SAT. UPDATE: Hulk Hogan perjury story clarification, TripleMania publicity, UFC preview

By F4W Staff
Published: 8 Aug 2015, 22:29

by David Bixenspan | davidbix@wrestlingobserver.com | Follow @davidbix

Weekend major show notes:

UFC Fight Night: Texeira vs. St. Preux airs live tonight from Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee:

Here is WrestlingObserver.com’s coverage:

UFC Fight Night 73: Teixeira vs. Saint Preux live results and coverage

UFC Fight Night Nashville: Observer Picks & Preview for Glover Teixeira vs. Ovince St. Preux
UFC Fight Night 73 Preview: 5 storylines to watch, betting odds & predictions

UFC Fight Night 73 Picks From The Secret Psychic Spy~!

UFC Fight Night 73: Teixeira vs. Saint Preux weigh-in results and live video

Main Card on Fox Sports 1 at 10:00 p.m. ET:
Glover Teixeira (205.5) vs. Ovince Saint Preux (206) in a five round main event.
Michael Johnson (155.5) vs. Beneil Dariush (156)
Derek Brunson (186) vs. Sam Alvey (186)
Jared Rosholt (237) vs. Timothy Johnson (265)
Sara McMann (136.5) vs. Amanda Nunes (136)
Ray Borg (126.75) vs. Geane Herrera (126)

Prelims on Fox Sports 1 at 8:00 p.m. ET:
Uriah Hall (185.5) vs. Oluwale Bamgbose (184.5)
Chris Camozzi (185.5) vs. Tom Watson (185)
Dustin Ortiz (125.5) vs. Willie Gates (126 – 126.5 on first try)
Frankie Saenz (136) vs. Sirwan Kakai (136)

Prelims on UFC Fight Pass at 6:30 p.m. ET:
Chris Dempsey (204.5) vs. Jonathan Wilson (205)
Marlon Vera (135.5) vs. Roman Salazar (135)
Anthony Christodoulou (156) vs. Scott Holtzman (155.5)

This is an iffy card with some good fights mixed in. The main event isn’t incredibly compelling, but it’s a good fight. McMann-Nunes is very divisionally relevant and would be huge for Nunes if she wins, but she doesn’t seem like the type of fighter to beat McMann unless her defensive wrestling has improved a lot (and it very well could have at American Top Team).

The best fight on paper is Johnson vs. Dariush, which is a really fun style match on paper and an intersting test of where Dariush’s ever-improving striking is right now if he can’t take Johnson now. Sam “King of Fight Pass” Alvey also gets his toughest test yet in Derek Brunson, which is also pretty fun on paper.

New Japan G-1 Climax Day 14 airs on New Japan World at 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning Eastern time from Korakuen Hall in Tokyo

Non-Tournament Matches:
David Finlay & Jay White vs. Bad Luck Fale & Tama Tonga
Kota Ibushi & Mascara Dorada vs. Toru Yano & Yoshi-Hashi
Tetsuya Naito & Ryusuke Taguchi & Captain New Japan vs. A.J. Styles & Doc Gallows & Cody Hall
Hiroshi Tanahashi & Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Kushida vs. Togi Makabe & Katsuyori Shibata & Tiger Mask
B Block League Matches
Michael Elgin vs. Karl Anderson
Satoshi Kojima vs. Yuji Nagata
Kazuchika Okada vs. Yujiro Takahashi
Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Tomoaki Honma
Hirooki Goto vs. Tomohiro Ishii

WWE has a house show on Sunday in Vancouver, BC (Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt)

AAA TripleMania XXIII from Arena Ciudad in Mexico City on both traditional and internet PPV and at 7 p.m. Eastern
Drago & Goya Kong & Dinastia & Pimpinela Escarlata vs. Daga & Sexy Star & Mini Psycho Clown & Mamba
Cibernetico & Chessman & Averno defend the trios titles against Jack Evans & Fenix & Angelico and El Hijo del Fantasma & El Texano Jr. & Pentagon Jr.
Blue Demon Jr. & La Parka vs. Mesias & Electroshock
Los Villanos III & IV & V vs. The Psycho Circus
Alberto El Patron vs. Brian Cage hair vs.. hair
Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Myzteziz

There will also be a Hall of Fame induction ceremony for both Perro Aguayo Jr. and Hector Garza.

Raw will be Monday night in Everett, WA. Stephen Amell of the TV show Arrow will be a guest doing an angle with Stardust. No Brock Lesnar or Paul Heyman advertised this week, nor John Cena.

SmackDown will be Tuesday night in Portland, OR.

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The new issue of Figure Four Weekly is now up for subscribers (subscribe to th site here and get access to Figure Four, the Observer, tons of audio, and more) featuring a chat with Konnan about the state of AAA heading into TripleMania XXIII. We discuss the company’s improvements in production, advantages over WWE and differences in philosophy, how to listen to fans, and much more. Plus, as always, we have all of the usual reviews and international news, including Dr. Lucha’s TripleMania preview.

Last week’s FREEFigure Four Weekly is still up with a look at the crazy story of why Gawker thinks the FBI may have helped Hulk Hogan cover up his racist and homophobic comments. A judge has ordered the FBI to turn over the records of their investigation, and what Gawker is saying in court about what has and hasn’t been turned over paints a very interesting picture.

