News From Cook’s Corner 05.12.10

Hi, hello and welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, and last week I learned a very valuable lesson: back to back wrestling news columns are a bad idea. People who have done this for awhile know that it’s best to have a couple of days before a column to gather your thoughts, write stuff down, edit it, edit it again and again, and then eventually have something that might be presentable to the general public. So my plans of expanding the Cook Regime have hit a bit of a snag, but there are still some different things I’m looking into. I’m in talks with TBS for a late-night talk show, ESPN 2 for a mid-afternoon sports talk show, and Spike TV for a weekly wrestling show.

Everybody else has one!

Programming Note: I was trying to think of something to do on the June 2nd edition of the Corner that wouldn’t involve a lot of busy work for me…see, my birthday is on May 27th, and right after that is Memorial Day Weekend, so I’m looking to get out of spending a lot of time researching wrestling news. Since it’s a holiday there probably won’t be that much anyway. While thinking about this, I noticed an article about Maxim’s Hot 100. Katy Perry’s all right with me, but it wouldn’t hurt for me to totally jack their gimmick.

So on June 2nd I’ll be presenting the News From Cook’s Corner Hot 100. I’m assuming I can come up with 100 hot lady wrestlers or women involved in da biz to some extent. I’ll even stretch it back a full year so I can include people that have been fired and aren’t really involved with wrestling anymore. Since I just came up with this less than 24 hours ago, I haven’t planned a darn thing or decided if I want other people to participate.

I have a feeling that some of you would like to see me do this all on my own, because you get a kick out of my preferences in women. It’s all good, I’ve got no problem with that. I do think that if you want to make sure that I don’t forget somebody or overlook a person because I’m not familiar with their work (I‘m sure there are quite a few that will fall into that category), you should e-mail me at [email protected] or say something down in the comment section if you’re comfortable with the unwashed masses knowing who you’re digging on.

Hopefully I’ll come up with 100 women and it won’t be like Jeff Small’s IWC 18 from a few years ago. Stay tuned!

Have you guys had the new Mountain Dew flavors yet? I’m sensing some of you are shocked that I’ve actually drank something without alcohol in it. Anyway, I’m really not sure which one to vote for. The lime one looks a little too much like the regular Dew to stand out but it’s got a good taste to it. The tropical one’s a bit funky in a good way, and I dig the citrus one too. It’s going to be a tough choice in a different way than the Kentucky Senate primary is going to be. I don’t know how the three other liberals in my state feel about it, but I’m less than impressed with our choices. Of course, the folks on the other side are even worse, so it’ll be an easier pick in the general election. I think this is why nobody votes in primary elections.

Kelly Kelly is the latest target of Team Laycool, who claim that she doesn’t smell very good. Unlike their previous claims of Mickie James being fat & Beth Phoenix looking like a man, we can’t really refute this or really have an opinion one way or the other. Well, I can’t because I’ve never crossed paths with Kelly. Perhaps one of you fine readers can enlighten us on this.

And now the fake news!

John Meehan’s best friend Irv Muchnick reports that WWE’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel Jared Bartie was fired from the company for sexual harassment. Apparently there was an incident during WrestleMania XXVI Weekend where he inappropriately hit on a woman after having a few adult beverages. Now, who among us hasn’t done that once or twice? I say let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Of course, I don’t blame WWE for suspending him, but I’m not going to get up on my high horse and get all preachy about how Bartie should be disciplined even more harshly for doing something that happens at just about every office party in America.

(I’m being a bit facetious here…mostly because there’s nobody in my workplace worthy of being sexually harassed. Not at my “real” job and not here either. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s a bit of a sausage fest around here. I was hoping we could bring in some hotties during the hiring drive but Csonka hasn’t had any luck. Tis a shame.)

Of course, the story gets better…the woman involved in this was fired by WWE just weeks later after being caught performing a sex act on another WWE employee on company property during business hours. Well, no wonder Bartie thought he had a chance! You can’t be accusing people of sexual harassment on one hand and performing sex acts at inappropriate places during inappropriate times. People who do this are referred to around here as “slutty bitches”. I know we had a women’s movement 50 years ago and I’m all for equality, but I’m not for sex acts in the workplace unless you work at a strip club. And even there you should have limits.

The fact of the matter is that sex & wrestling go together like peanut butter & jelly, especially behind the scenes. Ric Flair’s career wouldn’t have been what it was if he wasn’t a serial sexual harasser. Vince McMahon booked himself to make out with every Diva on the roster for years until that pesky PG thing kicked in. It’s really not surprising that WWE Corporate employees act similar to the person that runs their company, and nobody should expect it to change anytime soon.

