Originally published at POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: Historian Dean Silverstone passes away
POST IT NOTES
**On the newest edition of Thunderstruck, WH Park is joined by Alan4L of the Pro Wrestling Torch site to chat Jushin Thunder Liger & Minoru Tanaka vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru from NOAH in April 2002. There are only three more shows remaining in this limited series from WH Park, all the past episodes can be heard here.
**Wai Ting and I are back with a special bonus show tonight with the latest going on heading into the strangest WrestleMania Week of all-time. Our guests tonight will be the returning Dr. Alex Patel to give us an update and answer more questions, Brandon Thurston from Wrestlenomics Radio on the financial ramifications for WWE and others during this time, and we will check in with Marcus Vanderberg of Yahoo Sports. This show will be available for everyone late tonight.
**Friday’s edition of Rewind-A-SmackDown can be heard in full for members of the POST Wrestling Café. The news segments off the top is 43 minutes in length and on the free feed and on the POST Wrestling YouTube channel.
**Davie Portman has a review of Saturday’s episode of MLW Fusion from the tapings in Philadelphia featuring Muhammed ‘King Mo’ Lawal vs. Low Ki in the main event.
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WRESTLING NEWS
**Dean Silverstone, who was a major force behind the Cauliflower Alley Club and former promoter died earlier this week at the age of 75.
KIRO-7 in Seattle has a story on his passing. Silverstone got involved in wrestling in his teens by selling his own programs for Seattle promoter Harry Elliott and that led to his eventual role working for other promoters and eventually, opening Super Star Championship Wrestling. Beyond the wrestling industry, Silverstone turned a love of collecting vintage records into a business with the launch of the Golden Oldies Records chain of stores in the state of Washington. He opened his first store in Seattle and would add ten more stores before retiring in 2017.
In August 1980, he married Ruth Godsey, herself a fan of professional wrestling and the two would host annual reunions at their home with retired wrestlers. Ruth passed away in 2016.
Silverstone had served as the secretary and treasurer of the Cauliflower Alley Club and put out an autobiography in 2014 called ‘I Ain’t No Pig Farmer’ with Scott Teal.
Greg Oliver also has a story on the loss of Silverstone, discussing his friendship, along with Oliver and co-author Steven Johnson dedicating their recent Professional Hall of Fame: The Storytellers book to Dean & Ruth. Oliver added that Silverstone’s involvement with CAC was significant to the point that one could question the short-term future of the organization following his passing.
**Dave Meltzer had an update on Wrestling Observer Radio show regarding the ladder match taped for WrestleMania. It was initially believed to be a singles match involving John Morrison and a member of The Usos, but it might be a three-way with either Kofi Kingston or Big E. as the third participant.
**Next Friday’s episode of SmackDown is advertising a face-to-face segment involving Bill Goldberg and Roman Reigns as well as John Cena’s response to the challenge by Bray Wyatt for a ‘Firefly Fun House’ match at WrestleMania. Clearly, WWE didn’t want to blow up their taped episodes of SmackDown to reflect the change to the Universal title match, so the new title match at WrestleMania is going to get 24 or 48 hours of notice.
**Monday’s episode of Raw will feature appearances from Edge, The Undertaker, Becky Lynch, and Brock Lesnar heading into the WrestleMania shows.
**WWE Network News reports that the start time for both nights of WrestleMania is 7 pm Eastern with each show having a one-hour kickoff at 6 pm. The same site notes that a WWE Chronicle featuring Drew McIntyre will air after night one and a new WWE 24 covering Edge will air after night two.
**Chris Jericho discussed the closing segment from this week’s episode of Dynamite. He acknowledged the teleportation entrance of Matt Hardy was Jericho’s idea, so any praise or criticism can be directed at him. They filmed the segment on Tuesday, but Jericho wasn’t happy with it, so they decided to redo it on Wednesday prior to the airing. However, it wasn’t dark yet as Daily’s Place is an open-air facility and the light would be visible. The solution was to re-tape the segment as Dynamite was on the air and they had to do it during the airing of the Darby Allin vs. Kip Sabian match, which was a taped match. They shot the segment, edited it within fifteen minutes and aired it during the last segment of the show.
**The decision for Jericho and Hardy to use the lapel microphones instead of handheld ones was a decision to go for a different look and they did not require handheld microphones with no fans in attendance.
**ESPN has a story on Becky Lynch following her interview with Ariel Helwani this past week. In this interview, she stated that she believes her match with Shayna Baszler will air on the first night of WrestleMania next weekend.
**The WWE Network has added a collection of Ric Flair’s best WWE matches. The matches selections includes Flair teaming with Randy Orton & Batista against The Rock & Mick Foley at WrestleMania 20, the Money in the Bank Ladder match from WrestleMania 22, the 1992 Royal Rumble, his title loss to Bret Hart in October 1992 in Saskatoon, his match against Triple H from Raw in May 2003, and his retirement match against Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 24 in 2008.
