Originally published at POLLOCK'S NEWS UPDATE: WWE Network content edited off Peacock
POST IT NOTES
**Wai Ting and I will be LIVE at 10:15 pm ET with Rewind-A-Dynamite tonight for Double Double, Iced Capp & Espresso members of the POST Wrestling Café. We will start the show with a discussion on the tricky waters Peacock has to navigate with WWE Network content and then get into our review of Dynamite. We will also announce the final show for POST Podcast Day on Saturday, April 3rd.
**Braden Herrington and Davie Portman will be LIVE at 10:15 pm ET at Twitch.tv/upNXTpodcast with upNXT.
**We have our latest POST Movie Review discussing “Creed” from 2015 with Wai Ting and I continuing our Rocky franchise reviews.
**Tuesday’s edition of DEEP IMPACT is up on the site with Davie Portman and Andrew Thompson reviewing Tuesday’s show and discussing the latest news.
**On Thursday, I’ll be joined by MMA analysts James Lynch and Cody Saftic to preview UFC 260 and discuss all the latest news in the sport. James and Cody are always excellent, and this should be a great show. This will be on the free POST Wrestling feed.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Dynamite with John & Wai (LIVE at 10:15 pm ET for Dbl Dbl+ Patrons)
Tonight: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Thursday: UFC 260 Preview Show with John Pollock, James Lynch & Cody Saftic
Thursday: Bushby & Thompson’s Wrestling Adventure (NXT TakeOver: Dallas)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown with John & Wai (LIVE at 10:15 pm ET for all Patrons)
Saturday: MCU L8R with Wai Ting & WH Park (Patreon)
Saturday: UFC 260 POST Show with John Pollock & Phil Chertok (LIVE at YouTube.com/POSTwrestling)
WRESTLING NEWS
**AEW Dynamite is live from Daily’s Place tonight at 8 pm ET with the following announced for the episode:
*TNT Championship: Darby Allin (champion) vs. John Silver
*Non-Title: Kenny Omega vs. Matt Sydal
*The Young Bucks & Brandon Cutler vs. Rey Fenix, Penta El Zero Miedo & Laredo Kid
*FTR & Shawn Spears vs. The Varsity Blonds & Dante Martin
*Nyla Rose vs. Tay Conti
*Hangman Page vs. Cezar Bononi
**Here are the matches announced for tonight’s edition of NXT airing at 8 pm ET on the USA Network:
*NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship: Shotzi Blackheart & Ember Moon (champions) vs. Aliyah & Mercedes Martinez (Martinez is replacing Jessi Kamea)
*Io Shirai & Zoey Stark vs. Raquel Gonzalez & Dakota Kai
*Karrion Kross vs. Oney Lorcan
*Jordan Devlin vs. KUSHIDA in a non-title match
*WALTER vs. Drake Maverick
*LA Knight vs. Bronson Reed
*An announcement regarding the vacant NXT tag titles after Danny Burch’s shoulder injury
*William Regal to make an announcement regarding Adam Cole and Kyle O’Reilly
**Below are the matches for tonight’s episode of MLW Fusion airing at 7 pm ET on Fubo Sports and the MLW YouTube channel:
*Chained Ropes Match: The Von Erichs vs. Team Filthy
*Mil Muertes vs. Gringo Loco
*Calvin Tankman vs. Sentai Death Squad
*Zenshi vs. Gino Medina
*Medical update on Bu Ku Dao
**While not unexpected, the editing of certain WWE content on Peacock has begun. It was noted Wednesday morning that the Roddy Piper vs. Bad News Brown match has been edited off Peacock’s version of WrestleMania 6 where Piper painted half his body black, including his face. The segment from the Survivor Series in 2005 where Vince McMahon flippantly uses the n-word with John Cena and proceeds to walk past a stunned Booker T. and Sharmell, has also been removed. One user noted to us that among the 2009 episodes of Raw, the June 22nd edition where Donald Trump buys the WWE doesn’t appear to be there.
It opens up Pandora’s box of what Peacock is comfortable adding to its service when there is so much past content from WWE that doesn’t hold up to societal standards of today. This is directly attached to the most valuable portion of WWE’s library to its current fanbase – the Attitude Era. There is so much language, angles, and content from 1997 onward that will present issues and test Peacock’s comfort level and what standards they will hold themselves to. It only takes a minute for any viewer of that era to recall the countless angles and promos that would not stand a prayer of evading criticism today and emphasizes the edict that pro wrestling largely received a pass.