I mean, I work for two companies run by drunks, ne’er do wells and vagabonds. See where I get it from?

WrestleMania drew 885,000 buys worldwide, which is seen by many as a pretty big disappointment. Considering it featured the retirement of Shawn Michaels & the return of Bret Hart, I’d have to agree. Obviously this means that WWE is in its last days and won’t be a successful company very much longer.

I’m kidding. Though I’m sure plenty of you wouldn’t be if you said the same thing.

There’s been a bit of an ankle injury epidemic in WWE, as Kane & Beth Phoenix both suffered minor ankle injuries last week. They should both be back in action pretty soon, and I’m trying to think of other things they have in common but I’m drawing a blank. If Undertaker would share I’d be able to say that they’ve both had their way with Michelle McCool. But that would be mean.

An Indian promoter that falsely advertised the Great Khali for an event was arrested. DS Babbar admitted to police that he tricked fans into thinking that Khali would be appearing at the event…when Khali wasn’t there the fans started a riot. Could you imagine what would happen in the United States if we started throwing wrestling promoters in jail for falsely advertising people? The American wrestling business as we know it would be over in thirty days.

It’s also ironic because here in America wrestling promoters wouldn’t think to advertise Great Khali. He’s usually part of the “and many more” that work WWE house shows.

“Rocket Hero” Buzz Aldrin will be hosting Raw on May 17 in Toronto. Will Canadians show the proper respect to a true American hero, or will Buzz have to turn heel on them like Sgt. Slaughter did? I hope it’s the former, because the Slaughter stuff was pretty ridiculous in the way that isn’t good.

Speaking of people that are way older than your humble correspondent, there have been talks of Betty White hosting Raw after her performance on Saturday Night Live. Isn’t that really quite bass-ackwards? I’d think that hosting Raw after hosting Saturday Night Live would kind of be like playing for the Clippers after you’ve been with the Lakers. I mean, I’m a huge Betty White fan and would love to have her on Raw, but the logic involved here just sounds strange to me.

Matt Hardy told people on his twitter box to yell “We Want Matt” when they see Drew McIntyre. Didn’t Theodore Long fire Drew on Smackdown? When are we going to see him, when we’re walking down the street? I know that whenever somebody gets fired that just means they’ll be back real soon with a push, but would it kill Matt to act like Drew’s actually gone for a few minutes?

No wonder kayfabe’s dead.

So why was Drew fired on Smackdown? Nobody seems to know, but the current speculation is that it’ll lead to the return of Mr. McMahon as he keeps his Chosen One safe from the wrath of Long. Yay? I think people backstage have noticed that people are into Drew until his cool entrance is over, so they’ve concluded that Vince by his side will be the answer. I’m of the opinion that the Mr. McMahon character has pretty much run its course, but at the same time I figure that if Vince really wants to get this guy over he should do it his damn self. Que Sera, Sera.

There were rumors that he failed a drug test, and others speculated that he was taking time off because he just got married to Tiffany. How long do people usually get off work after getting married? A week, maybe? No, I don’t think that’s the answer. Most of us probably wouldn’t even notice if he was gone for a week, so I doubt they’d go to those lengths. I have a feeling we’ll find out soon enough.

Yup yup yup.

Well, it turns out that Drew McIntyre is your “new” Intercontinental Champion, as at the Smackdown tapings this week Teddy Long came out after Kofi Kingston beat Christian and said that Vince McMahon told him to give Drew the title back.

LAME. NOT COOL. TOTALLY LAME.

On the bright side, they theoretically built Kofi Kingston & Christian as contenders. There’s also the added bonus of working the smarks, which is always a fun thing to do and often more important to wrestling companies than doing good business.

But I had to write several paragraphs about Drew McIntyre that could have been better spent on just about anything else. So this does not please me.

Raw stayed at pretty much the same rating this week that it had when Impact was on against it. That just might be the most damning bit of evidence that the Monday experiment was a complete and utter failure for TNA. I’ll cue the Impact Zone chant “At least you tried!” now. The show itself was pretty unremarkable except for Daniel Bryan finally getting a victory (too bad we’ll never see that guy again) and William Regal’s rap. This deserves to be reprinted in all of its glory:

Straight out of Blackpool
I’m William Regal
My rhyme’s so intense
It shouldn’t be legal
My style is refined
Not crude and crass
I’ll keep you grounded
Like volcanic ash
I’ll take you down
Rung by rung
I’m just like British Parliament
I’m completely hung
Straight Up Gangsta Trippin.
Yes boy.

