Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/30/pollocks-news-update-owe-running-shows-in-toronto-this-august/
POST IT NOTES
**The latest edition of upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman is now available with a review of the final episode going into TakeOver. The two review the show and preview the entire card for this Saturday. Braden & Davie will be back Saturday night with a TakeOver POST Show reviewing the card from Bridgeport, Connecticut.
**We have a loaded edition of The Double Shot available with Wai Ting and I sharing our thoughts on the Jon Moxley edition of Talk is Jericho, tons of Starrcast panel reviews, and this week’s Being the Elite. The Starrcast panel reviews include The Young Bucks & Cody, Dustin Rhodes, Arn Anderson, Bret Hart & Tom Magee, and the Brian Pillman Remembered panel. This show is available for all members of the POST Wrestling Café.
**This week’s edition of the British Wrestling Experience features Benno and Jamesie looking at the Double or Nothing card, AEW’s deal with ITV 4, the Walter vs. Pete Dunne rematch on NXT UK, the expected deal announcement between WWE and BT Sports, the PAC vs. Hangman Page match for Wrestle Gate Pro, and lots more.
**On Friday, we will have a new edition of Rewind-A-Wai out for members of the POST Wrestling Café. Wai Ting and I will be reviewing “Thunder in Paradise” starring Hulk Hogan, as chosen by Espresso Executive Producer Kris Ealy. This is a dreadful film so be prepared as we try and make sense of it.
WEEKEND SCHEDULE
*Friday: Rewind-A-Wai #37: Thunder in Paradise starring Hulk Hogan (Patreon)
*Saturday: Cruel Summer Episode 1 w/ WH Park & John Pollock on the 1991 G-1 Climax Final
*Saturday: NXT TakeOver POST Show with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
*Sunday: Cruel Summer Episode 2 w/ WH Park & Matt McEwen on the 1992 G-1 Climax Final
*Sunday: POST PROFILE BONUS – Heath McCoy Full Interview (Patreon)
WRESTLING NEWS
**Tuesday’s episode of SmackDown averaged 2,072,000 on the USA Network, which was the show’s highest viewership since April 23rd that did the identical number. They were not going against any major sports competition with the NBA and NHL having the night off. They were up 4.5% from the week prior, a turnaround from this week’s Raw number that was down 13%. Compared to the same week in 2018, SmackDown was down 5.5% year-to-year.
**The Chinese-based OWE (Oriental Wrestling Entertainment) group has partnered with Toronto’s Smash Wrestling to stage two events in the city over SummerSlam week this August. OWE will be part of the groups that are running at The MET (The Midtown Event Centre). OWE will be presenting shows on Wednesday, August 7th at 4 pm and Saturday, August 10th at 3 pm. They are joining Smash Wrestling, Progress, wXw, SHIMMER, RISE, and Femme Fatales, who are all running cards at the venue that week. The group will be running a total of nine events that week from Wednesday through Sunday.
**On FITE TV, the top worldwide markets for Double or Nothing were the U.K. & Ireland, Australia, Germany, Canada, and Japan. The number of buys was said to be less than All In but not far off, although it’s not a fair comparison because Double or Nothing was not available in the U.S. through Fite and All In was. If you added the buys from B/R Live, the total digital buys were likely greatly above All In. An interesting note is that when it comes to big pro wrestling shows on FITE, they can do up 20% replay buys while other sporting events like boxing will not do any significant replay business.
**On Thursday morning, former WWE talent Terri Runnels was arrested at Tampa International Airport where she was scheduled to fly out for the Samu benefit show in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Runnels was at the security check when they discovered a loaded gun in her handbag. According to TMZ, she was arrested with her bond set at $2,000 with the charges carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison and a maximum $5,000 fine. She was released just after 1 pm Eastern on Wednesday.
Runnels posted a video later in the day, confirming the incident and explaining that she had the gun because of an issue involving an armadillo at her mother’s house that was digging up the lawn. She stated she was going on minimal sleep and forgot the gun was in her bag until it was detected at the airport. There is no word yet on a court date for Runnels.
**On Thursday’s NXT call with the media, Paul Levesque noted that Tyler Breeze is with NXT when asked about his status. He will be challenging Velveteen Dream this Saturday for the North American title at the TakeOver event in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
**Ring of Honor has announced that the main event of the Best in the World pay-per-view will feature Matt Taven defending the ROH title against Jeff Cobb in Baltimore, Maryland on Friday, June 28th. Cobb lost the ROH Television title earlier this month in Toronto in a four-way match where wasn’t pinned and Shane Taylor won the title. On the same show, Taylor will be defending the Television title against Bandido.