The same can be said for archived content from WCW, ECW, Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and other libraries. Then, there is the subject of Chris Benoit, whose matches have been preserved in all of WWE’s archives and would require enormous editing.
There is also the mixed message of decrying racist content on the WWE Network while putting Hulk Hogan front-and-center as the host of WrestleMania on the Peacock platform in several weeks.
The calculus on the part of Peacock is what resources are they willing to invest to edit around WWE content knowing that in the grand scheme, it’s a small portion of the audience that is invested in the archives. The bread-and-butter of this deal is new and live content, primarily the pay-per-views rather than episodes of Raw from 1998. Now, there is an audience that wants the archives, but how big is that number and does it justify the added expenses to edit and scrub through the countless hours of programming?
UFC essentially split its digital strategy for the U.S. in 2019 where ESPN+ took over the live content and has past pay-per-views but the majority of the UFC library remained on Fight Pass to service its hardcore fans and essentially considered two tiers for its streaming audience. If WWE had executed the same strategy and retained its archive as a standalone service, I have no doubt they could retain at least 200,000 subscribers (and I may be guessing low on that estimate), so then you have to ask if Peacock sees a number like that and wants to do all it can to maintain that number of potential subscribers? Or, if that estimate is comprised of your most die-hard fanbase, would they be likely to just subscribe to two separate services because they will still want all the new content on Peacock?
Brandon Thurston at Wrestlenomics researched this subject in February 2020 when it appeared WWE was only looking to license its pay-per-view content instead of the entire network. Thurston asked how many would retain the WWE Network if main roster pay-per-views were moved elsewhere and the network held onto TakeOver specials and the library at the same price point of $9.99 concluding roughly 300,000 would keep the service. Perhaps it would be a bit smaller with the elimination of the TakeOver specials, but my hunch is that we would be surprised at how many would keep the service and just add Peacock to their monthly streaming bill.
**Mike Johnson at PWinsider.com reports that WWE and Gabe Sapolsky have been removed as defendants from the lawsuit filed last October by Samantha Tavel. WWE, EVOLVE, Sapolsky, and Matt Riddle had been listed as defendants with EVOLVE and Riddle remaining part of the suit, although EVOLVE has been absorbed by WWE. The site adds that Riddle’s attempt to dismiss the suit was turned down by the court. Johnson has a thorough breakdown of the motions to dismiss and the 14-page ruling issued by Judge Manish S. Shaw of the U.S District Court in the Northern District of Illinois.
**WWE confirmed Wednesday that the ThunderDome will move to the Yuengling Center in Tampa beginning Monday, April 12th after WrestleMania.
**IMPACT Wrestling has moved the Rebellion pay-per-view one night later to Sunday, April 25th.
**IMPACT Wrestling averaged 116,000 viewers and a 0.04 in the 18-49 demographic on Tuesday.
**NBC’s Young Rock finished with 2,896,000 viewers with a 0.62 in the 18-49 demographic. In the demo, it finished second for the night behind This is Us on the same network.
**On Wednesday, WWE announced that Kane and The Great Khali have added to the Hall of Fame class for 2021.
**IMPACT Wrestling has confirmed that the Hardcore Justice event on Saturday, April 10th will start at 3 pm ET. This is the smart move by having the show air in the afternoon and not competing with the first night of WrestleMania. In storyline, Tommy Dreamer is the commissioner for one night and therefore, is booking the show. It’s a great weekend to run a show because of the high captive audience of wrestling fans that weekend that will be consuming a lot of shows between Game Changer Wrestling, IWTV, and WWE.
**A&E has released a lengthy preview clip of its forthcoming documentary on Steve Austin, which premieres on April 18th.
**Our condolences go out to WWE performer Lince Dorado, who lost his grandfather on Wednesday. There is a GoFundMe to assist Lince’s grandmother after his grandfather lost his life insurance last year.
**The Hybrid School of Wrestling out of Texas posted a photo Tuesday night after a training session that included Sasha Banks, Bayley, Kalisto, and Tessa Blanchard. The school operates out of San Antonio, Texas where Sho Funaki is one of the trainers.
