POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: Matt Cardona speaks on match with Nick Gage

Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2021/07/26/pollocks-news-update-matt-cardona-speaks-on-match-with-nick-gage/

POST IT NOTES

**Rewind-A-Raw is LIVE tonight at 11:15 p.m. ET for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso members at the POST Wrestling Café. We will go through all the news from the past few days and go over a massive schedule here at POST over the next week.

**Happy Birthday to Braden Herrington.

**Wai Ting and I did a Sunday night show for POST Wrestling Café members with reviews of the Nick Gage vs. Matt Cardona match from Saturday night and a full review of the NJPW Wrestle Grand Slam show at the Tokyo Dome. At the start of the show, we spoke about the day-long discussion about the reaction from the audience and throwing garbage into the ring at Cardona.

**On Tuesday, we will have the latest Rewind-A-Wai out for POST Wrestling Café members. This week, we are reviewing WrestleMania 28 from April 2012 featuring The Rock vs. John Cena, The Undertaker vs. Triple H in a Hell in a Cell Match, and CM Punk vs. Chris Jericho as the top matches. We will dive into the major news during this week in history and you can post questions and feedback on the POST Wrestling Forum.

POST SCHEDULE

Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw (11:15 p.m. ET for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso Patrons)
Tuesday: Rewind-A-Wai #91 – WrestleMania 28 (Patreon)
Tuesday: Andrew Thompson interviews Curtis Hughes a.k.a. Mr. Hughes
Tuesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite (10:15 p.m. ET)
Wednesday: Shot in the Dark with John Siino (upNXT feed)
Thursday: The Wellness Policy with Wai Ting & Jordan Goodman (LIVE at 1 p.m. ET for Patrons)
Thursday: Bellator 263 Preview Show
Friday: Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics chats WWE Q2 Report
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (10:15 p.m. ET for all Patrons)
Saturday: Bellator 263 POST Show with John Pollock, Phil Chertok & Eric Marcotte
Sunday: The Long & Winding Royal Road with WH Park & guest JP Houlihan (Misawa vs. Taue, April 1995)

WRESTLING NEWS

**Off the top, we want to send our condolences to the family of Brian Blair. Blair’s 29-year old son Brett was murdered over the weekend with few details available. The news of Brett’s death surfaced on Friday night when Steve Keirn made an announcement at The Gathering and is a close friend to Brian. Brett was one of two sons to Brian and Toni Sabella. Brett had his issues with the law including an arrest this past April for possession of cocaine, a controlled substance, and drug paraphernalia. We send our condolences to the Blair family regarding this tragedy.

**Matt Cardona was interviewed on Busted Open Radio on Monday to discuss the match with Nick Gage from Saturday at the GCW Homecoming – Part 1 event. Cardona noted that there were full bottles and a pizza cutter thrown into the ring during the post-match and was informed by security they needed to go. He described the scene as “wild” and was very proud of it but didn’t want to get injured by the fans. Cardona respects the deathmatch style “but it’s not for me” but respects Nick Gage for what he does and the love the audience has for him and both deserve credit for the success of the show. He said it’s probably “one and done” when it comes to deathmatches for him, but it is not one and done with him and GCW. Cardona said winning the Intercontinental title at WrestleMania 32 in 2016 and celebrating with his Dad was his #1 moment of his career but this is two or three.

**WWE continues to load up the September 10th edition of Friday Night SmackDown at Madison Square Garden. After adding Raw talent to the show, John Cena will now appear on the show several weeks after SummerSlam where he is expected to face Roman Reigns. When WWE announced the “Summer of Cena” schedule, his last date listed was for SummerSlam.

**Jeff Hardy is not expected to be at Raw tonight after it was reported he has tested positive for COVID-19 and is in quarantine. Hardy, 43, was scheduled for a meet-and-greet at The Record Bar in Kansas City tonight, but the event was canceled with the event promoter issuing a statement:

We regret to inform you that the event with Jeff Hardy to take place on Monday July 26, 2021 at recordBar in Kansas City, MO will have to be postponed to a later date.

Jeff Hardy just tested positive for covid this morning, and will have to quarantine for the next two weeks, and will not be participating in any live events for the next two weeks.

For now, all tickets will be held to await a rescheduled date. Once the new date is announced, if you cannot attend the new date, please email [email protected] for a refund.

You will receive another email from us when the new date is announced.

Both PWinsider.com and the Wrestling Observer sites have confirmed the positive diagnosis for Hardy. It is unknown if anyone else will be sidelined due to contact tracing. We wish Hardy a full recovery from the virus.

**Tonight’s edition of WWE Raw takes place from the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri with John Cena advertised for tonight’s episode after working the two house shows over the weekend. Below are the following matches and segments announced:
*Raw Tag Team Championship: AJ Styles & Omos (champions) vs. Viking Raiders
*Bobby Lashley responds to Bill Goldberg’s challenge
*Nikki A.S.H. celebrates her title win

**WrestleTix reports that as of Sunday night, there were 7,270 tickets out for tonight’s episode of Raw with the arena set up for 8,095.

**AEW will be donating $100,000 this Wednesday at Fight for the Fallen to Safe Alliance, which is a non-profit assisting people recovering from domestic violence and survivors of sexual assault. A special t-shirt will be released with a portion of proceeds going to the group and are encouraging fans to donate at www.AEWFightfortheFallen.com. Fight for the Fallen takes place this Wednesday from the Bojangles’ Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina.

