POST IT NOTES
**Rewind-A-Raw is LIVE at 11 p.m. ET tonight at YouTube.com/POSTwrestling. Wai Ting & John Pollock will review WWE Raw from Milwaukee and discuss ROH TV on Honor Club, Final Battle & Deadline thoughts, Sasha Banks & all the latest news. The show is available by subscribing to POST Wrestling in your podcast app.
**We had lots of coverage this past weekend of all the major shows including the ROH Final Battle POST Show with Wai & Kate from Montreal, an NXT Deadline POST Show with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman, and UFC 282 POST Show with Eric Marcotte & Pollock.
**On Tuesday night, we have an edition of TALK with Wai & John covering the past year for the site, many parenting stories, and Christmas. On Wednesday, it’s a special doubleheader on the site with Rewind-A-Dynamite followed by a POST Wrestling Café exclusive review of the Vince McMahon documentary on Vice TV.
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting (11 p.m. ET)
Tuesday: Pollock & Ting – TALK (Patreon)
Tuesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Wednesday: Shot in the Dark with John Siino
Wednesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite (10 p.m. ET)
Wednesday: Review of Vince McMahon doc (Patreon, 11 p.m)
Thursday: The BWE Big Fat Wrestling Quiz
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (Patreon)
Saturday: The Long & Winding Royal Road with WH Park & Damian Abraham (Onita vs. Hector Guerrero)
Saturday: POSTmarks with David Meyers & Bruce Lord with guest Scrump
Sunday: Wrestlenomics Radio
WRESTLING NEWS
**The most significant news following Final Battle is the announcement of a weekly ROH television series that will launch on the revamped Honor Club streaming service, which is available for $9.99 per month. It is a signal that there wasn’t enough of an appetite for more wrestling content on TNT or TBS or a streaming option within WBD. It is noteworthy that TBS did greenlight Dana White’s Power Slap, which launches in a few weeks and is directly piggybacking off AEW in the same way Ultimate Fighter did with Raw eighteen years ago. Tony Khan stated that New Japan would likely have a big role in the new ROH project with more news to come after Wrestle Kingdom. The ROH pay-per-views will be added to the service 90 days after they air live but the service does come with portions of the ROH library going back to 2002. There are several questions regarding the cost associated with a new show, whether it will be taped in conjunction with Dynamite and Rampage if enough people will add the streaming service for a weekly show and no pay-per-views, and how AEW programming will be utilized for ROH given it’s the largest platform to promote the brand. It is hard enough to convince the average AEW viewer to watch Rampage on Friday nights and now pay for the ability to watch more wrestling. Putting Ring of Honor on YouTube would stigmatize the product and put it in line with Dark Elevation and Dark and automatically tells the audience it’s an inferior product. The Honor Club method will dramatically decrease the eyeballs on the product with the hope that there are enough diehards willing to spend $10 a month to make it worthwhile and keep production costs low. We will spend more time discussing this story on Rewind-A-Raw tonight.
**WWE Raw is at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee tonight with the following matches listed for the show at 8 p.m. ET:
*#1 Contenders Match: Seth Rollins vs. Bobby Lashley
*#1 Contenders Match: Bayley vs. Alexa Bliss
*IYO SKY vs. Candice LeRae
**Vice TV will premiere the 9 Lives of Vince McMahon documentary on Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET. Wai Ting and I will be doing a review of the doc on Wednesday for POST Wrestling Café members. The trailer has been released:
The 9 Lives of Vince McMahon.
Tuesday at 9P on @VICETV. pic.twitter.com/CooM7EQEmI
— VICE TV (@VICETV) December 10, 2022
**AEW is set to hold Dark tapings at Universal Studios in Orlando this Saturday with sessions at 2-5 p.m. and 7-10 p.m. ET. It is their first set of tapings at the venue since August although no talent has been advertised yet.
**Davey Richards will defend the MLW National Openweight title against Johnny Fusion a.k.a. John Hennigan at MLW’s Blood & Thunder event on 1/7 in Philadelphia at the tapings at the 2300 Arena.
