Originally published at POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: Raw's Third Hour, Hiring of Nick Khan
POST IT NOTES
**The latest edition of Rewind-A-Wai is up for members of the POST Wrestling Café covering WWF’s Capital Carnage event from December 1998. The show was available on Sky Box Office and later released on home video worldwide. Wai Ting and I review the entire show with some of the following topics:
-The WWF’s business is on fire with some stats from the era
-Why Jim Ross was the true MVP of the show and what he had to work through
-Steve Austin’s illness in the days leading up to the event
-The Rock’s first few weeks as WWF champion, including a horrible idea pitched for him
-The star power of Vinnie Jones
-An insane promo from Vince McMahon on the British crowd
-William Regal pulled from this card ahead of time during the Real Man’s Man period
-The WWF undercard of 1998
-The underappreciated work of Sean Waltman & lots more
**We have posted a poll for listeners to choose a Royal Rumble event that we will review next on Rewind-A-Wai in two weeks. The options are the Royal Rumble events from 1991, 1995, 1999, and 2001. The next Rewind-A-Wai will be released on Tuesday, August 18th.
**Tonight on the site, we have a new edition of Rewind-A-Dynamite with Wai & I reviewing AEW Dynamite. As always, we will be giving away an item from the POST Wrestling Store with ALL members of the POST Wrestling Café automatically entered in the draw to win.
**Braden Herrington & Davie Portman are back with upNXT tonight as they chat about tonight’s NXT episode and go through your feedback.
**The POST Puroresu Q&A thread is open for any questions for WH Park, Dylan Fox and I ahead of this Saturday’s show we will be releasing.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Tonight: Rewind-A-Dynamite with John & Wai
Thursday: The British Wrestling Experience – review of WWF Rebellion 2001
Friday: Silva vs. Sonnen – Ten Years Later, a POST Profile
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (LIVE at 10:15 pm Eastern for all Patrons)
Saturday: POST Puroresu with John Pollock, WH Park & guest Dylan Fox
Sunday: The Long & Winding Royal Road with WH Park & guest Daniel Makabe
WRESTLING NEWS
**WWE ended up taping only one episode of SmackDown on Tuesday at the Performance Center after the original plans called for two episodes to be taped. The call was made Monday to scrap the taping of the second episode, which would be the show airing on August 14th. I was told they are still finalizing the schedule for when they will be taping their next shows.
**Here is a look at the difference in the third hour of this week’s Raw compared to the final hour of last week’s show:
*Adults 18-49: +24%
*Females 18-49: +54%
*Males 18-49: +9%
*Adults 18-34: +82%
*Females 12-34: +237.5%
*Males 12-34: +86%
*Adults 25-54: +15%
*Adults 50+: -6.5%
Last week’s third hour was the least-watched hour of Raw in history, so it’s worth noting for context. That said, it’s hard to dispute that Raw Underground was a big hit among its younger audience. The question is whether it left a positive impression and it can be a concept that works as a regular segment in the third hour or was a one-week novelty? Regardless, you must find the answer and it would be silly not to continue with the concept even though it appeared to be universally panned. There is also the hook of Shane McMahon back on television for the first time since October and that was promoted throughout the day while Raw Underground was not teased until the show began.
**The hiring of Nick Khan is a huge story for WWE and sends a strong message by getting Khan from CAA as its news president and chief revenue officer. The greatest concern for a WWE shareholder is the fear of the television rights bubble bursting and therefore, the added concern over viewership declining even though the company less than one year into their five-year pacts with NBC Universal and Fox. To offset that, they have hired a major power broker when it comes to negotiating sports rights and will be in-house for the next set. On the surface, it would represent massive savings for WWE to cut out CAA and send Khan out as the chief negotiator on its behalf (assuming WWE negotiates on their own without CAA for the next round). I would suspect this can quell concerns of shareholders of falling numbers knowing Khan is a huge hire for this specific task, but nothing is a guarantee when we are looking down the road at the landscape of 2023-24. The news of Khan’s hiring was met with a 2% increase in the WWE stock price that closed at $45.26 on Wednesday. In terms of long-term stability and possibilities, this is one of the most important hires for WWE and was a massive story within the television industry on Wednesday.
**On the site, we have a big story and bio on former Toronto-based wrestler Jaguar Vijay Singh (Vijay Hemanchal), who passed away last Friday at the age of 46. Singh trained under Ron Hutchison and wrestled from 1999 until 2003 winning the Apocalypse Wrestling Federation title four times and later became an avid practitioner of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu where he earned his brown belt.
**A disturbing Facebook post from an account belonging to Marty Jannetty has led to police looking into the matter. On Wednesday morning, a post that was attributed to Jannetty outlined a story when Jannetty was 13 years old (which would be around 1973) where he was buying marijuana and the dealer dragged him to the back of a building with Jannetty believing he was going to be assaulted. The post went on to state “that was the very first time I made a man disappear..they never found him..they shoulda looked in the Chattahoochie River”. It went on to issue a threat to a woman he was recently involved with stating “I promised myself way back then, nobody would ever hurt me again..that includes.”
TMZ contacted the Columbus Police Department in Georgia, who tells the site they are going to investigate the matter with the first step being to check records of any missing persons or unidentified remains cases match Jannetty’s story.
Jannetty has since deleted the post and did not respond to TMZ’s request for comment. Given the nature of the story and Jannetty’s previous celebrity, this story has gained a lot of attention online throughout the day.