Indeed. I also enjoyed this:

Batista must really like Mizark because that has to be the biggest bump he’s ever taken off of anything. That might be my second favorite GIF of 2010, closely behind Donovan McCrabb going nuts at the Mascot Bowl.

That one’s going to be tough to beat.

Former WWE wrestler Domino recently did an interview where he said that WWE was planning to have Maryse manage him & Deuce while giving them a makeover to update their style before they got future endeavored. I had completely forgotten about this until I researched it, but the Sexiest of the Sexy actually did manage them for a cup of coffee in mid-2008 until the team split up and both men faded into obscurity. Out of the three people involved in this, we should certainly thank our lucky stars that Maryse was the one that made something of themselves.

People may hate on my girl’s matches, but she’s never been involved in anything as horrible as Deuce & Domino’s match with Sgt. Slaughter & Jimmy Snuka. Good God, I think she could have a match with Mae Young that would out-do that debacle.

Some of you have noted that I’ve been pretty harsh towards the TNA Wrestling company lately. I was going to go on a ridiculously long rant about why, but then it hit me: Why should I waste my time ranting and raving about how bad the TNA product and business practices have been lately when everybody reading this already knows that? I’m not telling you guys anything that you don’t already know, am I?

I guess the reason it gets to me a little bit, and a reason I’ve been extra harsh towards this promotion lately, is that I supported it long before many people bothered watching it. You can ask Larry Csonka about how we were the only people on the 411 staff who would even bother talking about TNA back in 2004-05. He was just as pissed off as I was watching Impact a couple of weeks ago when TNA flipped their fans the double bird and had RVD squash Desmond Wolfe in five minutes. Mind you, this is far from the first time that TNA has ignored their audience, but we both like to think that at some point TNA will learn their lesson. This is probably a dumb thing to think.

Recently I went out on a limb and supported TNA bringing in Hulk Hogan & Eric Bischoff. Everybody else on the Interweb was throwing a fit, but I went on the other side and looked at the positives of bringing in two guys who had been around the wrestling business for a long time and had surely learned from their previous mistakes. Of course, I wasn’t aware that they didn’t think they made any previous mistakes. I probably should have known better. I think I was so excited to take an opposing viewpoint that I didn’t see the forest for the trees.

So it all comes down to this…I was wrong about something. I guess I could end up being right if the Bischogan regime takes their heads out of their rear ends and eventually produces a show worth watching on a regular basis that makes the industry take notice, but the odds of that happening are about as good as the odds of Pacman Jones not getting in trouble with the law as a member of my Cincinnati Bengals.

*shakes head and sighs*

To put a cherry on top of the TNA stupidity that’s been chronicled recently, I’ve seen some reports that TNA is signing Betsy Ruth and wants to push her as the new Awesome Kong. For those of you unfamiliar with Betsy, she was recently in a dark match at an Impact taping with Daffney.

Yes, that’s the match where Daffney got hurt.

Yes, they’re apparently going to sign somebody who hurt one of their regular talents in a tryout match.

Do you really need more evidence that this company doesn’t have a freaking clue?

Jeff Hardy’s trial has received another continuance and will pick up on June 3rd. Or so they say. I think that Matt Hardy will win at least five WWE matches before his brother actually goes to trial. Yeah, I’m guessing Jeff goes to trial sometime around August…2011.

Tara is on her way out of TNA, and apparently wants one last run with WWE. Remember when Tara left WWE and was so happy to go to TNA because they’d let her actually do stuff? Funny how things change over time. There was allegedly heat between Tara & the Beautiful People, but Tara has stated that she enjoys working with Velvet Sky & Madison Rayne. I wonder if there’s any coincidence that she left somebody out. Hmmmmmmmm.

Speaking of former WWE Divas & TNA, Maria Kanellis has been in talks with the company, but the main holdup in discussions has been money. I think it says something when HDNet can afford to bring her in to interview MMA fighters on shows, but TNA can’t bring her in for a wrestling show.

There has been a lot of speculation as to how much money the Knockouts are making. Recently it was rumored that Madison Rayne was left off of some recent house shows because she couldn’t afford to make the trip, but the pride of Ohio Championship Wrestling says that isn’t the case at all. She’s very happy with the money she’s making was the jist of her online statement, along with various usages of “lol” and unnecessary Chicago Cub support. How do you grow up in Ohio and become a Cubs fan? For heaven’s sake, I’d rather hear she was an Indians fan!

