POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: SmackDown talent expected on Raw

Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/05/pollocks-news-update-smackdown-talent-expected-on-raw/

POST IT NOTES

**Wai Ting and I did a bonus show on Saturday reviewing both New Japan cards from Fukuoka with Dragon Lee vs. Taiji Ishimori headlining the first show and Kazuchika Okada vs. Sanada on the second night. This show is available now for Café members.

**The Café Hangout is available for everyone to listen or watch. On this week’s special Friday edition, Wai Ting and I were joined by Conrad Thompson to discuss the planning for Starrcast II, what he learned from the first one, negotiations with WWE after The Undertaker & Kurt Angle were pulled, plus his latest podcast collaboration with Jim Ross. On the same show, we were joined by MLW CEO Court Bauer to discuss the special edition of Fusion this weekend featuring Salina de la Renta, how she was discovered, MLW’s place in the market, the WWE’s declining viewership, and MLW’s move to Saturday nights. This was a loaded edition of the show complete with phone calls at the end, so check it out.

**A new edition of Rewind-A-Wai drops tonight with Wai Ting and I reviewing the WWE’s New Year’s Revolution card from January 2006. This was selected by Espresso Executive Producer Roberto Macias, who attended the show in Albany, New York. We dive into this card featuring the first Money in the Bank cash-in, the role of Edge on the show, the reactions for John Cena, the WWE’s desperate attempt to get fans to boo Kurt Angle, Ric Flair’s personal life dragged onto television, the Trish Stratus vs. Mickie James program, Momma Benjamin, Big Show’s cast and lots more is covered. This show will be available for all members of the POST Wrestling Café tonight.

WRESTLING NEWS

**Monday’s episode of Raw from Cincinnati, Ohio will likely feature several performers from SmackDown. Last week, WWE postponed Monday night’s SmackDown house show in Corbin, Kentucky allowing for talent to be available on Raw. The decision to cancel the house show was described to me by one person because they needed talent for Raw and was not an issue with ticket sales. On Saturday, Roman Reigns sent out a tweet teasing an appearance and is expected to be one of several on the show. The company is very aware of the viewership trends and coming up with ideas to throw at the wall and curb that erosion.

**The SmackDown house show that was scheduled for Corbin, Kentucky on Monday has been moved to October 17th and tickets purchased for Monday’s show will be honored on the new date.

**Raw will be facing two NBA playoff games Monday night with the Milwaukee Bucks vs. Boston Celtics followed by the Golden State Warriors vs. Houston Rockets at 9:30 pm Eastern. SmackDown goes against Game 5 of the Toronto Raptors vs. Philadelphia 76ers series on Tuesday night.

**Impact Wrestling is working with House of Glory tonight with the Code Red special that will stream on Impact Plus. The show is taking place from the HOG Arena in Jamaica, New York at 8 pm Eastern with the following matches: Johnny Impact & Taya Valkyrie vs. Eddie Edwards & Alisha Edwards, Michael Elgin vs. Willie Mack, LAX vs. New York Wrecking Krew, Rich Swann vs. Ace Austin vs. Trey vs. Mantequilla vs. Evander James vs. Smiley, Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz vs. Josh Alexander & Ethan Page, Tessa Blanchard & Violette vs. Scarlett Bordeaux & Sonya Strong, Moose vs. Ken Broadway, and Tommy Dreamer vs. Sami Callihan.

**Willie Mack has signed a multi-year contract with Impact Wrestling after going through hurdles with several promotions. Last weekend, Lucha Underground reached out to the NWA with a cease-and-desist regarding their use of Mack, stating he was still under contract to the struggling promotion. In Mike Johnson’s reporting at PWinsider.com, he stated that Mack was always losing the National title, but they worked it out and he had his match with Colt Cabana on the Crockett Cup card. Days later, Mack signed the deal with Impact Wrestling, who has a relationship with Lucha Underground and AAA. Nick Aldis tweeted out, “If you ever wanted to see the evidence of scheming carny wrestling BS, look no further. Sorry Willie. They took advantage of you.” Aldis deleted the tweet later.

