotions and promoters
*He can appear on WWE programming during his final year at the University of Minnesota
*He will be training for professional wrestling while competing over the next season with a set-up being developed for Steveson in Minnesota and coaches will be sent to work with him
*Steveson was backstage at Madison Square Garden on Friday during SmackDown
*Steveson is under contract for three years (not including the remainder of 2021)
*He still plans to do MMA
*He was never presented with the option of going on Dana White’s Contender Series
*His older brother Bobby is 25-years old and noted he’s introverted and has to bring out the character side, he is already training at the Performance Center
*There is a chance he could bypass NXT and could go straight to the main roster
**The WWE stock jumped 4 percent on Monday and closed at $53.98.
**The following matches were taped last week and will air on AEW Dark: Elevation at 7 p.m. ET on the AEW YouTube channel:
*Daniel Garcia vs. Lee Moriarty
*Jade Cargill vs. Shawna Reed
*Frankie Kazarian vs. Ren Jones
*Anna Jay & Tay Conti vs. Ella Shae & Jaylee
*Nyla Rose vs. Skye Blue
*Emi Sakura vs. Queen Aminata
*The Butcher & The Blade vs. Turbo Floyd & Truth Magnum
*Penelope Ford vs. Layna Lennox
**We want to send our best wishes and a full recovery for Chris Mordetsky a.k.a. Chris Adonis/Chris Masters. The performer missed the PCW card in the U.K. over the weekend and stated it was due to COVID-19. Masters had been scheduled to face Doug Williams at the event.
**Anthony Crupi at Sportico shared some stats on U.S. homes getting rid of cable over the past quarter. According to MoffetNathanson, subscribers of cable/Direct Broadcast Satellite/Telco subs are currently at 72,571,000 homes or 60 percent of all U.S. homes with a television. It works out to a decrease of 2,470,000 since the first quarter of 2021 and down 5,980,000 over the past year. Crupi adds that the number of U.S. homes to cut the cord since 2014 is 27,918,000.
**After Death Before Dishonor, Lenny Leonard wrote that he has no bookings coming up and appears to be at a crossroads regarding his future in professional wrestling. Leonard had just been utilized by Ring of Honor throughout the women’s tournament to crown the new champion, which happened on the pay-per-view. Leonard is one of the best in the industry and the most consistent name you hear of someone that should be calling pro wrestling regularly for a major company.
**Paul Heyman spoke about the signing of Gable Steveson by WWE and the appearance by Trae Young on SmackDown this past Friday night.
**Game Changer Wrestling has announced Nick Gage vs. Grim Reefer for the September 24th show at the Melrose Ballroom in New York City. Other matches on the card include Minoru Suzuki vs. Homicide, Taiji Ishimori vs. Tony Deppen, Alex Zayne vs. AR Fox, and a major announcement from Matt Cardona.
**GCW has announced their tour dates for the rest of 2021 including a New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day set of shows. This Friday they are in Los Angeles for ‘Highest in the Room’ followed by the two nights at the Melrose Ballroom on September 23rd and 24th. On October 9th and 10th they are in Atlantic City, which includes Jon Moxley vs. Nick Gage on the first night at The Showboat. The remainder includes October 22nd (Location TBA), October 23rd (L.A.), November 12th (Detroit), November 13th (Chicago), December 3 & 4 (TBA), December 17th (L.A.), December 31st & January 1st (Atlantic City).
**GHC Jr. Heavyweight Champion HAYATA will defend his championship against Daisuke Harada on October 10th at Pro Wrestling NOAH’s next card in Osaka as he looks to make his fourth championship defense. The October 10th event will feature Naomichi Marufuji defending the GHC Championship against the winner of the N-1 Victory tournament, which began this past weekend.
**Timebomb Pro Wrestling has added a match between Paul London and Orin Veidt for their ‘Violence is Forever’ card on October 21st in Fargo, North Dakota. The show is headlined by Minoru Suzuki and Dominic Garrini with only general admission tickets remaining.
**Being the Elite Ep. 273: Catching Up.
**The Happy King Baron Corbin turns 37 years old today.
MMA NEWS
**Conor McGregor and rapper Machine Gun Kelly had an incident on Sunday night at the MTV VMAs. It is unknown where the source of contention originated from with TMZ reporting McGregor had sought a photo with MGK while McGregor’s team is denying that. A video emerged that clearly shows McGregor launching a drink in his direction. Security separated the two and both continued with their evening and attended the event.
A spokesperson for McGregor issued the following statement to MMA Fighting:
Conor McGregor did not ask anyone for a picture, nor did he instigate this incident. He does not know Machine Gun Kelly, outside of the fact that he attended Conor’s fight this past July.
McGregor was interviewed by Entertainment Tonight and briefly commented on the altercation and claimed to not know who he was:
Conor McGregor is throwing shade at Machine Gun Kelly. 😬 #VMAs https://t.co/FJ7v0Kowr4 pic.twitter.com/vtC7ca3oeY
— Entertainment Tonight (@etnow) September 13, 2021
**The fallout of the Triller Fight Club event is a negative one and begs the question of when does the bubble burst, if not already? Saturday’s event was a disgrace on several levels from the lack of adequate oversight by a Florida commission that inherited a fight involving a 58-year old Evander Holyfield on a week’s notice and appeared all too ready to greenlight a fight California would not. The fight only turned out to be embarrassing and thankfully, did not present dire consequences for Holyfield as he was stopped by Vitor Belfort in the first round.