Eric Bischoff is appearing regularly on an Internet radio show until he gets tired of people asking him questions. One of the more interesting things he said was that they never intended to compete with Raw when they moved to Monday…

“We never intended to compete with WWE, we intended to position ourselves on Monday night, because that’s where the traditional wrestling fan audience is, and we thought that would be a great way to gain exposure for the TNA brand. That’s why we went to Monday nights, not to compete.”

You know, I’ve heard that Monday night talking point before, and I’ve probably repeated it as “fact” because I can be lazy sometimes.. But where does the “traditional wrestling fan audience” go on other nights? The fact is that audience shows up when there’s something that they think is worth watching. If it was on a Tuesday night or a Wednesday night they’d be there then too. Come to think of it, Tuesday & Wednesday are usually weaker TV nights than Monday and don’t feature football games during the fall, so why doesn’t a wrestling company put their main show on then?

Admittedly I’m not really up to date on what draws ratings these days, but I do know that Dancing with the Stars on Mondays & Tuesdays has become the top rated show in the country and sent American Idol running home to its mother. What’s on Wednesday? I think Idol’s on, cable’s got South Park, but what else is there? I guess the main thing in the way there is Spike runs The Ultimate Fighter on Wednesdays when it’s on, but they could either change that or put Impact in the 8-10 slot, couldn’t they?

I don’t know who I’m asking these questions to. Usually this doesn’t happen until much later in the evening.

Shelly Martinez has recently been trying to get hired (well, re-hired, but its been so long that it’s almost like she wasn’t even there) by TNA. She’s gone to interesting lengths in this quest, mostly involving strange pictures like this one:

Yeah, I dunno what’s going on there. She has also said that it would be her dream to manage Shannon Moore, proving if nothing else that her and I dream about vastly different things. I think I had a nightmare involving Shannon Moore and a midget once, but that’s as close as I get to smelling what she’s cooking. She contacted Terry Taylor the other day to see if she had a shot, and Taylor replied that there currently isn’t a place for her in the company.

Maybe she can contact Jim Cornette and see if he can get her a spot with ROH. If she mentions Taylor turning her down he’ll probably sign her.

Shelly may be out of luck, but the woman known as Lizzy Valentine or Kandi Kisses depending on if you’re a WSX or a Wrestlicious person might be finding her way to TNA. The Twitter campaign has struck again, and much like how Shannon Moore got a job with TNA thanks to it, Lizzy will be receiving another tryout match very soon. Well, this is certainly a step up from Moore. Maybe Twitter’s getting more picky about who they push.

If you’re not familiar with Ms. Valentine, here’s a look at her WSX work with some XPW thrown in here and there…

Taz has been advocating that TNA bring in Mike Knox. It’s been reported that when he went to Bischogan with this idea, neither man knew who he was.

Knox, not Taz. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t know who Taz was either.

Gregory Helms is reportedly going to be with TNA pretty soon after his non-compete clause expires. No surprise there, TNA’s home to the Hardy Clique and will certainly do everything they can to appease a guy that might be headed to jail if they ever have a trial. But who cares about that? In all fairness, I was a huge fan of Hurricane during his feud with the Rock, and still think that WWE dropped the ball with him after that. He hasn’t done much to help himself recently, but I’m not opposed to giving him another chance.

In case you’re curious about how Monday night ratings went for Spike without Impact, Revenge of the Sith did a .44 rating. It says a lot about the quality of the Star Wars prequels that it took me a few minutes to remember which one that was. Really, other than Natalie Portman getting it done until her character got preggers, Darth Maul’s double light saber and the time Yoda had a light saber fight, that trilogy had nothing going for it.

Dixie Carter will be doing a live YouShoot in New Jersey this Friday. I kind of feel sorry for Dixie, as I’m sure she means the best but just doesn’t have a clue what she’s gotten into. I definitely feel sorry for myself because I can’t make the trip and see this debacle live and in living color.

We’ve had a pretty steady stream of interesting fan stories in the column recently. Unfortunately they’ve been trending downhill, as we went from the awesome grandmother in Tennessee who slapped CM Punk to the crazy Brooklyn dude that wanted to blow up Titan Towers, and now we’ve managed to step even lower into the abyss of humanity with the latest wrestling fan story.

David Laird, a twenty-eight year old from Oklahoma, has been arrested and charged with felony child abuse for powerbombing and abusing his girlfriend’s four year old child. The report states that while Laird originally claimed that the child fell off of a clothes dryer, he later admitted that he powerbombed the child onto a bed, then slammed him into a door frame several times before the kid got dizzy and began to vomit. The victim had a large bruise on the back of his head, fractures on his skull and chest, and bruising on his shoulders, back, legs and genitalia according to a court affidavit.