**Here are the matches and segments announced for AEW Dynamite tonight at 8 pm Eastern on TNT from Daily’s Place:
*Jon Moxley vs. Darby Allin for the AEW title
*The debate between Chris Jericho and Orange Cassidy
*Kenny Omega, Hangman Page, The Young Bucks & FTR vs. Brodie Lee, Colt Cabana, Stu Grayson, Evil Uno, “Five” (Alan Angels) & “Ten” (Preston Vance)
*Cody & Matt Cardona vs. John Silver & Alex Reynolds
*Best Friends vs. Santana & Ortiz
*Big Swole vs. TBA – In the storyline, Swole’s suspension has been lifted and she will face an opponent of Britt Baker’s choosing
**Below are the matches announced for tonight’s episode of NXT at 8 pm Eastern at Full Sail University on the USA Network:
*Marcel Barthel & Fabian Aichner vs. Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish for the NXT tag titles
*Keith Lee vs. Cameron Grimes in a non-title match
*Damian Priest vs. Oney Lorcan vs. Ridge Holland in a Qualifying Match
*Bronson Reed vs. Shane Thorne
*Dakota Kai vs. Rhea Ripley in a #1 contender’s match
*Pat McAfee appears on the show to speak with Adam Cole
**New Japan Pro Wrestling has stated that Hiroshi Tanahashi has been cleared to participate in this week’s Summer Struggle events at Korakuen Hall. Tanahashi appeared on a talk show this past Saturday with an unnamed individual that tested positive for COVID-19, although Tanahashi did not come into close contact with the person. Tanahashi has since tested negative with PCR, antigen, and antibody tests administered.
**AEW Heels, which is the company’s female-focused group has launched a membership platform. The yearly subscription rate of $49 comes with access to virtual meet-and-greets, video conference discussions with experts in the field, Q&As with AEW talent, customized merchandise, themed parties & more. This will launch with an event on Friday involving a Q&A with Aubrey Edwards, Brandi Rhodes hosting a social media strategy session, and a session focused on respect & empowerment in the workplace hosted by Keisha-Ann Gray. More information and subscription information are available at http://alleliteheels.com.
**Next week’s NXT qualifying match for the ladder match at TakeOver will feature KUSHIDA vs. Cameron Grimes vs. TBA.
**In terms of YouTube viewers, the biggest segment from Raw was Dominik Mysterio’s attack on Seth Rollins & Murphy that currently sits at 2.4 million views. The other most-watched clips from show were Samoa Joe standing up to Rollins at 1.3 million views, and Shane McMahon introducing Raw Underground with 860,000 views.
**Last Friday’s episode of SmackDown was the #2 sports program in Canada that night. Friday Night SmackDown averaged 133,000 viewers on Sportsnet 360 trailing the NBA game between Houston and Dallas that averaged 145,400. In the 25-54 demo, SmackDown did 72,800 viewers, which is the main demo that is measured in Canada.
**In the U.S., Friday Night SmackDown finished with a 1.18 rating and 1,894,000 viewers with 644,000 in the key demo.
**Matt Cardona spoke to TSN.ca ahead of tonight’s tag match with Cody on AEW Dynamite and discussed making his debut last week:
I’ll be honest, I was super nervous last Wednesday because I am a perfectionist and also a diehard wrestling fan. So for me, I don’t really care about the doubters, but I care about the fans who’ve kept my career alive for so long. I want to make them proud. I want to do them right. So I loved coming out live on Dynamite. The response from the fans afterwards was fantastic and I’m just looking forward to the future and the next couple of weeks on Dynamite.
**Roman Reigns was the guest on The R-Truth Game Show on Tuesday, which would be Reigns’ first appearance on any WWE-related programming since March. It was interesting that they promoted the game show on Raw but did not advertise Reigns’ appearance.
**New Japan Pro Wrestling kicks off four consecutive nights at Korakuen Hall on Thursday with its Summer Struggle tour. The show will stream on New Japan World at 4:30 am Eastern with the following line-up:
*Shingo Takagi, Sanada & Bushi vs. Minoru Suzuki, El Desperado & Douki in the first round of the NEVER Openweight Six-Man tag title tournament
*Kazuchika Okada, Toru Yano & SHO vs. Yujiro, Gedo & Jado in the first round of the NEVER Openweight Six-Man tag title tournament
*Zack Sabre Jr., Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi & Yuya Uemura
*Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii & Yoshi-Hashi vs. Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma & Satoshi Kojima
*Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Master Wato vs. Ryusuke Taguchi & Yota Tsuji
*Yuji Nagata vs. Gabriel Kidd
ON THIS DATE
*****
REWIND-A-WAI #67: WWF Capital Carnage 1998
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWF Capital Carnage 1998, a UK-only PPV from London, England headlined by a Fatal Four-Way match featuring Steve Austin vs. The Undertaker vs. Mankind vs. Kane.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/40104017
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 8/3/20: Raw Underground, Rock-XFL, TNT-Dynamite
John Pollock and Wai Ting discuss WWE Raw featuring the return of Shane McMahon with Raw Underground, Montez Ford is poisoned, and we chat all the latest news including the sale of the XFL.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/08/04/rar-8-3-20-raw-underground-rock-xfl-tnt-dynamite/
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 7/31/20: WWE Q2, Mark Rollerball Rocco, SmackDown
John Pollock and Wai Ting review this week’s WWE SmackDown featuring Bayley vs. Nikki Cross for the SD Women’s Championship and AJ Styles vs. Gran Metalik for the Intercontinental Championship.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/39953628
*****
WWE Q2 2020 Earnings Report & Analysis w/ Brandon Thurston
Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics joins John Pollock to discuss and analyze WWE’s second-quarter earnings report and subsequent call with media analysts on its performance this quarter.
https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/07/31/wwe-q2-2020-earnings-report-analysis-w-brandon-thurston/
*****
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