**Karrion Kross spoke to Steven Muehlhausen of DAZN about negativity towards his arrival in NXT and how high he is positioned:
For starters, I don’t pay any attention to that. But for the sake of entertaining the notion, first of all, I got really thick skin except when you start trashing Demolition Man. Bro, don’t think I forgot. Okay, first of all, it’s on my mind. I approach it from two different things, two different ways. Number one, everybody wants to see you do well until they feel like you’re doing better than they’d like you to do. That’s life in general. On that notion, people always say they want change. People like to see change and all things, right? But they want to see change on their terms. Too bad. Look at it like this. This is a success story if you really think about it. If you remove me from it and just look at a person not Karrion Kross. A person coming in and finding success like this. This can happen to other people.
I feel like my story right now is a success over the status quo. People don’t like status quo. They don’t like it. If you think about it like that, I am the change that people are always asking for. I am the change that people are always looking for. People want to see things get shaken up immediately. If you look at it and observe like that, that’s exactly what I’m doing. The other thing I would tell them, ‘Hey, if you’re not sold on me, keep watching because I’ve heard that before’. I have a lot of fans right now that are diehard fans of mine that weren’t big on me to begin with. Know at the end of the day, everything that I do is in the interest of entertaining you. So eventually, I’ll get you. Believe me.
**Ata Johnson, the mother of Dwayne Johnson, had a cameo at the end of this week’s episode of “Young Rock” and was easily the highlight of the show.
**A big NOAH vs. DDT tag match has been confirmed for the Cyber Fight Festival event on June 6th. Kaito Kiyomiya & Yoshiki Inamura will take on Konosuke Takeshita & Yuki Ueno. Ueno is the current DDT Universal Champion while Takeshita is one of the group’s biggest stars.
**Zach McGibbon of This is Wrestling on TSN 1200 spoke with IMPACT’s Josh Alexander and asked about Ethan Page’s recent debut in AEW:
I didn’t even think about it because I hadn’t been watching AEW really too intently and I haven’t been keeping up with storylines or anything. I looked up the pay per view, I think it was the day before, and I saw that they had the ladder match and it was a mystery for it and I knew that, of course, they were teasing a different ex- Hall of Famer to debut as well. So I just remember looking at it like, I bet it’s going to be him, you know what I mean? I just wanted to be left in the dark like everybody else so I can be a fan because I love watching wrestling as a fan if I’m pleasantly surprised by something like that happening. You know, it’s awesome. So I tuned in and I saw him come out. I miss his old music. I’ll say that, but otherwise it was just awesome to see because I know how much hard work has gone in to get him there. He’s going to be nothing but successful.
**The L.A. Times has a story on The Miz facing Bad Bunny at WrestleMania 37.
**The WWE stock closed at $56.59 on Wednesday.
**Crave in Canada has added the first three episodes of Dark Side of the Ring: Confidential covering the death of Gino Hernandez, the Montreal Screwjob, and last night’s episode on the Von Erich family.
**Former WWE co-president George Barrios has been named the chairman of the board for Make-A-Wish America.
**Chavo Guerrero Jr. is hosting a podcast called Suplexes & Cervezas and his guests this week are Gail Kim & husband Robert Irvine.
**TSN.ca spoke with MJF to promote tonight’s episode of Dynamite, The Pinnacle, and the MJF character.
**WrestleMania 37 odds from Bet Online:
*Roman Reigns (-140) vs. Edge (EVEN) – this is expected to become a triple threat match
*Bobby Lashley (-115) vs. Drew McIntyre (-115)
*Sasha Banks (+200) vs. Bianca Belair (-300)
*Asuka (+150) vs. Rhea Ripley (-200)
*New Day (+120) vs. AJ Styles & Omos (-160)
*The Fiend (-500) vs. Randy Orton(+300)
*Bad Bunny (-850) vs. The Miz (+450)
**The Undertaker (Mark Calaway) turns 56 today, Christopher Daniels turns 51, Jake Hager is 39 and among the list of birthdays, today includes Lana, The Pope D’Angelo Dinero, Epico, Barry Horowitz, Lacey Evans, and of course, Brandon from New Jersey.
MMA NEWS
**ESPN reports that Miesha Tate is coming out of retirement to fight Marion Reneau on July 17th, which is expected to be a UFC Fight Night card. Tate, 34, retired in November 2016 following her loss to Raquel Pennington at UFC 205 at Madison Square Garden. Tate left the sport with a record of 18-7 and was a former bantamweight champion after beating Holly Holm in March 2016 and losing to Amanda Nunes in July 2016 at UFC 200. Conversely, the 43-year old Reneau tells ESPN that the fight with Tate will be her retirement fight.
