News From Cook’s Corner 09.15.10

Hi, hello and welcome to News From Cook’s Corner. I’m Steve Cook, and I might as well mention it now to get it out of the way. My grandfather passed away last Friday after a battle with cancer. He was eighty-five years old and lived a long & rewarding life with plenty of people that loved him. We’ll all miss him, but hopefully we’ll meet up again in fifty or sixty years or so and he can tell me all about how the world works.

The funeral yesterday brought some peace and now I’m feeling a bit better about things, but in case you’re wondering why I’m not bringing the A material this week, even with great topics like wrestlers complaining on Twitter & new hot chicks to talk about, that’s why. I’ll be back in my usual form next week, when things will be less stressful and I’ll have more time to decompress. I’m sure most of you have lost family members and understand how it goes better than I do.

OK, on with the wrestling news that you came to read about! Contrary to what Geoff Eubanks might say, this isn’t “Boobs From Cook’s Corner”. We cover all the important topics…like NXT Rookie Divas I was unable to identify last week. That’s an important topic! Don’t look at me like that.

My critically-acclaimed NXT Diva Preview last week wasn’t quite complete because I didn’t know who was going to replace Aloisia. Enter Kaitlyn. Formerly known in FCW as Riki Vaughn, Kaitlyn does not have a whole lot in the way of wrestling experience. She’s been training for a month, so I don’t expect her to be a standout in that aspect of the game. Like many lady wrestlers of recent fame, she was a fitness model under her real name, Celeste Bonin.

Scratch that. There’s no way that’s her real name. That’s something somebody would use as a porn name. If it is her real name, it’s no wonder she was giving people wedgies in school. Can you imagine the teasing that name would have got her?

In addition to being a fitness competitor, Kaitlyn had been working as a bartender when WWE discovered her. Of course she was. Is there a hot girl out there that hasn’t worked as a bartender at some point? Not that I’m complaining, most of the women I’ve fallen for over the years were serving me beer at one point or another. I often wonder what I was looking for in a girl before the age of 21. Probably brains or personality or some dumb crap like that.

One interesting thing about this is that Kaitlyn has some pictures online that were more “risqué” than Aloisia’s were. There’s a rumor going around that Aloisia’s pictures were linked to an escort service, but you couldn’t pay me to research that. Well, you probably could, but I’d need to take a longer bath than I already have to after reading Perez Hilton’s website for 411 news.

I’d rate Kaitlyn right with Jamie Keyes in the NR section because I have no way of judging her in-ring skills. As far as hotness goes…well, let me think about that for awhile.

A long while.

What?

I’d have you guys compare them for me, but then Csonka would yell at me for stealing his gimmick. Lord knows I’m in enough hot water with the higher-ups as it is…

And now, the fake news!

I figured out what this column has been missing lately…not enough pictures of Maryse covering people. That’ll happen when WWE doesn’t have her in matches.

Another week, another Matt Hardy story. That’s the MO around here, right? Reports came out on Sunday that the Sensei of Mattitude had been sent home from the Smackdown European Tour due to “concern about his condition”. This could mean any number of things, so naturally we speculated about every single possibility we could think of. Most of them were fat jokes.

Soon after this, Matt posted a video that I’m afraid to watch. Honestly, I’ve seen enough of Matt Hardy’s videos to know that they’re not going to improve my life in any possible way. So I don’t bother with them. From what I gather, he talked about how he was still in England & says that “a stooging punk” started this story.

Stooging punk.

You know, if that means what I think it means, I am now a huge CM Punk fan. I never thought I would say that, but if he’s stooging Matt Hardy off to the higher-ups & the Internet, I now have a great deal of respect and admiration for him. I toast you, good sir CM.

He wouldn’t want to be toasted. That’s part of the humor of it all.

Apparently one thing that Matt didn’t mention in his video was that he didn’t work the last night of the tour. I guess it’s a matter of semantics…obviously he wasn’t working for some reason, but they didn’t make him go right home to North Carolina. So he’s at least right on a technicality. If Meltzer’s description of this video was right, he also said he dropped thirteen pounds over the last few weeks, going from 245 to 224 lbs. You are correct, that does not equal thirteen. Either Matt Hardy or Dave Meltzer can not do simple math.

Heck, whenever I lose weight I always add five or ten pounds to the total when I’m telling people about it. I’m sure not subtracting it.

The WWE/Matt fun continued on Tuesday! WWE told Newsday that contrary to Matt’s online reports, they had indeed sent him home from two WWE shows, and word on the street is that Matt was not at the Smackdown taping in Detroit last night. Apparently Matt is on thin ice. For his part, Matt is talking about how it’s “decision time”. Well, I’m not sure who’s making the decision here, but I have the feeling we haven’t heard the last of this story.

Which is great because I need things to write about and Matt Hardy is a great punching bag.