**I received an update on AOP, who have been set to return for a few weeks. Akam has been cleared and it’s simply a matter of coming up with a program for the duo. One of the reasons for their delayed return was the addition of the Wild Card rule, which has tied up television time. Akam has been out since January with a knee injury while Rezar has been used sparingly during that time.
**WWE has canceled this Monday’s SmackDown live event that was scheduled for the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas. This follows the pattern since the Wild Card rule was adopted with the domestic SmackDown house shows on Mondays being canceled so talent is available for Raw.
**MLW will be announcing a date for Dallas later this year following the announcement that Marshall & Ross Von Erich had signed with the group. TNA proved that the Von Erich name could still draw in Texas when they brought Kevin Von Erich and his sons for Slammiversary in 2014 and spiked local ticket sales for the show that year in Arlington.
**The Best of the Super Juniors tournament is winding down with shows on Friday, Monday, and the finals next Wednesday. The following A Block matches will be taking place Friday morning from Ehime and streaming on New Japan World:
*Tiger Mask vs. Titan
*SHO vs. Jonathan Gresham
*Dragon Lee vs. Marty Scurll
*Shingo Takagi vs. Taiji Ishimori – the winner goes to the finals and will face the winner of Monday’s match between Will Ospreay and Ryusuke Taguchi
**New Japan Pro Wrestling has announced that Tomohiro Ishii and Jeff Cobb will be part of the G1 Climax card at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas on July 6th. Ishii and Cobb join the previously announced names of Kazuchika Okada, Kota Ibushi, Tetsuya Naito, Jay White, EVIL, Sanada, and Jushin Thunder Liger. Tickets to the show range from $30-300.
**John Martin, a member of the British Columbia Legislature, took time to acknowledge Mauro Ranallo for his efforts to raise awareness and understanding of mental health. At the end of the clip, he got the members of the legislature to join and yell, “Mamma Mia”.
**Kyle O’Reilly, Bobby Fish, and Roderick Strong will be wrestling for EVOLVE on June 29th at La Boom in Queens and June 30th at the Saint Finbar Catholic Church Gym in Brooklyn. The three will be doing meet-and-greets along with Tommaso Ciampa both nights. In July, Ciampa and Johnny Gargano will be doing meet-and-greets for EVOLVE on July 13th in Philadelphia at the 2300 Arena and July 14th at the Melrose Memorial Hall in Melrose, Massachusetts. The card in Philadelphia will feature a singles match between Matt Riddle and Drew Gulak.
**Zachary Madsen, the man who jumped Bret Hart at the Hall of Fame ceremony in Brooklyn, was in court earlier this week. The hearing consisted of the judge reminding Madsen to obey the orders of protection that had been issued and to stay away from Hart, which he complied with. He is set to return for another court appearance on Tuesday, July 9th.
**Fight Network has released a 40-minute special following LAX around on the day of the Rebellion pay-per-view last month in Toronto.
**The first guest announced for Starrcast III is Mick Foley with bracelets on sale for the Labor Day weekend convention. The host hotel for Starrcast will be the Hyatt Regency Schaumburg, which hosted the first Starrcast convention the year prior.
**Kofi Kingston is on a tour of Ghana this week and below is footage of the reception he has received in his first visit to his birthplace since 1993:
MMA NEWS
**The UFC has an early morning card this Saturday from Stockholm, Sweden with the main event involving the last two men that Jon Jones defeated with Alexander Gustafsson taking on Anthony Smith. The preliminary card will air on ESPN 2 and the main card on ESPN+ with 13 fights scheduled for the show. Below is the full lineup:
MAIN CARD (1 pm Eastern on ESPN+)
*Alexander Gustafsson vs. Anthony Smith
*Ilir Latifi vs. Volkan Oezdemir
*Jimi Manuwa vs. Aleksandar Rektic
*Makwan Amirkhani vs. Chris Fishgold
*Christos Giagos vs. Damir Hadzovic
*Daniel Teymur vs. Sung Bin Jo
PRELIMINARY CARD (10 am on ESPN 2)
*Rostem Akman vs. Sergey Khanodozhko
*Lina Lansberg vs. Tonya Evinger
*Stevie Ray vs. Leonardo Santos
*Frank Camacho vs. Nick Hein
*Bea Malecki vs. Eduarda Santana
*Darko Stosic vs. Devin Clark
*Joel Alvarez vs. Danilo Belluardo
**Yoel Romero won a sizable judgment in civil court this past week against the supplement company that caused his six-month suspension in 2016. Romero filed a lawsuit against Gold Star Performance Products, the manufacturers of Shred Rx. Romero took the supplement, which not label ibutamoren as one of the ingredients. The substance is banned and led to Romero testing positive in December 2015. Romero fought the suspension and proved it he took a legitimately tainted supplement, although was still required to accept a six-month suspension. Gold Star did not contest the case in court and led to the New Jersey civil court awarding $27.4 million to Romero. It’s not expected Romero will see much, if any, of that staggering amount. Romero’s failed drug test came shortly after his split decision victory over Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza at UFC 194 that month. It was likely that Romero would have fought for the middleweight title had he not been suspended. Instead, then-champion Luke Rockhold was announced for a rematch with Chris Weidman, who was replaced by Michael Bisping at UFC 199 in June 2016.