**Hannah Goldy announced on Instagram that she is unable to fight Jessica Penne this weekend at UFC 260 after contracting COVID-19. Goldy joins the list of fighters affected by COVID-19 that are unable to fight this weekend including UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski and Randa Markos.
**The UFC Fight Club presale for UFC 261 tickets in Jacksonville began today at 3 pm ET. There will be a separate pre-sale on Thursday at 10 am and tickets for the public are available Friday at 10 am. UFC 261 will be the first event to operate at full capacity since the pandemic began last March with the promotion running the April 24th event from the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena with three championship fights scheduled.
**It was first reported by ESPN that Antonio Tarver is off the Triller card on April 17th where he was scheduled to box Frank Mir. Ariel Helwani and Marc Raimondi of ESPN report that Tarver did not meet the requirements of the Georgia Athletic and Entertainment Commission that are necessary for a fighter competing over the age of 50. Triller has announced that former IBF Cruiserweight Champion Steve “USS” Cunningham will replace Tarver with ESPN noting that medicals still need to be submitted by Cunningham before the fight is official.
**TSN’s Jay Onrait spoke with Ariel Helwani to preview this weekend’s UFC 260 card, Jon Jones moving to heavyweight, and the UFC running a full capacity venue next month. Helwani noted that the third fight between Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor for July is not finalized.
**Kenny Florian has joined the PFL broadcast team for the upcoming season, which begins on April 23rd on ESPN2. Florian will be part of the broadcast team that includes Randy Couture and Sean O’Connell.
**The latest episode of UFC Embedded prior to this Saturday’s UFC 260 card.
ON THIS DATE
*****
DEEP IMPACT 3/23/21: “Better Than Ibushi”
Davie Portman and Andrew Thompson review IMPACT Wrestling from March 23rd, 2021, featuring Eddie Edwards vs Karl Anderson in the main event, plus AEW Champion Kenny Omega returns to the IMPACT Zone!
*****
POST MOVIE REVIEW: Creed (2015)
John Pollock & Wai Ting review Creed (2015) as Adonis “Donnie” Johnson, illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, confronts his father’s legacy in and out of the ring under the tutelage of an ill and aging Rocky Balboa.
*****
REWIND-A-RAW 3/22/21: “The Abyss of Hell”, WM 37 Update
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE Raw as WrestleMania continues to take shape, Charlotte Flair announces she has COVID, WWE taping schedule next week & more.
*****
WWE Fastlane 2021 POST Show: Reigns vs. Bryan, The Fiend returns
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE Fastlane 2021 featuring Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan for the Universal Championship and the return of The Fiend. We also discuss the New Japan Cup Final featuring a controversial show-closing angle.
*****
MCU L8R: Falcon & Winter Soldier Ep. 1, Justice League #SnyderCut
Wai Ting & WH Park return for the debut of MCU L8R as they review The Falcon & The Winter Soldier Ep. 1 and Justice League #SnyderCut.
*****
TRMPS #26: Moana (2016) w/ Brian Streleckis & Daniel Perry
Make Way, Make Way! This month on TRMPS, Nate Milton & resident Disney demigod Daniel Perry are joined by loyal POSTmark and cinephile, Brian Streleckis to review the 2016 smash-hit, “Moana”!
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN 3/19/21: Edge wrestles, Hogan & Titus host WM
John Pollock & Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown featuring Edge’s first match on SmackDown since 2011, a preview of Fastlane, WM tickets get off to a strong start, Hulk Hogan & Titus O’Neil host WM & your calls.
*****
THE WELLNESS POLICY #3: Meditation
Join Wai Ting, Jordan Goodman, and the POST Wrestling community for Episode 3 of The Wellness Policy as we discuss the concept and practice of meditation.
*****
STING: ROUNDTABLE (w/ Nate Milton & Kris Ealy)
Martin Bushby is joined by Nate Milton & Kris Ealy for a roundtable discussion about the man called Sting.
*****
Browse the POST Wrestling Store
https://store.postwrestling.com
Subscribe to POST Wrestling
https://postwrestling.com/subscribe
POST Wrestling Forum
https://forum.postwrestling.com
Support our Patreon – The POST Wrestling Café
http://www.patreon.com/POSTwrestling