POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: Jordan Myles adds details on shirt design

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Originally published at POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: Jordan Myles adds details on shirt design

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**Wai Ting and I are back with Rewind-A-Raw tonight to review the show from St. Louis and cover all the news from the weekend. Plus, we will take your feedback and questions at the end of the show.

**There is a review of the latest episode of MLW Fusion on the site looking at the last show before Saturday’s pay-per-view.

**WH Park released the first edition of his new series THUNDERSTRUCK over the weekend. The series will take a look at classic matches from the career of Jushin Thunder Liger with a new guest each week. On the first show, WH welcomed Damon McDonald of the Super J Cast to discuss the 1990 match of the year between Liger and Naoki Sano. The series will be released each Sunday and next week’s guest is Richard “Benno” Benson from the British Wrestling Experience to discuss the Liger vs. Bryan Danielson match from Ring of Honor in November 2004.

POST SCHEDULE
*Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
*Tuesday: ASK-A-WAI mailbag show (Patreon)
*Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite
*Wednesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
*Thursday: Special live show at 11 pm ET with John & Wai (LIVE for all Patrons)
*Friday: British Wrestling Experience with Martin Bushby, Benno & Jamesie
*Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (Patreon)
*Saturday: UFC 244 POST Show with John Pollock & Phil Chertok
*Sunday: NJPW Power Struggle POST Show (Patreon)

WRESTLING NEWS

**Tonight’s episode of Raw takes place from the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, Missouri for the final show before this Thursday’s Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia. Here is what the has been announced for tonight’s episode:
*Seth Rollins vs. Erick Rowan in a Falls Count Anywhere match
*Becky Lynch vs. Kairi Sane for the Raw women’s title
*Ricochet vs. Drew McIntyre
*R-Truth vs. Buddy Murphy
*Jerry Lawler hosts “The Divorce Court” with Rusev and Lana
*Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair will appear on the show

**The talent will be leaving from St. Louis to Saudi Arabia for Thursday’s Crown Jewel show. The SmackDown talent is in the middle of an unbelievable stretch as most were in Australia this past week, returned to the U.S., fly to Saudi Arabia, immediately turn around for Friday night’s episode in Buffalo followed by the European tour that starts next week.

**Albert Hardie Jr. aka Jordan Myles continues to voice his outrage stemming from his reaction to a t-shirt design that featured connotations to racist imagery. WWE issued a statement on Sunday stating that Hardie Jr. approved of the design and when he wanted it re-designed it was taken down with no shirts being sold that contained the image that has caused mass criticism.

Hardie Jr. reacted to WWE’s statement and said he was uncomfortable when he first saw the design. He didn’t address the issue but instead made a counteroffer with a new design. Hardie Jr. added that WWE employee Baker Landon e-mailed him on September 11th and it was Paul Levesque’s call to make an alteration to the logo and be “more teethy”:

Don’t believe me? Email him and ask him yourself.

GFYS Baker! pic.twitter.com/iNfV7aqq6M

— Jordan Myles (@GoGoMyles) October 28, 2019

Hardie Jr. went on to call the whole WWE system “a fraud” where you can’t trust anyone adding that Hulk Hogan is still employed by the company. He posted an additional message that was critical of Ring of Honor for not pushing black talent in the top positions except for Jay Lethal, who he referred to as an “Uncle Tom” before deleting that message. He also posted a short video stating that WWE didn’t care about black people, which was also deleted. In another deleted response, Hardie Jr. wrote:

I’m far from perfect. I’m willing to do anything for the job of my dreams to make things work for both parties. I only agreed to the shirt because it was shown to me on a white tee. Once placed on a black tee you can clearly see the racist intentions.

Hardie Jr. has not been on the road with NXT for over a month with his last match listed from September 21st in Melbourne, Florida.