**There was a special Celebrity Family Feud episode on Sunday and featured a team consisting of David Arquette, RJ City, Peter Avalon, Dalton Castle, and Jungle Boy. The overnight numbers averaged 3,685,000 viewers and 0.5 in the 18-49 demographic with the final number out later this week.

**Here are the matches listed for tonight’s edition of AEW Dark: Elevation streaming at 7 p.m. ET and taped last week in Garland, Texas:
*PAC vs. Chuck Taylor
*Lee Johnson vs. Luther
*Jungle Boy vs. Marq Quen
*Penta El Zero Miedo & Rey Fenix vs. Alan “5” Angels & Preston “10” Vance
*Eddie Kingston vs. Serpentico
*Thunder Rosa vs. Myka Madrid
*Wardlow vs. Bear Bronson
*Scorpio Sky vs. Fuego Del Sol
*Kris Statlander & Tay Conti vs. The Bunny & Madi Wrenkowski
*Marko Stunt vs. Angelico
*Luchasaurus vs. Jora Johl
*Brock Anderson & The Gunn Club vs. Chandler Hopkins, Izzy James & Cameron Cole
*Amber Nova vs. Yuka Sakazaki

**Tuesday’s NJPW Summer Struggle show at Korakuen Hall streams at 5:30 a.m. ET on New Japan World. The show is headlined by Shingo Takagi & BUSHI taking on EVIL & Dick Togo. After Tuesday’s show, they return with three straight nights at Korakuen Hall beginning on Friday. Sunday is the major show with a NEVER Openweight Six-Man Championship match and the “farewell matches” for Yota Tsuji and Yuya Uemura as young lions.

**Chris Harrington did a special show with Brandon Thurston over the weekend going through last week’s Fyter Fest television figures, which were the third-highest in Dynamite’s history. Of note is that Harrington’s new title is Senior Vice President of Business Strategy with the company. The two did a similar breakdown last December after ‘Winter is Coming’ and was an extensive look at the television figures and valuable insight from someone who studies the intricacies of the audience, patterns, and can speak about his findings publicly.

**This week, we will get a sense of what impact the Olympics will have on WWE and AEW programming. In Canada, it was noted that the first two nights of CBC’s coverage in primetime averaged 1.12 and 1.32 million.

**Mark Pickering, who is the English voice for Pro Wrestling NOAH and Tokyo Joshi Pro, is doing coverage of the Olympics Games in Tokyo. He has an article posted on New Japan running the Tokyo Dome card on Sunday with an attendance announced at over 5,300.

**Tokyo Joshi Pro’s Tokyo Princess Cup tournament continued Sunday with second-round matches at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring. Suzume defeated Mahiro Kiryu, Maki Ito beat Raku, Shoko Nakajima defeated Marika Kobashi, and Rika Tatsumi beat Hyper Misao to advance. The tournament is down to eight women with the next round taking place on Saturday at Shinjuku Face and the semi-finals and finals on August 14th and 15th at Korakuen Hall, which will have English commentary on Wrestle Universe.

**Denise Salcedo spoke with Bronson Reed on a potential call-up to Raw or SmackDown, which he stated was his goal but right now he is still part of NXT.

**Being the Elite – Ep. 266 “Your Bloody Hands”.

**The WWE stock closed at $49.61 on Monday.

ON THIS DATE

Ric Flair defends the NWA Championship against Wahoo McDaniel in Houston on this date in 1985:

Exactly one year later on this date in 1986, Dusty Rhodes ended Flair’s reign as champion in a steel cage match during the Great American Bash tour at the Greensboro Coliseum:

This match was taped two days earlier in Pittsburgh but aired on this date in 2001. It was the first WCW title switch in a WWF ring as Kurt Angle won the title and lost it on the following episode of Raw:

*****
NJPW Wrestle Grand Slam POST Show / GCW: Nick Gage vs. Matt Cardona
John Pollock & Wai Ting review NJPW Wrestle Grand Slam in Tokyo Dome as Shingo Takagi defends against late-replacement, Hiroshi Tanahashi. They also discuss Nick Gage vs. Matt Cardona from GCW: Homecoming Night 1.
******
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 7/23/21: Cena’s Challenge, Rolling Loud
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown from two locations at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland with John Cena and the Rolling Loud Festival in Miami with Bianca Belair vs. Carmella.
*****
POST PURORESU: NJPW Wrestle Grand Slam, Stardom 5Star Grand Prix
WH Park is joined by Wai Ting (filling in for John Pollock) as they discuss the latest with NJPW ahead of Sunday’s Wrestle Grand Slam in Tokyo Dome. Plus, WH gives an in-depth preview of Stardom’s 5Star Grand Prix.
*****
REWIND-A-DYNAMITE: Moxley vs. Archer, Nick Gage, CM Punk report
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite’s Fyter Fest Night 2 featuring a Mox vs. Archer Texas Deathmatch and an appearance by Nick Gage. We discuss a report on CM Punk being in talks for an in-ring return.
*****
SHOT IN THE DARK
John Siino reviews this week’s editions of AEW Dark, AEW Dark: Elevation, NXT UK, NWA Powerrr, 205 Live, NJPW Strong, Ring of Honor, and Main Event in under 15 minutes on Shot In The Dark.
*****
MCU L8R: Black Widow (2021)
Wai Ting, WH Park and John Pollock review the 24th Marvel Cinematic Universe film, Black Widow (2021).
*****
upNXT 7/20/21: A Kross the Universe
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review the July 20th 2021 episode of WWE NXT featuring Raquel Gonzalez vs Xia Li for the NXT Women’s Championship!
*****

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