Originally published at POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: William Regal details past health issues
POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Dynamite is live tonight at 10:15 p.m. ET on the POST YouTube channel right after St. Patrick’s Day Slam. Wai Ting and I will have a review of the show and take your feedback from the POST Wrestling Forum. The podcast version will be posted late tonight.
**This month’s edition of the ASK-A-WAI Mailbag show is available for all members of the POST Wrestling Café. We tried a new format this month where we took questions as usual along with calls from Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso members of the Café. We had a wide range of questions including initial goals and ideas for POST Wrestling, how we monitor stats for shows, the news process, comparing Ultimate Warrior with Bill Goldberg, documentaries on musicians, looking back at the launch of the WWE Network, and many other topics. Questions can always be submitted in the POST Wrestling Forum.
**Rich Fann from the PW Torch will be joining me on Thursday for the POST Daily News show live at 1 p.m. ET on the POST YouTube channel.
**The Wellness Policy returns on Thursday live at 3 p.m. ET for members of the POST Wrestling Café. Wai Ting and Jordan Goodman will be joined by independent wrestler and mental health activist Jaxon Stone.
**On Thursday morning, we will have a Q&A on the site with author Steven Bell about his upcoming book, Dynamite & Davey: The Explosive Lives of the British Bulldogs, which comes out later this year.
POST DAILY NEWS SHOW
Wai Ting and Andrew Thompson discuss WWE’s response to the MLW lawsuit and what the next steps are, Joey Janela-AEW, Raw’s numbers from Monday, their thoughts on NXT 2.0 from Tuesday night, and a preview of AEW’s St. Patrick’s Day Slam:
WRESTLING NEWS
**Northern Japan experienced a 7.3 magnitude earthquake on Wednesday which has led to a tsunami warning. The earthquake hit the prefectures of Miyagi and Fukushima. This comes days after the 11-year anniversary of the 2011 earthquake that was devastating to the country and registered 9.0. We hope everyone is safe.
**On WWE’s YouTube header, it is promoting a two-hour kickoff show for each night of WrestleMania 38. They are advertising a start time of 6 p.m. ET and the main show beginning at 8 on both nights at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
**William Regal was a guest on Talk is Jericho today, which was taped recently and details the enormous set of health problems Regal endured over the past several years. To say it’s a miracle he survived these issues is a giant understatement. I would recommend you listen to the interview to hear from his own words what he went through but he noted the following:
*In late 2018, he was hospitalized for eight weeks and faced the threat of having his leg amputated when they discovered sepsis. By pure chance, his condition was overheard by someone, and an alternative solution was offered that led to his leg being saved. Doctors had feared that if they didn’t amputate the leg, he could have died.
*Regarding his heart issues, he was diagnosed with Pericarditis in 1998, which is a swelling and irritation of the saclike tissue around the heart. In 2018, it had calcified around his heart and if a procedure was not completed to remove it, he would have died within six months. The procedure he had is called a pericardiectomy and is rare.
*His neck problems are among the worst you are going to see from a professional wrestler. It goes back to a match involving Ricky Steamboat in 1993 where he broke his neck on a bridge and didn’t have it taken care of because his neck was so strong and worked through it. He had two neck surgeries – one through the front and one through the back – where they learned what was keeping his neck together and resulted in having four vertebrae fused with an experimental procedure using titanium that allowed for mobility in the neck.
*He detailed an excruciating episode where spinal fluid was leaking and had to undergo an eight-day procedure of sitting upright and going through ungodly pain when they released fluid and set off the nerves throughout his body.
*In March 2018, while arriving off the plane in Costa Rica for a scouting assignment, he took a nasty fall and broke his eye socket that has affected his vision and led to three weeks of amnesia. WWE got him into the Shepherd Center in Atlanta because it was a brain injury.
*He mentioned several times how much WWE helped him by paying for various treatments and surgeries and it’s not an exaggeration to say the company saved his life.
*Regal also gave a speech about wrestlers landing on their heads and necks and they need to avoid it. He thought that Mitsuharu Misawa’s death in June 2009 would cause a change within the industry, but it didn’t. This was the strongest point he conveyed to wrestlers that might be listening.
*After getting out of the hospital in early 2019, he said he got back to walking three miles per day and within two months, was doing 500 squats per day
**AEW presents its second annual St. Patrick’s Day Slam edition of Dynamite from the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas. The show is built around Thunder Rosa going for the AEW women’s championship in her hometown inside of a steel cage match. The match takes place one year after their famous Lights Out match that headlined the St. Patrick’s Day Slam card last year and was one of the best AEW matches of the year. The following matches have been announced for tonight’s show at 8 p.m. ET on TBS:
*AEW Women’s Championship, Steel Cage Match: Dr. Britt Baker (champion) vs. Thunder Rosa
*TNT Championship: Scorpio Sky (champion) vs. Wardlow
*Hangman Page, Jungle Boy & Luchasaurus vs. Adam Cole & reDRagon
*Bryan Danielson & Jon Moxley vs. Chuck Taylor & Wheeler Yuta
*The Hardys vs. Private Party
*Jericho Appreciation Society commencement
**The Freeman Coliseum was a regular stop for WWF/WWE throughout the ‘90s and into the 2000s before making the AT&T Center the prime location for its shows in San Antonio. The venue hosted Tuesday in Texas in 1991 and the Survivor Series in November 1994 with the WWE running it consistently until 2002. They came back for a few house shows between 2014-16 and then NXT ran the building for its TakeOver: San Antonio show in January 2017.