Beyond the initial statement, WWE has not responded to the further points raised by Hardie Jr. but needs to handle this in a public forum. There is a lot of criticism that goes beyond just the design of the shirt, which was a terrible decision. The company made its own misfire by failing to apologize for the insensitive nature of the shirt and placing the onus on Hardie Jr., who disputes the notion that he signed off on the design as WWE put it. Regardless, this design never should have made it to that stage. It goes beyond a public gaffe and brings about questions regarding the thought process that went into that shirt and whether it was pure ignorance or someone aware of the racist imagery it conjures when seeing the logo coupled with a black shirt design.

**Tickets for next April’s WrestleMania go on sale Friday, November 15th at 10 am eastern. The show will take place from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida on Sunday, April 5th, 2020. Travel packages will be available beginning next Tuesday. According to the travel package options, next year’s Hall of Fame ceremony will take place on Thursday, April 2nd as WWE will run four events from the Amalie Arena that weekend. Friday Night SmackDown will be live that week from the arena, NXT TakeOver is listed for Saturday, and Raw will close out the weekend on Monday, April 6th. WWE Axxess will take place from April 2-6.

**Everyone is raving about the match between Jordan Devlin and David Starr from the OTT card this past Saturday in Dublin, Ireland.

**The next OTT is in conjunction with The Crash on Saturday, November 30th at the KFR Centre in Dublin. They have announced Pentagon Jr. and Rey Fenix will be on the show and the venue is limited to 400 people.

**All Elite Wrestling has announced that their first episode of Dynamite in 2020 will take place from Daily’s Place in Jacksonville, Florida. The show falls on New Year’s Day and will see AEW return to the venue that is owned by the Khan family and which hosted the Fight for the Fallen event this past July. Tickets for the show go on sale this Friday at Noon eastern.

**The AEW account was building this news up throughout Monday morning, so naturally people assumed it was a bigger deal than TV tapings. Tony Khan actually addressed it and spun it around to be a positive:

Jeff, let’s do our best not to toy with people’s emotions like this. We got people who aren’t near the Florida market all excited, now we have to come up with another huge announcement, one that affects all of our fans everywhere, to make it up to them. So that’s what we’ll do.

**The episode of AEW Dynamite that aired on ITV 4 on Friday, October 18th averaged 143,000 viewers and was up 2.9% from the week prior in the same slot. From that figure, 45,000 watched the show live.

**Bayley was interviewed in Australia last week and it was her first time wrestling in the country since being called up. She discussed the changing role of females in WWE, watching Candice LeRae as a fan and the legacy of her matches with Sasha Banks from NXT in 2015.

**Ring of Honor will be launching on Fight Network UK beginning on Friday, November 8th. The program will air on Friday nights at 9 pm in the UK.

**Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson were guests on ESPN Radio in St. Louis promoting tonight’s episode of Raw. Locally, they are advertising a steel cage match between Seth Rollins and The Fiend as a dark match after the show.

Anderson shared the following on Finn Balor’s recent move to NXT and the turn from last week’s show:

I’m happy for the people to see Bullet Club Finn Balor, to see some of that attitude he had over in Japan. I think he lost some of his ‘coolness’ on Raw to be honest of how cool he can be.

**The WWE stock closed at $68.91 on Monday.

**Gareth Davies has a big interview and feature on Tyson Fury in The Telegraph.

**MLW announced on this past weekend’s episode of Fusion that Low Ki will take on Brian Pillman Jr. at the Saturday Night SuperFight pay-per-view this weekend at Cicero Stadium. The pay-per-view airs at 8 pm eastern and they have promoted that the show will be just under three hours to avoid going against the Nate Diaz vs. Jorge Masvidal fight at UFC 244 as well as the Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez vs Sergey Kovalev fight on DAZN that night.

**New Japan’s Super Junior Tag League is winding down with shows on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before the finals at Power Struggle on Sunday in Osaka. Taiji Ishimori & El Phantasmo are on top with ten points followed by Rocky Romero & Ryusuke Taguchi, Birds of Prey, and El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru with eight points each, Roppongi 3K and Titan & Volador Jr. have six points, and TJP & Clark Connors and Tiger Mask & Yuya Uemura have zero points.