**PWG has finalized its list of seventeen participants for the annual Battle of Los Angeles takes place on 1/7 and 1/8 at the Globe Theatre. The participants include Michael Oku, Shun Skywalker, Masha Slamovich, Speedball Mike Bailey, Komander, Alex Shelley, Jonathan Gresham, Aramis, Titus Alexander, Jordynne Grace, Lio Rush, Black Taurus, Latigo, Daniel Garcia, Bandido, Konosuke Takeshita, and Hijo del Vikingo. This is among the deepest lineups for a tournament you are going to have and should be one of the early highlights of 2023.
**The Premier Streaming Network has announced a multi-year agreement with Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) to stream all of its live events and add CZW’s library of previous shows to the new service in 2023.
**Brian Zilem of PW Torch attended the ROH post-show press conference and asked Athena about representation in the industry:
I think representation is key. Just in general, it doesn’t matter what your ethnicity is. It doesn’t matter how old you are just having a representation. I’m going to make a terrible analogy because I didn’t have this as a kid. I watched up and watched Craig of the Creek one morning with my niece, and one of the coolest things was, like, her seeing someone, a person of color, just like her, having fun with everyone else. I’m not a big person about promoting race or anything like that because I feel like our ability and what we do in the ring speaks for ourselves. We just happen to be that ethnicity. We just happen to be that race. Though I will be a flag bearer for the African American community, I have no problem with that. I’m black girl magic. I am that nerd girl, that goth girl. I am everything everyone can’t be. But at the end of the day, it does mean a lot to stand up for people that don’t have a voice, whether it be children that are bullied, because I cannot stand that, even though I’m a little bit of a bully of myself.
But just to stand up for people that can’t speak for themselves, that means the world to me. And that’s something that I heavily promote on all of my platforms.
**Being the Elite Ep. 326: In-N-Out Whataburger?
**The WWE stock closed at $75.41 on Monday.
MMA NEWS
**MMA judging was at the center of controversy over the weekend spanning three fights between Bellator 289 and UFC 282. Friday’s issue concerned the main event where Raufeon Stots defeated Danny Sabatello by split decision with judges Eric Colon and Bryan Miner scoring it 48-47 for Stots while Douglas Crosby had the scorecard of 50-45 for Sabatello and grew all types of criticism. In watching the fight, there were close rounds, but I had it 49-46 for Stots but can see arguments on some of those rounds. Having all five rounds for Sabatello just doesn’t add up to me. Sabatello spent a lot of time controlling Stots with his wrestling and having him in the cradle position but did so little damage that it is hard to reward him for control when breaking it down using the applicable criteria of the unified rules.
The next night, Crosby was part of UFC 282 and gave a 29-28 card for Paddy Pimblett, which is a score you can justify, although it’s tough. However, Crosby scored the first round for Pimblett and there is no way Pimblett won that round. Pimblett beat Jared Gordon by unanimous decision with all three judges having it 29-28. My score was 30-27 for Gordon and of the scores on MMA Decisions, eleven had the same score as me, twelve had it 29-28 for Gordon and one had it 29-28 for Pimblett. The second round was very close and it’s not a round you can get too outraged about for Pimblett. In the third, there was little offense from either fighter and it resembled some of Sabatello’s rounds against Stots. I felt Gordon did enough. Both Crosby and judge Ron McCarthy scored the first round for Pimblett, which is a really hard round to justify.
The third fight was the main event where it was ruled a split draw between Jan Blachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev. Judge Michael Bell scored it 48-47 for Blachowicz (Blachowicz winning Rounds 1-3 and Ankalaev winning Rounds 4-5), judge Derek Cleary had it 48-46 for Ankalaev (Blachowicz getting Rounds 1-2, Ankalaev Rounds 3-5 and a 10-8 round in Round 5), and judge Sal D’Amato had it 47-47 (Blachowicz getting Rounds 1-3, Ankalaev Rounds 4-5 and a 10-8 round in the fifth). The one score that stands out is Cleary scoring the third round for Ankalaev where his legs were damaged and showing the effects of the leg kicks by Blachowicz. I can’t see that round being for Ankalaev. The first round was the closest of the five and it’s the only toss-up round. The fifth round was dominant from Ankalaev and while it was not a 10-8 on my card, I’m not arguing that score either. I had it 48-47 for Ankalaev with 23 of the 25 media scores having the fight for Ankalaev and none scoring it a draw.
