Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2023/02/01/pollocks-news-update-ibushi-vs-speedball-at-bloodsport-all-collective-shows-on-fite/
POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Dynamite is live at 10 p.m. ET tonight. Wai & I will catch up on all the latest news and review Dynamite from Dayton as well as read your feedback from the POST Wrestling Forum. The show will stream live on the POST YouTube channel.
**The January 2023 edition of the ASK-A-WAI Mailbag Show is available for all Café members with a lot of great questions this month and various tangents we went on from the questions provided. Topics include the progress of Jade Cargill, AEW running more live events, coverage of those with controversial histories, Carl DeMarco running WWF Canada, Kota Ibushi’s future, Sami Zayn and Saudi Arabia, and more.
**There will be a bonus show this Friday with Brandon Thurston and I going through the WWE year-end/Q4 financial results and subjects covered in the call with analysts.
**Braden Herrington & Davie Portman will be doing a live NXT Vengeance Day POST Show on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET.
**Next Tuesday’s edition of Rewind-A-Wai will cover two episodes of Raw from February 1993. The shows will be from Feb. 15 and Feb. 22, 1993, with a big angle to set up WrestleMania 9. Both episodes can be found on the WWE Network and were selected by our Espresso Executive Producer, Ryan Charkow.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Dynamite with John Pollock & Wai Ting (10 p.m. ET)
Friday: WWE Q4 and 2022 Year-End Financials with John Pollock & Brandon Thurston
Sunday: NXT Vengeance Day POST Show with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Sunday: Wrestlenomics Radio
WRESTLING NEWS
**AEW Dynamite takes place from the Nutter Center on the campus of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. WrestleTix reports over 4,000 tickets are out for the show (they were at around 3,300 on Tuesday), which would be the first time Dynamite has drawn under 5,000 people this year. It is another loaded lineup including rematches between Jon Moxley and Hangman Page and Darby Allin against Samoa Joe. Below is the lineup for 8 p.m. ET on TBS and TSN 2 in Canada:
*TNT Championship, No Holds Barred: Darby Allin © vs. Samoa Joe
*TBS Championship: Jade Cargill © vs. Red Velvet
*Jon Moxley vs. Hangman Page
*Bryan Danielson vs. Timothy Thatcher
*Konosuke Takeshita vs. Brian Cage
*The Acclaimed in action
**Michael Weber at FITE TV has confirmed to POST Wrestling that all eleven shows connected with ‘The Collective’ this year will be available through FITE+, which is its news streaming service. That is an incredible deal from years past where all the big shows including Spring Break and Bloodsport will be covered with a $4.99 subscription. Besides Spring and Bloodsport, the eleven shows include DDT, For the Culture, Jimmy Lloyd’s Degeneration F, Santino Bros. Wrestling, Emo Fight, Effy’s Big Gay Brunch, Gringo Loco’s the WRLD on GCW, and the Indie Wrestling Hall of Fame ceremony.
**Over the past 24 hours, Kota Ibushi has become the most intriguing free agent on the market with confirmation his contract with New Japan has ended. Ibushi is set to wrestle at the end of March with dates announced for Bloodsport and Spring Break as part of The Collective. In an interview with Dark Puroresu Flowsion, Ibushi indicated he was looking at opening a gym in Japan and wasn’t looking at AEW immediately. Obviously, Tony Khan would be interested in Ibushi and said as much on Busted Open Radio on Wednesday.
**On that note, Ibushi is now scheduled to face Speedball Mike Bailey at Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport on Thursday, March 30th as part of The Collective. Ibushi has been out of action since his shoulder injury sustained during the G1 Climax final against Kazuchika Okada in October 2021.
**For the Culture has announced 2 Cold Scorpio vs. Bryan Keith for 3/30 at The Collective. That show will include Lio Rush and Myron Reed among the announced talent.
**The firm of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC, has issued a press release announcing an investigation into WWE on behalf of company shareholders. The purpose of the inquiry is to determine if WWE violated security laws in relation to the reports of Vince McMahon’s undisclosed payments to various women over the years, as reported by the Wall Street Journal last year. The release included the following note for shareholders and their assistance with the investigation:
If you are aware of any facts relating to this investigation or purchased WWE shares, you can assist this investigation by visiting the firm’s site: www.bgandg.com/wwe. You can also contact Peretz Bronstein or his law clerk and client relations manager, Yael Nathanson of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC: 212-697-6484.
**Monday’s episode of WWE Raw averaged 288,400 viewers on Sportsnet 360 in Canada along with 145,900 in the 25-54 demographic and ranking fourth among sports programming that night. It was down from the previous week’s Raw is XXX special, which was one of the highest Raw numbers in Canada in years. WWE has been doing some huge numbers in Canada for Raw and SmackDown lately. Friday’s edition of SmackDown going into the Royal Rumble averaged 283,000 viewers and 126,400 in the demo on SN 360.
**New Japan drew 1,216 to the Aomori Prefectural Budokan on Wednesday for its Road to the New Beginning event. LIJ’s Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi, SANADA & Hiromu Takahashi headlined the show beating Kazuchika Okada, Shota Umino, Tomoaki Honma & Ryusuke Taguchi with Takagi pinning Honma after the Pumping Bomber.