**Wednesday’s New Japan card in Shizuoka features one tag league match as Roppongi 3K takes on Tiger Mask & Yuya Uemura. Thursday’s show in Aichi has Tiger Mask & Yuya Uemura taking on TJP & Clark Connors. On Friday’s card, the final round-robin matches will be Rocky Romero & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Volador Jr. & Titan, Will Ospreay & Robbie Eagles vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado, and El Phantasmo & Taiji Ishimori vs. Roppongi 3K.

**A new episode of WWE Table for 3 will air after Raw featuring JBL, Ron Simmons, and Teddy Long on the WWE Network.

**EVOLVE is allowing fans to vote on who Evan Bourne will face on the November 9th and 10th shows. The options are Anthony Greene, AR Fox, Leon Ruff, and Anthony Henry and the results will be revealed tonight. Adam Cole, Johnny Gargano, and Tommaso Ciampa will be holding meet-and-greets at these two shows.

**NXT has added live events in California this December. They have announced December 12th in Riverside, December 13th in Visalia, December 14th in Santa Cruz, and December 15th in San Jose with tickets on sale this Friday.

**Courage Pro Wrestling is running a card in Hamilton, Ontario on Sunday, December 8th at the Germania Club. The show will be headlined by a Barbed Wire Mayhem match between Holden Albright and Aiden Rayne, plus Sabrina Kyle vs. Kobe Durst in a ladder match for the CPW heavyweight title, Matthew Grant & JT Kirk vs. Tyson Dux & Jake Jones for the CPW tag titles, Ethan Page vs. Tyler Aero, and Josh Alexander vs. Mike Forte. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door with VIP tickets $20 in advance and $25 at the door, which can be purchased at Vagabond Saints on Barton Street and Kool Stuff Toys on King Street East.

**Scrump of the PWT Cast interviewed Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes on this week’s podcast.

VIDEOS

**Steve Austin is the guest on the latest edition of Iron-On Wrestling with Gregory Iron speaking to Austin about his neck problems, retiring in 2003, walking away from the industry, and other subjects.

**John Cena (and his hair) appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon:

**Ariel Helwani roams around Madison Square Garden with Nate Diaz for an extensive interview ahead of UFC 244:

**A Trios match from Arena San Juan Pantitlan has received a lot of positive response when the match was recommended by Rob Viper on Twitter:

**The latest edition of Being the Elite:

*****
THUNDERSTRUCK Ep. 1: Jushin Liger vs. Naoki Sano
In his new series that looks at Jushin Thunder Liger’s greatest matches, WH Park welcomes Damon MacDonald of the Super J-Cast (at the Voices of Wrestling website) to discuss Liger’s history as well as one of his most famous matches against Naoki Sano from January 31, 1990.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/10/26/thunderstruck-1-jushin-liger-vs-naoki-sano-1-31-90-w-damon-macdonald/
*****
RASD 10/25/19: Doom for Dominick, Jake Hager’s fight
John Pollock and Wai Ting review Friday Night SmackDown on FS1 featuring a final Brock Lesnar and Cain Velasquez confrontation before Crown Jewel. Plus, the result of Jake Hager’s Bellator MMA fight, Xavier Woods, Hana Kimura on Terrace House and more.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/10/26/rasd-10-25-19-doom-for-dominick-jake-hagers-bellator-fight/
*****
Café Hangout – Oct. 24, 2019
John Pollock and Wai Ting discuss this week’s news including reactions to the glitch-filled release of WWE 2K20, AEW vs. NXT Week 4 ratings, Conor McGregor’s plans to fight in January, a report on Randy Couture, thoughts on this week’s NXT & NWA Power episodes, and our thoughts on “Joker”.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/10/24/cafe-hangout-wwe-2k20-reaction-aew-vs-nxt-week-4-joker-review/
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE 10/23/19
John Pollock and Wai Ting review this week’s AEW Dynamite on TNT featuring Jon Moxley vs. PAC and a big angle with Cody and Chris Jericho. Plus, we choose a new theme song for Rewind-A-Dynamite.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/10/24/rad-10-23-19-break-down-the-doors-of-jericho-theme-song-contest/
*****
upNXT 10/23/19
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman are back to review this week’s WWE NXT featuring Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic vs. Roderick Strong for the North American Championship, Matt Riddle vs. Cameron Grimes, Rhea Ripley vs. Bianca Belair and a HUGE angle to close the show!
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/10/24/upnxt-10-23-19-balor-club-is-not-for-everyone/
*****
POST INTERVIEWS: Big John McCarthy & MMA analyst Robin Black
John Pollock speaks with “Big” John McCarthy about his role as a broadcaster, MacDonald vs. Lima II, CSAC’s new weight cutting rule, plus a chat with MMA analyst Robin Black.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/10/23/post-interviews-big-john-mccarthy-mma-analyst-robin-black/
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #47: WCW Monday Nitro – June 30, 1997 (Patreon)
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WCW Monday Nitro from June 30, 1997, featuring the WCW Nitro debuts of Raven and Curt Hennig.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/10/22/rewind-a-wai-47-wcw-monday-nitro-june-30-1997/
*****