Also, now available for the first time on Kindle (meaning Kindle devices and anything with the Kindle app) is Fall Guys, the seminal 1937 book that has been described as being like the 1930s version of the Wrestling Observer. It was surprisingly not on Kindle already, so we put together a nice version with a full table of contents w/ chapter marks, proper formatting on everything, etc. Right now it’s available from the American, Canadian, and Australian Amazon/Kindle stores OR you can also buy it from anywhere in the world on PayHip, who will provide you with both Kindle and ePub (every other e-reader) format files, and you can either sideload them to your device or have them email it to your Kindle.

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The latest Wrestling Observer: August 10, 2015 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Roddy Piper passes away, WWE Q2 results & analysis

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Saturday Daily Update

Reminder: It’s fallen off the front page thanks to the new issue, but last weel’s Figure Four Weekly is still FREE for everyone with a huge, detailed cover feature on the crazy story of why Gawker thinks the FBI has tried to help Hulk hogan cover up the racist and homophoic comments he made that ended up being leaked a week ago. This is some weird, fascinating stuff.
AAA got a pretty big late hype boost for TripleMania in the form of an Associated Press story about Rey Mysterio and the show that is or will be in hundreds of newspapers this weekend. It’ll be interesting to see how the show does, as most of the expenses (including the satellite feed) were already incurred before the decision to put it on PPV in the U.S. and Canada, so they can be very successful without getting anywhere close to the 10,000 buy mark everyone else needs to hit to reach profitability.
As noted last night, in an interview with Ron Kruck that aired on Insida MMA, Tito Ortiz claimed that the Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino has been offered a fight with Ronda Rousey for “Cowboys’ Arena.” Dave also has an article about this at MMAFighting. Ortiz is, while still friends with Cyborg as well as her wrestling coach, no longer her manager because he worried his issues with the UFC would hurt her career. So far, UFC hasn’t acknowsled what he said, but one would think it’ll come up at tonight’s press conference.
With regards to what Dave wrote on the front page about Thursday’s National Enquirer website article on the possibility that Hulk Hogan perjured himself in a deposition, here’s the entire relevant portion of the July 2nd haring transcript that’s being referred to. The context is that Gawker attorney Seth Berlin is trying to get the FBI to re-issue documents about their investigation into the sex tape extortion attempt without redactions that shouldn’t have been made, and the emphasis on the key part is mine:

But what these documents show, and then I’ll come back and I can talk a little bit about the exemptions and the indexes, but let me tell you what our concern is, Your Honor. So in this investigation what we know is that Mr. Bollea — this is not — I’m not treading on secret ground here. What we know is that Mr. Bollea came with his lawyer, Mr. Houston, to the FBI and asked for an investigation, which they conducted. And what we know from Mr. Hardy’s last declaration is that part of this investigation yielded three DVDs that have encounters involving the three key participants in this — Mrs. Clem, Mr. Bollea, and for portions of it Mr. Clem.

Each of those people has testified differently, they have all said different things about what actually happened, when it happened, how often it happened, whether — what was known. And so one of the reasons why we said we would like to get — we started by just saying look, we thought we would find, which we eventually got in yesterday’s stack, statements by Mr. Bollea and his lawyer, and to see whether what he was saying to the FBI matched what he is saying in our lawsuit.

Turns out, without getting into the specifics, they don’t, that we have essentially under oath testimony to the FBI and we have under oath testimony in our case directly at odds with one another. So we have a situation — and it’s very unfortunate that this is two days or one business day before we’re supposed to start a trial on this matter, but we have a situation where the key participant, the plaintiff, is telling us one thing under oath and telling the FBI something else. So this is why we’re asking — and you can’t use that document to impeach a person if there is a bunch of blanks in it that somebody is saying well, that’s private even though it’s already public.

The BBC of all places has an article about why wrestlers die young stemming from the passing of Roddy Piper
RIP Roddy Piper: your favorite matches & moments, part 1 of 3
RIP Roddy Piper: your favorite matches & moments – part 2 of 3
Glory and Bellator announced a new fight for the Septmeber 19th “Dynamite” card in San Jose, which is Gabriel Varga defending the Glory Featherweight Title against Serhiy Adamchuck.
Nice article from The Courier about the late George Kidd (the wrestler who developed the “escapology” style that Johnny Saint made famous internationally) being honored at Caird Hall, where he first made his name.
WWE’s “The Kliq Rules” set comes out this Tuesday on both DVD and Blu-Ray this Tuesday with pre-orders still available. It looks like the streaming version is already available now.
AAW tomorrow afternoon (August 9, 2015) at 115 Bourbon St (3359 W 115th St Merrionette Park, IL). Doors: 2:15pm Belltime: 3:00pm. Tickets Available at the door. Anything Goes Bourbon Street Fight: Eddie Kingston & Shane Hollister vs. Matt Cage & Tyson Dux, AAW Heritage Championship Match: Louis Lyndon vs. Christian Faith w/ Gregory Iron, Matt Sydal vs. Johnny Gargano, Silas Young vs. Tommaso Ciampa, ACH vs. DjZ, Zero Gravity vs. Mat Fitchett & Davey Vega. Also signed: AAW Tag Team Champions: OI4K, Candice LeRae, Heidi Lovelace, Allysin Kay, The Hooligans (Devin & Mason Cutter with Bucky Collins).