**Michael Hayes (Michael Seitz) turns 61 today.
**The NWA has released an interview with Tim Storm discussing Joe Exotic’s foray into promoting pro wrestling in Texas and Oklahoma and Storm working one of his events, which was under the banner of NWA Texoma:
MMA NEWS
**Guilherme Cruz at MMA Fighting has a great feature on the status of UFC 250, which is still on the schedule for May 9th in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The card tentatively features two title fights with Henry Cejudo vs. Jose Aldo for the UFC bantamweight title and Amanda Nunes vs. Felicia Spencer for the women’s featherweight title. Cruz spoke with many fighters attached to the card and how they are dealing with the uncertainty and the limitations of training during this pandemic. Of the 117 deaths in Brazil from the coronavirus, 86 have been in Sao Paulo.
Ketlen Vieira, who has not fought in 19 months, shared her apprehension towards fighting given the circumstances:
Coronavirus or not, if we get hurt, you only get paid if you fight, so that’s very hard. I was coming off an injury that kept me out for almost two years, and now I came back with a fight and was preparing to fight at least three times this year but this happened. It affects not only athletes, everybody in the world is in a tough situation.
**The camera footage from Jon Jones’ arrest this past Thursday has been released to several media outlets. The footage was from a camera on the lapel of one of the officers that ran the sobriety tests on Jones. In the footage, Jones performs poorly on most of the tests and notes he has ‘short term memory loss’ citing that he gets hit in the head for a living. Once he put in handcuffs and directed to the police car, Jones became emotional. He is sent for an arraignment on April 8th.
**In his latest interview, UFC president Dana White spoke to Mike Tyson about his attempt to push through with events during the pandemic. White said that they are close to finalizing plans for UFC 249 on April 18th and that they have ‘four or five locations’ but noted the curveballs coming his way daily. White said that the media is making the pandemic scary and that it’s ‘driven by fear’ and that we will look back on this time in a year or two and won’t believe that we shut down the whole world for this thing.
**Joe Rogan has flat out said he would not be calling UFC 249 and questions how the company will stage this event given the current circumstances.
*****
THUNDERSTRUCK: Liger & Tanaka vs. Kikuchi & Kanemaru (4/7/2002) with Alan4L
WH Park and Alan4L from Pro Wrestling Torch’s ProWres Paradise pontificate about many topics including this awesome tag match between Jushin Liger & Minoru Tanaka taking on the NOAH Jr. team of Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/29/thunderstruck-23-liger-tanaka-vs-kikuchi-kanemaru-4-7-02-w-alan4l/
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 3/27/20: Latest on WrestleMania Changes
John Pollock and Wai Ting review Friday Night SmackDown and discuss today’s news as WWE navigates a number of major changes to WrestleMania 36 including Roman Reigns, Miz and Andrade being taken off the show, the latest on Jon Jones’ arrest, Brodie Lee on TIJ, and Dana White speaks.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/28/rewind-a-smackdown-3-27-20-latest-on-wrestlemania-changes/
*****
Café Hangout: Chris Benoit on Dark Side of the Ring, Jon Jones arrested
Join John Pollock and Wai Ting for the Café Hangout as they take your calls and discuss the Chris Benoit episode of Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring. Plus, the latest on today’s arrests of Jon Jones and Teddy Hart.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/26/live-link-cafe-hangout-chris-benoit-on-dark-side-your-calls/
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upNXT 3/25/20: “Don’t Touch Me”
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review the March 25th edition of WWE NXT from Full Sail University featuring Matt Riddle vs. Roderick Strong, Austin Theory vs. Tyler Breeze, the return of Io Shirai, the debut of a brand new tag team, Triple H addresses Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano, and more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/26/upnxt-3-25-20-dont-touch-me/
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REWIND-A-DYNAMITE 3/25/20: Vanguardian of the Galaxy
John Pollock and Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite from Daily’s Place with Matt Hardy confronting Chris Jericho.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/25/rewind-a-dynamite-3-25-20-vanguardian-of-the-galaxy/
*****
POST INTERVIEW: Jeff Marek
On today’s show, John Pollock speaks with Jeff Marek about the new Dark Side of the Ring documentary covering Chris Benoit.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/25/post-interview-jeff-marek-on-the-chris-benoit-documentary/
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ASK-A-WAI: Ask us Anything! (March 2020)
John Pollock and Wai Ting answer their patrons’ questions from the POST Wrestling Forum in the March 2020 edition of Ask-A-Wai.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/24/ask-a-wai-ask-us-anything-march-2020/
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REWIND-A-RAW 3/23/20: Too Legit to Grit
John Pollock and Wai Ting review another empty-arena WWE Raw from the Performance Center as Randy Orton answers Edge’s challenge, and AJ Styles challenges The Undertaker to a BONEYARD match.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/03/24/rewind-a-raw-3-23-20-too-legit-to-grit/
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