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A billion dollar company, with hundreds of millions at stake from TV Partners, and advertisers, somehow has a merchandising department that let this happen, and worse, the email shared by Myles suggests top brass knew. At what point does the investment community demand accountability from VKM and management? At what point do we as fans stop excusing this as “stupid WWE” behavior. It’s somewhat surprising advertisers aren’t more outraged, but then again, the wrestling business has never been seen as A level programming despite now getting 200+ million a year for both its big TV properties. At some point this reckless and almost negligent behavior has to have a consequence. To put financial deals in jeopardy over a T shirt design is just bizarre. To defend it by blaming a contracted performer is bizarre. To antognize fans is bizarre. But when it comes to wrestling is WWE too big to fail?

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To be fair to them a bit, this guy could have used his brain a bit. It looks pretty clear to me, that he saw this design, on a shirt that was not black. I’m pretty sure WWE has an option to change the colors of shirts you can get the design on, at least thats what it looked like to me from seeing a commercial. So he should have known that this design could be put on a black shirt potentially. He could have spoken up then, the way he is now, but he didnt.

Why not? It seems like he isnt scared. So I doubt it was just him trying to be a “yes man” and do what the company wants. I’m getting some vibes that he cares more about getting a bit of attention from this, than genuinely being as offended as he’s making himself out to be.

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Doesn’t matter. In a world of corporate governance and compliance this never gets made or passed a first design. If this is Nike or Under Armor imagine the outrage. There was legit outrage when Gucci did something like this.

Then again, maybe we should lower corporate standards considering who America elected president and who just won re-election in Canada. Maybe it’s good business to appeal to a consumer who thinks this is normal in 2019. We have evidence that a lot of what we thought was understood as not okay seemingly is just fine.

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It does matter though. Maybe people have the right to be outraged, I dont think HE has the right to be outraged, because he had the chance to do something about this. He could have taken a stand immediately and he chose not to. Instead he waited and then went on twitter. Because in 2019, that is what people do. No one can seem to take a stand, unless its on twitter.

I have no sympathy for this guy. It doesnt make what the company did right. They’re idiots for coming up with such a bone headed design. He is also an idiot though and no one should see him as some kind of hero in this situation.

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Making members of a minoritized group responsible for policing the actions of a majority group to make sure they don’t do anything sexist, racist, etc. is fundamentally bad policy, and I’m not sure there is any reasonable institution where that would be considered acceptable.

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It doesnt matter what your skin color is, what your gender is etc. If someone is doing something that makes you uncomfortable and offends you, then you speak to them about it. You tell them your issues. If it continues, then you go on twitter.

This is the problem with the world. Everyone is offended by something and it seems like the majority of them just wanna go on twitter and make a scene. It doesnt seem to occur to people, that not everything is meant to be racist. This very well could have been a genuine mistake, by someone who had absolutely no idea that this design would upset people. It also could have been something that someone who is a racist tried to slide by.