**NJPW returns this weekend with back-to-back nights in Hokkaido. Saturday’s card airs early at 3 a.m. ET on New Japan World and is headlined by Tetsuya Naito against Shota Umino in the biggest match of Umino’s career. That card also features Will Ospreay against Taichi, and an IWGP Jr. Heavyweight tag title match with Francesco Akira & TJP defending their titles against DOUKI & Yoshinobu Kanemaru. The second card from Hokkaido airs at Midnight ET on Saturday night with Hiromu Takahashi vs. YOH for the Junior Heavyweight title, Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Tomohiro Ishii for the World TV title, and Bishamon vs. TMDK for the IWGP tag titles in the top matches.
**Tony Khan recently recorded an interview with Marc Maron for his WTF Podcast. Maron, who was one of the leads in GLOW on Netflix, spoke to several AEW talents for future release. The interview with Khan is available on Maron’s subscription service and will be released for free on 2/9.
What happens when a wrestling fan starts his own wrestling company to take on the industry leader?@TonyKhan tells @marcmaron how @AEW came to be & explains what it takes to do live TV shows every week.
For Full Maron subscribers now, everyone else Feb 9https://t.co/6UOBVnLOqk pic.twitter.com/TnRD5TuAdN
— WTF with Marc Maron (@WTFpod) January 31, 2023
**The All-Star Junior Festival on Wednesday, March 1st will be available as a separate pay-per-view on New Japan World. The card from Korakuen Hall will be available for 3,500 yen or approximately $27 U.S. with Japanese and English language options.
**The Rock is scheduled to be a presenter at the Grammy Awards this Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount Plus. The ceremony is being hosted by Trevor Noah.
**Jimmy Jacobs has been announced for GCW’s Emo Fight card on 3/31 at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Los Angeles as part of The Collective.
**MLW has announced a sponsorship agreement with BetOnline as the new title sponsor and official sports book of the company. The news comes one week before the launch of MLW Underground Wrestling on Tuesday, February 7th at 10 p.m. ET on REELZ.
**The following matches have been announced for IMPACT Wrestling on Thursday night on AXS TV from the most recent tapings in Orlando:
*Josh Alexander, Frankie Kazarian, Rich Swann & Yuya Uemura vs. Deaner, Callihan, Big Kon & Angels
*Chris Bey & Ace Austin vs. KUSHIDA & Kevin Knight
*Gisele Shaw vs. Savannah Evans
*Crazzy Steve vs. Sheldon Jean
*Before the Impact: Aiden Prince vs. Jonathan Gresham
**The WWE stock increased nearly two percent on Wednesday and closed at $86.20.
**Dave Bautista appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to promote his new film ‘Knock at the Cabin’.
**Scott Coker was on The MMA Hour on Wednesday and provided his plans for Fedor Emelianenko’s retirement ceremony for this Saturday night. After Fedor’s fight with Ryan Bader, a ceremony will take place with Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Royce Gracie, Mark Coleman, Renzo Gracie, Frank Shamrock, Chuck Liddell, Matt Hughes, Chael Sonnen, Quinton Jackson, and Josh Barnett will be in attendance for the ceremony, which a really cool idea. The card will be airing on CBS this Saturday at 9 p.m. ET with a three-fight main card that also included Johnny Eblen defending the Bellator middleweight title against Anatoly Tokov and Sabah Homasi fighting Brennan Ward.
**Laura Sanko is set to call Saturday’s UFC Fight Night card from the Apex in Las Vegas alongside John Gooden and Michael Bisping. She will become the first female commentator in the modern era of the promotion and second behind Kathy Long, who called UFC 1 alongside Bill Wallace and Jim Brown. Saturday’s card won’t air until 10 p.m. ET with the prelims and the main card begins at 1 a.m. late Saturday night on ESPN+ with a heavyweight main event between Derrick Lewis and Sergey Spivak. The reason for the late start is that the event was originally targeted for South Korea and airing at an advantageous time for that part of the world but instead, was moved to the Apex.
ON THIS DATE
A rare match involving Shawn Michaels and Jake Roberts from Mid-South in 1985. This was very early in Michaels’ career as Mid-South was his first territory and this match took place less than four months into his career.
After winning the Royal Rumble, Edge defeated Randy Orton in their blowoff match in 2021 after their feud the prior year:
*****
upNXT
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman talk all about the January 31st, 2023 edition of WWE NXT, the go-home show for Vengeance Day.
****
ASK-A-WAI: Ask Us Anything!
John Pollock and Wai Ting answer their patrons’ questions about anything and everything in the January 2023 edition of Ask-A-Wai.
*****
INTERVIEW: Abraham Riesman, author of ‘Ringmaster’
John Pollock & Brandon Thurston are joined by Abraham Riesman, author of the upcoming book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.
*****
REWIND-A-RAW
John Pollock and Wai Ting battle technical difficulties to review WWE Raw from Tulsa featuring fallout from the Royal Rumble and the start of the build toward WrestleMania 39.
*****
WRESTLENOMICS RADIO: The business of Royal Rumble 2023
Brandon Thurston, Jesse Collings, and Chris Gullo talk about the business of the 2023 Royal Rumble including its attendance, reception, Google Trends, and notes from the post-event press conference.
*****
WWE ROYAL RUMBLE POST SHOW
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE’s Royal Rumble event from San Antonio, Texas featuring two Royal Rumble matches and Roman Reigns versus Kevin Owens for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship.
*****
THE LONG & WINDING ROYAL ROAD
Alan4L joins WH Park to talk about a hidden gem of a match featuring Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Jun Izumida & Tamon Honda.
*****
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