I noticed a commenter in one of the Matt posts questioning if somebody like Matt Hardy would read our website. Well, I can point you to his tweeter account and show you some proof that he does:

“N Bazar gets it to a degree-he respect the hard work the boys put it-he’s a fair critic.
about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck”

That’s right, Matt’s talking about our very own Nick Bazar, the guy who’s making people forget about my stint as Smackdown recapper. Good for Nick, though I’d take my fans over his any day of the week. It’s a proven fact that members of Cook Nation are more intelligent & attractive than the fans of other IWC writers.

Who has the least intelligent & least attractive fans? I shouldn’t say who, but his name rhymes with Rephen Sandle.

The Connecticut Post reports that WWE is under investigation for how they classify their workers, specifically the whole “independent contractor” thing. I always refer people to JP Prag for this sort of thing as it’s all sorts of legal talk, and if I knew anything about law I’d be a lawyer just like Denny Crane. People have been questioning the independent contractor thing for years, and there was almost a lawsuit over it until people waited too long to file it. It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of this.

Monday Night Football started this week. I mention this only because Small talked about it in his column, and I felt the need to correct him on something I’m an expert in:

Week 9 – Pittsburgh at Cincinnati

Small’s Prediction – A grudge match featuring two small market teams. I’d expect Raw to have a modest gain here. Raw rating – 3.0

Small is half-right. Pittsburgh & Cincinnati are small markets, at least as far as NFL cities go. But as much as I hate to admit it, the Pittsburgh Steelers have one of the largest and most die-hard fan bases in the NFL. They get a nice flow of front-running casual fans because they’ve been pretty successful for most of the last forty years. Al Michaels recited some ridiculous stat proving that the Dallas Cowboys are #1 in fan interest on Sunday night’s telecast (I assume he only said this because Dallas isn’t #1 in anything else), but he also pointed out that the Steelers are #2, and I’d buy that. The Steelers are one of the top draws in the NFL, no doubt about it.

My Bengals are further down the list, but they always do manage to get some level of interest from the mainstream media for whatever reason. Whether it’s having a lot of criminals, or being criminally inept on the field, or Chad Ochocinco’s antics and the signing of Terrell Owens, the Cincinnati Bengals get a lot of attention from people. Their season of Hard Knocks was the highest rated season of that show. I haven’t seen the ratings for this year’s edition featuring the New York Jets, so maybe that record has been broken.

Pittsburgh vs. Cincinnati should do a pretty good number for Monday Night Football. You know I won’t be watching Raw that night, and I doubt Larry Csonka will be either. I’m not sure what WWE could book on Raw to get me to watch their show and not Bengals vs. Steelers. Unless the Bengals are 0-7, in which case I’ll be watching Raw.

Small’s actually not that bad. At least he knows who the players are, unlike Bryan Alvarez. Alvarez actually wrote the following in his latest news update:

Apparently Chad Johnson legally changed his name to Chad Ochocinco.

Thank you for that stunning revelation, Bryan. I know you & Dave Meltzer don’t have much time to pay attention to anything other than UFC, but you might want to take notice of an NFL game once a year or so.

Skip Sheffield underwent successful ankle surgery this week, and is expected to be back in action by February. Unfortunately this will be enough time for people to forget how awesome he was getting.

Speaking of surgery, remember when Rey Mysterio was supposed to be getting knee surgery? Apparently that’s not going to be happening, since he received a cartilage injection that helped him feel better. This is good news for Rey Mysterio fans, and bad news for the people that used to read my Smackdown reports.

NXT will be airing some episodes in October in Canada. After last night’s show I have no idea what to make of NXT anymore. It’s kind of reaching that point where it’s absurdly hilarious like the dying days of WCW Thunder, so at least it’s entertaining in that regard.

And now that Michael Cole quit I don’t have to listen to him anymore. Thank heaven for small favors.

Ezekiel Jackson worked a dark match at this week’s Raw, so it looks like he’ll be back pretty soon. I thought Big Zeke was showing a lot of potential during his feud with Christian in ECW, so it’ll be interesting to see what he does when he returns to television. Probably mess some dudes up. I’m all for that.

Facebook keeps telling me that I should be friends with Lacey Von Erich. I can’t really argue with that.

Matt Hardy isn’t the only wrestling star that complains a lot on the Internet. Kevin Nash has taken to the twatter recently in order to issue his grievances. Here’s some highspots from Thursday night, when he was drinking some wine and didn’t give a hoot…

“you can say what you want about me I don’t give a F**K ,but to ever question my integrity we no longer have a business relationship.”

“and to the person that said every September I go to work for my self ,f**k you you didn’t even see it. mid card bullshit neverbeens f**k you. “

You want to go to war with the best, hope you f**kers don’t live in glass houses. sorry to the 33′276 that have no idea what I’m ranting 4. 10- 10- 10 shit 1099.

Jason Heary made me tweet that guess you have to stayed tune after impact 4 the answers. I’m a f**king man not some green horn boy .you don’t like what I do fine .Pay me the dates you owe me .let my accounts look at the books.

RVD said Jeff hardy and him are rock stars ,in my prime I was selling out 30′000 plus seat domes they can’t draw 1000 on the road. WTF.