Anyways, in a couple days, none of this will matter, because there will be something new that someone is complaining about on twitter.

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If his statement is to be believed, he DID express concerns in the form of an alternate design, & only agreed to go along with their design because it was going to be printed on a white shirt.

Could he have handled the situation with more tact? Sure. But if we’re playing “The Blame Game” this is a clear 10-8 round in favor of the company. I place more blame on the WWE for crafting a bad design in the first place. If you can look at ACH as a performer & all you can think about is “He Smiles For Miles”, then you’re probably not great at your job. :100:

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In the last five minutes, I thought of better shirt ideas:

  • “Rare Jordan” with a play on the classic Air Jordan logo (or as close to it as you can get legally).

  • “The Myles High Club” with a silhouette of ACH coming off the top rope.

  • Simply his name in anime font.

Those aren’t amazing ideas, but they’re all better than what The Fed came up with. :100:

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But like I mentioned earlier…does WWE shop not have an option on their site, to change shirt colors? I’m sure I’ve seen this on commercials. So he should have known that it could have possibly been put onto a black shirt.

We all know you’re a hell of a lot more creative than them.

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When I go on WWE shop it does not see like most shirts are available in multiple colors. So if it was presented on a color there is no reason to feel it would be swapped to another. Especially if he indicated he was ok given the color of the shirt.

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Hey man this tournament has been OUTSTANDING!!! Just watched The Coaches vs 3K and about to get into the Ospreay match

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Major props to Booker for calling out this guy. Booker knows what its about. I’m sure he’s been through a ton of shit and has handled it like a man. Not a crybaby, bitch on social media.

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I think it was on the WWE custom site - https://customtees.wwe.com/

Shirts are available in a number of different colours that the buyer chooses. PWT knock-off basically

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That makes sense if that was the case. The whole thing should have been handled better and the shirt (which looks like garbage anyway) should never have been put out in the first place.

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I love this observation. The shirt looks amateur anyway. The WWE produces shirts sometimes that have zero tie-in to a character and make me wonder what their merchandising strategy is. It’s enamored me for some time now that while another company (and the rest of the industry) is proving Merch is a viable, growing business to be in for wrestlers that WWE sees sales dwindle. Naturally competition has ate away at some sales, but the strategy used by AEW and the Indies is so much more interesting than WWE.

Jericho releases shirts almost weekly to tie in to his character. Don’t like this weeks, maybe next week. WWE releases a shirt for a wrestler and gives no alternative, it has zero tie-in to a performer (it could be a shirt for anyone on the roster), and they don’t cycle through designs in a way that motivates fans to buy.

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yup they are good for some people like Becky, but I think they feel the need to have a shirt for everyone even when it makes no sense. I mean in all honesty who is buying a Jordan Miles shirt right now? Maybe someone at an NXT house show. The guy has wrestled what 4 matches in NXT all of which were prior to live TV. SO if they had a really good T-Shirt concept that is great. But if they were thinking “We need to get a shirt for this guy.” and this was what they came up with just don’t bother with the shirt.

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Maybe that was an idea instead of a pay increase. I know in advance of the NXT debut on USA they put out shirts for basically everyone on the roster, I remember seeing a few main roster talents pointing out the ridiculousness that these no names have shirts and they never have.

There’s a shirt for Gallus (?) on there.

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Yeah I saw the Gallus T and was like “huh?”
Interesting that this one wasn’t under NXT
https://customtees.wwe.com/products/cameron-grimes-unisex-t-shirt?_pos=1&_sid=6f6b11dc6&_ss=r

Though of the breakout guys the only ones with shirts are Garza, Grimes and Myles. Though I would say the new Myles shirt (or old one not sure) is also bad just not racist.
https://customtees.wwe.com/products/jordan-myles-unisex-t-shirt?_pos=1&_sid=4a3f05f25&_ss=r

1 Like