**The biggest news coming out of the two Wrestling Dontaku events was the announcement that Chris Jericho will challenge Kazuchika Okada for the IWGP heavyweight title at Dominion on June 9th in Osaka. A video featuring Jericho interrupted Okada’s post-match speech after Saturday’s match with Sanada. It shows a chance of stance from New Japan, who can work with Jericho and Kenny Omega and have opted not to do so until this announcement with Jericho. It’s an interesting match as you have one of AEW’s top guys coming in two weeks after a match with Kenny Omega and challenging for the IWGP title. It’s not typical of a New Japan title match to build where they traditionally telegraph future title challenges with wins along the way whereas Jericho is coming off the loss to Tetsuya Naito at Wrestle Kingdom. The fact is, New Japan needed this added shot in the arm, Osaka is a big market for them, and Osaka-jo Hall is a big venue and they didn’t have the right match for Okada. Following this weekend, the other option was Tomohiro Ishii in a battle of stablemates, Tetsuya Naito is tied to Kota Ibushi and I wouldn’t want to rush a title match involving Naito and that would leave Hiroshi Tanahashi, who is also coming off a loss to Zack Sabre Jr. at the G1 Supercard and Sanada in the New Japan Cup.

**Hiroshi Tanahashi will have his first match back after left elbow surgery on June 5th at Sumo Hall. They shot an angle on Saturday where Jay White attacked Tanahashi, so that match could be on June 5th or Tanahashi works a tag on that show and comes back at Dominion later that week for the match with White.

**WWE has announced the following for Tuesday’s episode of SmackDown in Louisville, Kentucky:
*Shane McMahon will appear and crown the new SmackDown tag champions
*Ali vs. Andrade
*Charlotte Flair, Sonya Deville & Mandy Rose vs. Bayley, Ember Moon & Carmella

**Barbara Goodish spoke to Devon Nicholson at the Cauliflower Alley Club this past week. She was not notified ahead of time regarding her late husband, Frank “Bruiser Brody” Goodish”, going into the Legacy Wing of the WWE’s Hall of Fame last month, stating she found out that day he was being included. Goodish praised the Dark Side of the Ring episode that Viceland produced and interviewed Goodish and her son, Geoffrey for. It was the first interview Geoffrey had done discussing his father’s murder in 1988 when he was a child.

**The Best of the Super Juniors tournament will begin next week on Monday, May 13th and runs until June 5th. The final entrant is El Phantasmo, who was revealed as “X” on Saturday’s Wrestling Dontaku show. He looked great in his debut teaming with Taiji Ishimori and defeating Dragon Lee and Will Ospreay with Phantasmo pinning Ospreay. He got over in the match, it was structured around him having the ability to shine and you left with another solid member of the BOSJ lineup and building up a Phantasmo vs. Ospreay match for the tournament.

**New Japan is bringing in another U.K. talent on June 5th to feud with Juice Robinson. On Friday’s show, a video aired after Robinson was celebrating in the ring. The mysterious man was sitting at a bar with a knife and had the Union Jack on his sleeve. It would make sense that it’s Chris Brookes and that seems to be the person most suspect. Jonathan Gresham is already part of the BOSJ tournament and Gresham teaming with Brookes in New Japan would be a great addition.

**CIMA’s partners at Double or Nothing will be T-Hawk and Lindaman for the six-man tag against Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian, and Scorpio Sky. SCU and Chris Harrington were in China this past week for OWE related business.

**Impact Wrestling wrapped up two nights of television tapings at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia over the weekend. This week’s episode of Impact will be from the Toronto tapings and Philadelphia will begin the following week. Mike Johnson at PWinsider.com reported that they drew between 200-250 on Friday night and 450-500 on Saturday.

**AAA has put tickets on sale for their card at Madison Square Garden on September 15th. They have announced the following names that are expected to be on the show: Aerostar, Averno, Blue Demon Jr., Daga, Dinastia, Drago, Fenix, Golden Magic, Hijo del Tirantes, Hijo del Vikingo, La Hiedra, La Parkita, Lady Maravilla, Lady Shani, Mamba, Maximo, Myzteziz Jr., Nino Hamburguesa, Pagano, Pentagon Jr., Piero, Pimpinela Escarlata, Puma King, Taya Valkyrie, Tessa Blanchard, and Villano III Jr.

**MLW’s Court Bauer and Konnan recently spoke to Alfred Konuwa about the diversity in the promotion and separating themselves from WWE.

**There will be a new episode of Table for 3 on Monday following Raw with Reby Hardy, Giovanna Angle, and Kim Orton with the theme of wrestler’s wives.

**Here is a rare gem on YouTube involving Gary Hart, Skandor Akbar, and Wild Bill Irwin from 2008 chatting about their time in World Class Championship Wrestling:

MMA NEWS

**On Saturday, the UFC made it official that Daniel Cormier will defend the UFC heavyweight title against Stipe Miocic on August 17th at UFC 241 from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. It’s a rematch from UFC 226 in July 2018 where Cormier stopped Miocic by TKO in the first round to win the championship. Since that fight, Cormier defended the title against Derrick Lewis in November at UFC 230 while Miocic has not fought since the loss to Cormier.