**Jay Briscoe has issued another apology regarding a homophobic message he tweeted in 2013. Shortly after, he did apologize for the comment but it’s one that has stuck with him and by association his brother Mark, over the years. Recently, Fightful Select reported that the 2013 comment is the reason that a “person of influence” at WarnerMedia doesn’t want the team signed to AEW. The Briscoes were guests on The Battleground podcast (which has since been deleted) with Jay once against apologizing for the comment in 2013: (Transcribed by Jeremy Lambert at Fightful.com)
I want to say, thank you to the people who really know…we get labeled as homophobes. I put out a stupid tweet nine years ago, the most dumbest, immature, obnoxious shit I’ve ever done. I don’t want anybody, from any walk of life, to feel like they can’t care for the Briscoes because I promise we love everybody. We love everybody and we just want to go out there and be pro wrestlers and give the best match that we can. I said some dumb shit a long time ago, I apologized for it and I’ll apologize for it again. It was stupid. I feel like now there are people who look at us like, ‘we can’t cheer for them because they hate a certain group of people.’ We don’t hate nobody. We love everybody. We’re just some country boys. I thought I was taking a stand for the Lord back in the day.
**The second round of the New Japan Cup will continue Thursday morning with a card from Shizuoka that streams at 5:30 a.m. ET on New Japan World. The following card is listed:
*New Japan Cup: Will Ospreay vs. SANADA
*New Japan Cup: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Great O-Khan
*Kazuchika Okada, Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI vs. Minoru Suzuki, Taichi & DOUKI
*Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi, Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI vs. EVIL, SHO, Yujiro & Dick Togo
*Hiroshi Tanahashi & Tomoaki Honma vs. Jeff Cobb & Aaron Henare
*Guerrillas of Destiny & Jado vs. Bad Luck Fale, Chase Owens & Gedo
*El Desperado & Taka Michinoku vs. Master Wato & Ryusuke Taguchi
*El Phantasmo & Taiji Ishimori vs. YOH & Tiger Mask
**The final matches of the second round take place on Friday at Korakuen Hall with EVIL vs. Hiromu Takahashi, and Shingo Takagi vs. Chase Owens.
**We’d like to pass our condolences along to the Hart family after the death of 37-year old Tanya Hart. Tanya was the daughter of the late Smith Hart and whose mother died when she was very young. There were remembrances and tributes posted by Bret Hart, Ross Hart, Natalya, and others.
**Stardom has listed the opening round matches for its annual Cinderella tournament that begins on Sunday, April 3rd. This year’s tournament will feature a field of 30 women with World of Stardom champion Syuri and Wonder of Stardom champion Saya Kamitani receiving byes in the opening round.
The first round will feature Himeka vs. Ruaka (the winner faces Syuri), Miyu Amasaki vs. Hazuki, AZM vs. Momo Watananbe, Giulia vs. Thekla, Fukigen Death vs. Koguma, Rina vs. Saya Iida, Lady C vs. Mai Sakurai, Utami Hayashishita vs. Tam Nakano, Mina Shirakawa vs. MIRAI, Saki Kashima vs. Waka Tsukiyama, Mayu Iwatani vs. Momo Kohgo, Unagi Sayaka vs. Hina, Natsupoi vs. Starlight kid, and Maika vs. Hanan (the winner faces Saya Kamitani).
The tournament runs throughout the month of April with the final night on Friday, April 29th.
**Bill Apter remembers Scott Hall.
**Nikki & Brie Bella share a memory of Scott Hall from last year’s WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the ThunderDome.
**MLW has announced Holidead vs. Chik Tormenta for its Azteca Underground event at Gilley’s on Friday, April 1st in Dallas, Texas during WrestleMania Week.
**SiriusXM has announced that Talk is Jericho will now air every Tuesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on SiriusXM Fight Nation Channel 156.
**Reporter Phil Strum is launching a new podcast with the USA Today Networked called “Under the Ring: Pro Wrestling Conversations”. It will be a weekly show and the first episode is already posted featuring an interview with Rhea Ripley. There will be new episodes every Monday morning
**Control Your Narrative has released its set of rules prior to its event in Dallas during WrestleMania Week. I assume that if anyone has problems with these rules they can address them in the ‘Rant Room’
ON THIS DATE
The first episode of Raw without fans in 2020 featuring Steve Austin on the show:
King Kong Bundy’s WWF debut on this date in 1985:
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