Originally published at POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: N-1 Victory begins, ROH PPV tonight
POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-SmackDown is available for all members of the POST Wrestling Café with Nate Milton joining me to review SmackDown at Madison Square Garden and AEW Rampage. We discuss a big edition of SmackDown including NBA star Trae Young’s involvement, Brock Lesnar’s appearance and challenge to Roman Reigns, Edge vs. Seth Rollins & more. Plus, Rampage from Cincinnati featuring Andrade vs. PAC, and your phone calls.
**Tonight on the site, we will have this month’s edition of The NWA Podcast with hosts Nate Milton & Kris Ealy being joined by Rich Fann from the Pro Wrestling Torch site along with Andrew Thompson providing the major news of the past few weeks. The show will be released at 10 p.m. ET and available on the free POST Wrestling feed wherever you listen to podcasts.
**Andrew Thompson will be filling in for Wai Ting on Monday night and joining me for Rewind-A-Raw.
**This Tuesday’s edition of Rewind-A-Wai will cover the April 15, 2004, episode of WWE SmackDown where Big Show attempts to kill Kurt Angle by throwing him off the ledge.
WRESTLING NEWS
**Ring of Honor returns to pay-per-view tonight with Death Before Dishonor from the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia. As of Sunday morning, WrestleTix reported 346 tickets out for the event with the capacity listed at just under 400 for the show, so this won’t be a giant crowd. On paper, it looks like another good show from ROH that has a very good delivery rate with its pay-per-views but it isn’t a show with a large buzz this weekend. We will have a report from John Siino on the site tonight and below is the line-up:
*ROH World Championship: Bandido (champion) vs. Brody King vs. Demonic Flamita vs. EC3
*ROH Pure Championship: Jonathan Gresham (champion) vs. Josh Woods
*ROH Six-Man Championship: Shane Taylor Promotions (champions) vs. Dragon Lee, Kenny King & La Bestia del Ring
*ROH Women’s Championship Finals: Miranda Alize vs. Rok-C
*The Briscoes vs. Matt Taven & Mike Bennett
*Jake Atlas vs. Taylor Rust
*Tony Deppen, Homicide & Chris Dickinson vs. John Walters, LSG & Lee Moriarty
*Dalton Castle vs. Eli Isom
*Hour One Pre-Show: 15-man Honor Rumble (Announced: Rey Horus, Beer City Bruiser, Danhausen, Brian Johnson, Brian Milonas, Sledge, Silas Young, PJ Black, Joe Keys, and Dak Draper with five slots open).
**Pro Wrestling NOAH kicked off its N-1 Victory tournament (its version of the G1) on Sunday at Korakuen Hall. This year’s tournament is structured with a round-robin style with four blocks with the winners of each block meeting in the semi-finals and finals on October 3rd. Below are the results from today’s show including non-tournament matches:
*Tadasuke, Haoh & Aleja over Junta Miyawaki, Kai Fujimura & Yasutaka Yano
*BLOCK D: Kazuyuki Fujita over Masa Kitamiya
*BLOCK B: Kendo Kashin over Kenoh
*GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Championship: Atsushi Kotoge & Hajime Ohara over Seiki Yoshioka & Yuya Susumu (champions) to win the titles
*BLOCK C: Masato Tanaka over Katsuhiko Nakajima
*BLOCK A: Keiji Muto and Takashi Sugiura wrestled to a 30-minute draw (each receive one point)
The entire N-1 takes place over seven shows with the next one scheduled for Saturday with Kaito Kiyomiya vs. Manabu Soya (Block A), Maasaki Mochizuki vs. Daiki Inaba (Block B), Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Kotaro Suzuki (Block C), and Masakatsu Funaki vs. Akitoshi Saito (Block D).
**AEW held its first Dark tapings at Universal Studios on Saturday with two sessions throughout the day. It was a marathon set of tapings with JJ Williams of the Wrestling Observer site reporting results of 51 matches that were taped during the day. The major news item from the show was Eddie Kingston ending the first taping by challenging Minoru Suzuki & Lance Archer to face Kingston & Jon Moxley on September 22nd at the Dynamite card at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
**WWE is holding a Supershow at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York tonight with Roman Reigns, Bobby Lashley, Bianca Belair, Randy Orton, and Drew McIntyre among those advertised.
**Raw takes place from the TD Garden in Boston on Monday night with the updated announcement that Bobby Lashley will defend the WWE Championship against Randy Orton, which was originally announced for Extreme Rules. WWE spent the entire episode last week on the Tag Team Turmoil Match to determine the challengers for Randy Orton & Riddle and ended the show announcing RK-Bro against Lashley & MVP for this week’s show but have changed plans. It’s the first week back for the NFL with Raw going against the Baltimore Ravens vs. Las Vegas Raiders and follows a week where AEW Dynamite edged out Raw in the 18-49 demographic by 3,000 viewers.