**Bellator has confirmed that the main event of their June 14th event at Madison Square Garden will be the Welterweight Grand Prix semi-final fight between Rory MacDonald and Neiman Gracie. The five round fight will be contested for MacDonald’s welterweight title and the winner advancing to fight Douglas Lima in the final later this year. Initially, it was believed that Chael Sonnen and Lyoto Machida would headline the card, but it will go second-to-last. The main card rounds out with a bantamweight title fight between Darrion Caldwell and Kyoji Horiguchi, Eduardo Dantas taking on Juan Archuleta and Dillion Danis taking on Max Humphrey. The entire broadcast will be airing on DAZN with Aaron Pico headlining the preliminary portion when he fights Adam Borics.
*****
upNXT 5/29/19: The Road to Bridgeport
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman review this week’s edition of WWE NXT featuring Kushida vs. Drew Gulak, Bianca Bel Air vs. Mia Yim, plus all the build & predictions for this Saturday’s TakeOver: XXV.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/30/upnxt-5-30-19-the-road-to-bridgeport/
*****
DOUBLE SHOT: Jon Moxley on Talk is Jericho, Starrcast panels, Being the Elite
John Pollock & Wai Ting review Jon Moxley’s interview on Talk is Jericho, Starrcast panels (Young Bucks & Cody, Dustin Rhodes, Bret Hart & Tom Magee, Arn Anderson), Being the Elite & more.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/27235026
*****
BWE 5/29/19: Dunne vs. Walter 2, AEW on ITV, WWE on BT Sports
With Martin away, Benno and Jamesie discuss the last two weeks of NXT UK with Pete Dunne vs. Walter 2 and look at the British involvement at AEW Double or Nothing.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/29/bwe-5-29-19-dunne-vs-walter-2-aew-on-itv4-wwe-on-bt-sports-waw-fightmare/
*****
POST PROFILE BONUS: Jason King (Full Interview)
John Pollock speaks with award-winning sportswriter Jason King, who was in attendance at Kemper Arena on the night Owen Hart passed away.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/27198798
*****
RASD 5/28/19: The Lessons of Hydraulic Fracking, AEW DON notes
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown featuring several 24/7 title changes, Daniel Bryan lectures Oklahoma about the dangers of fracking and subsequent earthquakes.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/29/rasd-5-28-19-the-lessons-of-hydraulic-fracking-aew-don-notes/
*****
RAR 5/27/19: Third-Hour Death Penalty, Corbin #1 contender, Jon Moxley
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE Raw featuring a Fatal Four-Way to determine Seth Rollins’ SSD opponent and the debut of The Electric Chair w/ Sami Zayn.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/28/rar-5-27-19-third-hour-death-penalty-corbin-1-contender-jon-moxley/
*****
POST PROFILE BONUS: Jimmy Korderas (Full Interview)
In a gripping interview, former WWE referee Jimmy Korderas speaks with John Pollock about the tragic passing of Owen Hart in 1999.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/27154065
*****
THE POST INTERVIEW: Fred Ottman
John Pollock speaks with Fred Ottman ahead of his appearance at Chinlock Wrestling’s Legends Convention about the viral popularity of The Shockmaster and his career.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/26/the-post-interview-fred-ottman/
*****
AEW DOUBLE OR NOTHING POST SHOW
John Pollock & Wai Ting review AEW Double or Nothing from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/26/aew-double-or-nothing-post-show/
*****
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