In the case of Stots vs. Sabatello, the right guy won the fight but it’s still a major issue to see a 50-45 scorecard for the loser of the fight and there should be some type of system for the judge to defend that card in a transparent way. For Pimblett vs. Gordon, I felt Gordon won the fight. If all three judges had given rounds two and three to Pimblett, it’s still a hard outcome to justify as the rounds were close enough, but the fact that two scored the first round for Pimblett makes it a lot worse. For the Blachowicz vs. Ankalaev fight, the big issue I had was Cleary’s third round going to Ankalaev, so if you flip that score, he would have it a draw as well and it’s the same outcome. Scoring three rounds for Blachowicz, and two for Ankalaev is acceptable given how close the first was, and 10-8 or 10-9 in the fifth round for Ankalaev is also fine, so it’s less of a controversy given that few were arguing that Blachowicz won the fight and Ankalaev can’t say he was robbed but most viewed him as the winner.
**Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, who has ties to many fighters including Magomed Ankalaev, issued a post on Sunday condemning the handling of Saturday’s main event decision and the light heavyweight title not being awarded to his fighter. Kadyrov addressed Dana White in the post stating, “what happened to you? You were a normal, principled man, and today you took the championship belt out of the ring without handing it to the clear winner. Or has politics entered the UFC ring and requires you to referee dirty? It’s a sport Dana, be honest.” He went on to state, “Admit your mistake, give the belt back to the real winner, and apologize for this show. Save your league’s reputation”.
You can’t come up with richer irony than that.
**Immediately after UFC 282, Dana White announced they were going in a different direction for the still vacant light heavyweight championship. Jamahal Hill was pulled from his fight with Anthony Smith in March in order to fight Glover Teixeira on 1/21 at UFC 283 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Teixeira was the odd man out of UFC 282 after Jiri Prochazka was injured and Teixeira needed more time to prepare for Ankalaev therefore, they gave the title fight to Jan Blachowicz. It’s a case of the UFC just wanting to add a title fight and get this title on anyone that’s available to fight as it’s silly that Magomed Ankalaev is not fighting for the title given his performance on Saturday, but wouldn’t be ready in six weeks after the damage he absorbed. Anthony Smith was working as the analyst on ESPN+ when Dana White made the announcement, so Smith found out like everyone else that his fight in March was being changed.
*****
WRESTLENOMICS RADIO: Tony Khan announced ROH TV for Honor Club
Nine months after acquiring Ring of Honor, Tony Khan announced the brand will have a weekly TV show on existing subscription streaming service Honor Club. Brandon Thurston and Jesse Collings talk about that and more.
*****
UFC 282 POST SHOW
John Pollock and Eric Marcotte review the UFC 282 card featuring Jan Blachowicz vs. Magomed Ankalaev for the vacant light heavyweight title and Paddy Pimblett takes on Jared Gordon.
*****
NXT DEADLINE POST SHOW
Braden Herrington and Davie Portman chat all about WWE NXT Deadline from December 10th headlined by Bron Breakker vs Apollo Crews for the NXT Championship!
*****
ROH FINAL BATTLE POST SHOW
Wai Ting and Kate from MTL discuss ROH Final Battle 2022 featuring FTR vs The Briscoes, Chris Jericho vs. Claudio Castagnoli, and Mercedes Martinez vs. Athena.
*****
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
John Pollock & Wai Ting chat Friday Night SmackDown, AEW Rampage & the WON Hall of Fame class. Plus, your calls tonight!
*****
UFC Betting Scandal & UFC 282 Preview
John Pollock chats with MMA analyst Cody Saftic about the ongoing UFC betting scandal and they discuss UFC 282 this Saturday.
*****
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