The concept of Triller in the fight game has been to create the grandest car crash that forces oncoming traffic to turn their heads while reaching for their wallets on the promise of an even greater stunt at the next exit. The company hit the public conscience last year by promoting the novelty of Mike Tyson fighting Roy Jones Jr. It went down a notch with this past spring’s debacle headlined by Jake Paul and Ben Askren that still held an interest with the public because of the Paul factor. This event appeared to be too far for even the most liberal of fight fans that can appreciate sizzle over steak. It’s downright dangerous and you’re almost hesitant to voice your objection because that’s the type of oxygen that fuels this promotion.
Prizefighting is not a reality show and taking fighters long past their prime and placing them into these scenarios feels exploitive and a flirtation with a dire outcome that this type of matchmaking could breed. There is a responsibility that falls upon the promoter but in the absence of that it is the commission’s job to prevent such irresponsible tactics and in that regard, both entities failed on Saturday night.
**Dana White’s Contender Series has a packed card on Tuesday night from the UFC Apex in Las Vegas with the following card streaming at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN+ and Fight Pass:
*Jailton Almeida (13-2) vs. Nasrudin Nasrudinov (9-0)
*Mo Miller (5-0) vs. Brandon Lewis (5-0)
*Caio Bittencourt (14-6) vs. Albert Duraev (13-3)
*Lukasz Brzeski (8-1-1) vs. Dylan Potter (10-5)
*Jack Della Maddalena (9-2) vs. Ange Loosa (7-1)
*Julia Polastri (8-2) vs. Jasmine Jasudavicius (5-1)
**Bellator 266 takes place this Saturday from the SAP Center in San Jose, California featuring the promotional debut of Yoel Romero as he takes on former light heavyweight champion Phil Davis.
**The UFC Fight Night card goes head-to-head with Bellator on Saturday with another card from the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. The main event is a light heavyweight fight between former title challenger Anthony Smith (35-16) and Ryan Spann (19-6). After Smith’s loss to Jon Jones in March 2019, he’s gone 3-2 and is coming off stoppage wins against Devin Clark and Jimmy Crute since last November. Spann is 30-years old and came off Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018. While fighting for the UFC, Spann has gone 5-1 and is coming off a TKO win against Misha Cirkunov last March.
ON THIS DATE
The WWF presented a live edition of SmackDown two days after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Talent and staff had been stuck in Houston since Tuesday where SmackDown had been scheduled to be taped. The show was not without criticism, in particular, the comments made by Stephanie McMahon comparing the attacks on the country to the U.S. government going after her father in the early ‘90s.
WWE presented the Breaking Point event on this date in 2009 from Montreal, Quebec. The card featured the concept of submission-based stipulations for the top three matches with CM Punk vs. The Undertaker in a ‘Submission Match’, DX vs. Cody Rhodes & Ted DiBiase in a ‘Submissions Count Anywhere Match’, and an ‘I Quit Match’ between Randy Orton and John Cena:
A pretty awful edition of War Games on this date in 1998 where the concept was changed to three teams with one individual winner that led to Diamond Dallas Page earning a future WCW title shot. This match is also remembered for the trap door installed for Warrior’s entrance that led to a serious injury to Davey Boy Smith on the undercard when he landed on it:
Rikishi debuted in TNA as ‘Junior Fatu’ but would only stick around for one month with the company and did a handful of matches including the infamous ‘Reverse Battle Royal’ at Bound for Glory the next month.
*****
ROH Death Before Dishonor POST Show w/ John Pollock
John Pollock is solo tonight with a review of the ROH Death Before Dishonor card from Philadelphia.
*****
THE N.W.A. Podcast: “Fair to Belair”
Nate Milton & Kris Ealy are joined by Rich Fann to discuss the significance of AEW’s signings of CM Punk & Bryan Danielson (and how they might actually help improve diversity), the WWE’s “unconscious bias” problem, and the passing of a fallen friend.
*****
POST News Update 9/10/21: AEW All Out tops 200,000 buys
John Pollock & Wai Ting discuss news of AEW All Out topping 200,000 buys, Dynamite ratings, SmackDown at MSG, Bound For Glory and more.
*****
MCU L8R: What If…Episode 5 “Zombies?!”
Wai Ting & WH Park are joined by Mike Murray to review What If…? Episode 5: “What If… Zombies?!”
*****
BWE: WALTER vs. Dragunov, RevPro 9th Anniversary, Charlie Morgan
Martin Bushby & Benno are joined by Andy Ogden to discuss the last month in European wrestling including the big Walter vs. Ilja Dragunov rematch from NXT TakeOver 36, RevPro’s 9th Anniversary and more.
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE: Moxley vs. Suzuki, Danielson/Omega
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite from Cincinnati featuring Jon Moxley vs. Minoru Suzuki and appearances from Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, and CM Punk following the All Out pay-per-view.
*****
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