**A memorial service for Shannon Spruill a.k.a. Daffney was held on Friday. Spruill sadly took her own life last week at the age of 46 with many impacted by her loss. On the site for the funeral home, there is a lengthy obit for Spruill and the family is encouraging donations in lieu of flowers to the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Boston University’s CTE Center
**Following Saturday’s Triller Fight Club event, reporter Dan Rafael is reporting that the top three fights including Vitor Belfort vs. Evander Holyfield and Anderson Silva vs. Tito Ortiz were actually exhibition fights and won’t go on any of their professional records.
**Stardom held an event on Sunday in Sendai with the continuation of the 5* Grand Prix. Here are the results:
*Non-tournament: Utami Hayashishita over Lady C
*Non-tournament: Mina Shirakawa over Waka Tsukiyama
*Non-tournament: Natsupoi over Mai Sakurai
*Blue Block: Takumi Iroha over Ruaka
*Red Block: Momo Watanabe over Koguma
*Blue Block: Tam Nakano over AZM
*Blue Block: Syuri over Unagi Sayaka
*Blue Block: Saya Kamitani over Maika
After Sunday’s show, the Red Block is led by Momo Watanabe (8 points) followed by Starlight Kid and Natsupoi (7), Mayu Iwatani, Giulia & Himeka (6), Mina Shirakawa, Fukigen Death & Koguma (4), and Saki Kashima (2). The Blue Block has Saya Kamitani in first (9 points), Tam Nakano & Konami (8), Utami Hayashishita, Syuri, Takumi Iroha & Maika (7), Unagi Sayaka (5), AZM (2), and Ruaka (0).
**John Siino was in attendance at Madison Square Garden on Friday for SmackDown and sent us the following live notes:
*Charlotte Flair defeated Rhea Ripley in a pre-show dark match
*Lilian Garcia sang before they went live
*When a promo aired for the new-look NXT, the crowd booed
*During the final segment, they were visibly getting the smoke machine ready for Finn Balor’s entrance
*After SmackDown ended, Happy Corbin beat Drew McIntyre by DQ after Corbin got the ring bell and was stopped with repeated chair shots and a Claymore by McIntyre
*John Cena & The Mysterios defeated Roman Reigns & The Usos when Cena pinned Jey Uso
*WWE is returning to Madison Square Garden for a house show on Sunday, December 26th
**Ariel Helwani attended Friday Night SmackDown on Friday and reported on Saturday that it was the highest-grossing gate for any episode of SmackDown in the 21-year history of the program. There was no gate figure released but WrestleTix reported that there were 13,132 tickets out for the event with WWE announcing over 14,000 on television.
**As noted on Friday night, there was a tag match scheduled for SmackDown with Zelina Vega & Carmella against Toni Storm & Liv Morgan that was cut due to time. Fightful Select noted that there was also a segment involving Kevin Owens and Happy Corbin that was cut in the afternoon.
**Zelina Vega (Thea Trinidad) was part of a memorial ceremony on Saturday listing the names of those that died on September 11, 2001, including her father, Michael. Trinidad paid tribute to her late father with the following post:
**Brittany Pillman gave birth on Friday after experiencing contractions after the AEW taping late Wednesday night in Cincinnati. The baby’s name is Asher William Evans and was born one day after Brian Pillman Jr.’s birthday. Brittany was part of the segment during Dynamite where MJF insulted her and Linda Pillman in the front row. Because Rampage was taped immediately after, Brittany was in the front row on Friday as well for Pillman Jr.’s win against Max Caster.
**WWE prospects Bronson Rechsteiner and Parker Boudreaux have updated their social media profiles to reflect their new names in the company, Rechsteiner, who is the son of Rick Steiner, is now going by “Rex Steiner” while Boudreaux has changed his profiles to “Gunnar Harland”.
**Congratulations to Kimberly Benson a.k.a. “Doudrop”, who was married over the weekend.
**Mark Pickering and Stewart Fulton, the English broadcast team for Pro Wrestling NOAH, were on The Wrstling Podcast to preview the N-1 tournament that began today.
ON THIS DATE
Kenta Kobashi defends the GHC Championship against Yuji Nagata in 2003:
A ladder match at Unforgiven between Chris Jericho and Christian in 2003 from Portland, Oregon:
The final weeks of Hulk Hogan’s tenure in TNA from 2013:
The finals of the first Mae Young Classic in 2017:
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