**The UFC held its Fight Night card in Ottawa, Ontario on Saturday night in front of 10,960 fans at the Canadian Tire Centre and drew a gate of $807,000. The card was highlighted by the main event where Donald Cerrone earned a unanimous decision over Al Iaquinta in a great fight. I scored the fight 49-45 for Cerrone with Iaquinta winning Round 2 and Cerrone earning a 10-8 round in the fourth. It was Cerrone’s third straight win and increased his record-setting number of UFC wins to 23.

The expected title fight between Khabib Nuramgomedov and Dustin Poirier in September means it’s highly-probable Cerrone is going to be thrown into another fight among the top contenders at lightweight. The status of Tony Ferguson is still unknown and if he’s not ready to fight, I can see the likely option being Justin Gaethje, which sounds like a tremendous fight on paper. The wild card is Conor McGregor, who has teased fighting Cerrone in the past and the latter clearly wants the fight but isn’t going to beg for it. It’s more complicated than McGregor just snapping his fingers. The climate has changed with the UFC’s distribution deal with ESPN+ and whether McGregor can force the UFC into a position to meet his asking price when UFC is receiving a fixed amount from ESPN+.

The Fight of the Night bonus was awarded to Cerrone and Iaquinta with the Performance of the Night bonuses going to Walt Harris and Macy Chiasson for $50,000 each.

Here is the full list of results from the show:
*Cole Smith def. Mitch Gagnon by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)
*Arjan Bhullar def. Juan Adams by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)
*Matt Sayles def. Kyle Nelson by arm-triangle choke at 3:16 of Round 3
*Nordine Taleb def. Kyle Prepolec by unanimous decision (30-27 all)
*Vince Morales def. Aiemann Zahabi by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Macy Chiasson def. Sarah Moras by TKO at 2:22 of Round 2
*Andrew Sanchez def. Marc-Andre Barriault by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Walt Harris def. Serghei Spivak by TKO at 0:50 of Round 1
*Merab Dvalishvili def. Brad Katona by unanimous decision (30-27 all)
*Shane Burgos def. Cub Swanson by split decision (30-27, 27-30, 29-28)
*Derek Brunson def. Elias Theodorou by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)
*Donald Cerrone def. Al Iaquinta by unanimous decision (49-45, 49-45, 49-46)

**The UFC is back on pay-per-view next weekend with UFC 237 from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The card will be headlined by Rose Namajunas defending the women’s strawweight title against Jessica Andrade along with Anderson Silva fighting Jared Cannonier and Jose Aldo taking on Alexander Volkanovski in the top fights. They will be going head-to-head with Bellator 221 featuring Michael Chandler defending the lightweight title against Patricio Freire, Douglas Lima vs. Michael Page in the semi-finals of the Welterweight Grand Prix, and Jake Hager’s second professional fight.

**The second event of Bellator’s European series took place on Saturday from Birmingham, England at the Resorts World Arena and featured the following main card results:
*Raymond Daniels def. Wilker Barros by KO at 4:36 of Round 1
*Pedro Carvalho def. Derek Campos by KO at 2:03 of Round 1
*Fabian Edwards def. Falco Neto by KO at 3:51 of Round 1
*Brent Primus def. Tim Wilde by gogoplata at 1:20 of Round 1

*****
NJPW Wrestling Dontaku 2019 POST Show

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*****
upNXT Movie Review – Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

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https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/03/conrad-thompson-talks-starrcast-ii-court-bauer-on-mlw-fusion-cafe-hangout-5-3-19/
*****
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*****
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John Pollock and Wai Ting review The Last of the Von Erichs special from Viceland, the NWA’s Crockett Cup card, and Being the Elite Ep. 149.
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John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown as the remaining participants are revealed for the Men’s and Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder matches and The Hardys vacate the SmackDown tag titles. Plus, John & Wai spend the final 45 minutes of the show reviewing Avengers: Endgame (spoilers inside).
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*****

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This is a smart move to turn the ratings up. Getting a chance to see a whole roster would be great and some inter brand matches. Hopefully some build too for the Saudi show which looks so much more epic than MITB. Maybe Goldberg and UT even?

I don’t think it’s a smart move. Maybe you’d get a small bump for a week or two but you’ll still make the company look desperate and incapable of sticking to the lines they drew. Contributes to the general feeling that WWE don’t even care about making sense and just chase short wins.

Isn’t the main reason behind it because it’s mainly the old roster set up on the European tour what starts right after TV?