I will work out my TNA contract anbd see what life brings me ,to my fans I love you and words can never explain what you mean to me. to the haters glad I was able to be there to dump on me to make u feel better about your F**KED up lifes.

going to take some time off twitter , will still read tweets just need to decompress away from the wrestling world. much love …..Kev.

Well, who hasn’t gotten a wee bit drunk and said some things you wish you didn’t? If you’re lucky you don’t remember them at all, so then you don’t feel sorry for it. That’s the problem with getting drunk online…you post stuff and then you read it later. Unless you’re me, then you never have time to read anything that you write.

Nash has been associated with the future plans of the WWP/Sean Davis promotion, but with that whole deal all up in the air it’s tough to say if that will ever be a viable option for the continuation of his wrestling career. He sounded like he wasn’t interested in coming back to TNA…but knowing Nash like we do, he’d come back if the price was right.

In case you’re wondering about the TNA status of Team 3D (and I’m sure you are), the duo has agreed to work the Northeast house shows coming up on September 23-25, but they are still not contracted to TNA. A source close to the tag team says that this could be the last time you see Team 3D.

Are the Dudley Boyz coming back?

Major changes are coming to TNA, and they will be revealed on October 7. Of course they will.

There just wasn’t a whole lot of TNA news this week. I guess that’s what happens when you pre-empt your show because you’re afraid of football.

I can’t explain this one. Reby Sky leads an interesting life.

Mike Shaw passed away on Saturday at the age of 53 after having a heart attack. Shaw wrestled under numerous names…people who followed him in Stampede Wrestling speak well of his days as Makhan Singh, when he had classic matches with the likes of Owen Hart & Brian Pillman. In WCW he was known as Norman the Lunatic. I don’t really remember that, but what I do remember Mike Shaw as…is the Booger Man.

Good ol’ Bastion Booger was a favorite among the elementary school crowd. What kid wouldn’t love somebody that’s completely disgusting? That’s the way we all wanted to be but couldn’t because our parents made us be like clean and stuff. Kids like being dirty & disgusting. They can identify with a guy like Bastion Booger.

The best thing about Booger, other than his music, and the chuckle you do whenever you call somebody Booger, was his finish. Call it the “trip to the bat cave”, call it the “teabag”, call it what you will…I call it effective! Somebody should bring that back as a tribute.

Homicide will be in action when Ring of Honor returns to Dayton on October 15. I remember the time I was standing outside the Montgomery County Fairgrounds & Homicide was helping Low Ki sell t-shirts…somebody yelled “Homocide” and dude got pissed! Cide’s a short dude, but he’s one of the last ROH people I’d be yelling stuff at. It just doesn’t sound like a good idea.

Bobby Lashley will be competing for the Inoki Genome Federation on September 25, when he teams with Bob Sapp to take on Kendo Kashin and Tamon Honda. Should be a barnburner. By that I mean that people would burn their barn if this match was taking place inside of it.

CZW is signing their workers to contracts. The company seems to be stepping things up, as they’ll be making their Massachusetts debut in October. They’ve mostly been running in Philadelphia’s Arena for quite awhile now, so this is a pretty sudden thing. I guess CZW’s new owner, DJ Hyde, has higher goals for the company than John Zandig did.

A friendly Mickie James fan suggested to the former WWE Diva that she & Batista would make a cute couple. Mickie said that she would rather run headfirst into a brick wall. If nothing else, it’s a good sign that Mickie James isn’t taking love advice from her fans. Nothing good could possibly come of that.

Jim Neidhart is still in jail. In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

I know, we don’t usually feature non-wrestling women in the column. But a Milla Jovovich movie was #1 at the box office this week, and she is my favorite export from the Ukraine. Plus, I don‘t have any pictures of the hot bartenders I drool over.

JP Prag introduces a new column concept that I think has potential. Not from me, mind you, but somebody else could do something with it.

Oh, and since Prag brought it up in his column, what’s with all the AJ hate from the 411 Universe? I’m not getting that. She isn’t a great promo, but what WWE Diva is? I’d say Maryse, but then people would yell at me. AJ’s obstacle course performance wasn’t very impressive, but she’s still my choice to win, by gum. I am very loyal to my women.

I look forward to Ari’s next column. He’s promised lots of words on the Glory by Honor show, and some harsh words for the crowd and their ridiculous chants. It should be a good one! Not that they all aren’t, but you know what I mean.

The Triple Threat talks about Matt Hardy. Well, somebody’s got to. The guy just doesn’t get enough attention.

Weyer talks about people getting buried.

Byers talks Perros del Mal. How did Supreme get on a PPV main event? That’s…odd.

Csonka hates on my boy Chad. Child please.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week. The distinguished JP Prag will be in tomorrow, and I’ll be back next week with more News From Cook’s Corner! Until then…

This is Dr. Wagner Jr., AAA Mega Champion & the Cook Regime’s favorite luchador. Bien Bien Bien Bien…