You know, I’m generally not one to wish ill will towards people I’ve never met, but I hope that when this jerkoff goes to prison he gets a friendly cell mate named Bubba and they get to know each other very, very well. It’s sickos like this that reinforce negative wrestling fan stereotypes that have plagued us ever since there was a pro wrestling business. I’m sure every single one of you has had the “I’m a wrestling fan” conversation with people that aren‘t, and about fifty percent of the time you get a really weird look from a person who believes that wrestling fans are the scum of the earth and shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce or even mingle with society.

And stories like this are why they believe that.

Let’s go to something more fun before I lose my lunch…

One of the great things about the independent wrestling scene is that things can happen there that would never happen in a large wrestling companies. People who harbor long-standing grudges with each other often have to bite their tongues and work with people that they hate for the sake of business, and for the sake of their jobs. When you’re working for an independent wrestling company, you’re often just working for them for one night. Sure, it’d be nice to work for them more than once, but there’s no guarantee that a lot of these companies will run another show, or run anything resembling a consistent schedule.

So, sometimes you get grouchy old wrestling veterans that don’t like each other. Sometimes they end up at a show where the promoter is dumb enough to book them against each other. Hilarity ensues!

Last Saturday night, Pro Wrestling Syndicate ran a show in White Plains, NY. You may remember that “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan is an Upstate NY guy, and sure enough, ol’ Hacksaw was there working the show. He was working against none other than Matt Bourne, who’s doing his “Rebourne Again” Doink/Joker type gimmick these days. Now, this usually wouldn’t be a story except that it turns out that Duggan had some heat with Bourne for something that happened over twenty years ago. There was a deal at a Mid-South show where Duggan got attacked by a fan, and Bourne got involved and messed the fan up something fierce. The fan ends up suing Duggan, Bill Watts & Mid-South, Duggan gets banned from wrestling in the town and misses out on some nice money thanks to Bourne’s over-reaction.

He is not happy. Years pass. I have to believe that Duggan crossed paths with Doink Bourne at some point in early 90s WWF, but that wasn’t an environment where you could just kick somebody’s butt. You could crap in their crown, sure, but butt kickings were generally frowned upon. So he had to let his resentment fester. That isn’t healthy, you know. It’s best to let these things out as early as possible, otherwise they build up and become more and more irritating.

So, Bourne tries to work the match out with Duggan. Duggan’s not really listening, pretty much blowing him off. Once they got out to the ring, things start out really slowly. Eventually they do some stuff and Bourne hits a low blow. Duggan no-sells. Bourne gets pissed and tries to take Duggan down. Duggan pretty much owns him on the mat, and Bourne goes outside. He decides to pick up a chair, which is certainly a better weapon choice than Sid Vicious’ squeegee, and Duggan gets his 2X4. Bourne ends up storming out of the building, going out a side door, getting in his car and zooming off while Duggan goes to the locker room and yells at anybody that will listen about Bourne being a pussy.

The moral of this story: Indy wrestling is lots of fun and you should go see a show. Especially if there are older wrestlers that may have been disrespected by somebody at some point that just don’t care anymore.

I actually updated my Facebook page for the first time in ages! Now that I have a fast computer the site makes a little more sense to me. I mention all of this here because I get lots of messages from people inviting me to Facebook…so those people and the rest of you can now add me and we can be friends or followers or whatever the hell they are on there. I plan on using the site to pimp my projects, re-connect with some friends I’ve lost touch with, and to help my self-esteem by looking at people that I used to know and didn‘t care for all that much. I’m not gonna lie, most of their recent pictures make me feel a lot better about myself even with the extra pounds I’ve picked up lately.

Oh, don’t act like you’ve never done it! I know you’ve all looked up people that rejected you back in the day to make sure that they’re doing worse than you are. It’s only natural. Now, the next step that people often take is to message them with the phrase “Choke on it.”, but I’m too nice of a guy to do that.

The Rs featured me forgetting to list the main event in the Quick Results of Superstars. In my defense, I forget to do any Quick Results most weeks, and a good editor would be able to fix a mistake like that. Eh, what can ya do.

Csonka talks about some of his favorite WWE events at Mellon Arena. Sadly he didn’t talk about all the times he was up in the cheap seats when Bruno Sammartino came to his hometown and defended the WWWF title. I’d rather hear about that than King Mabel any day of the week.

Hubbard puts two more Ric Flair 2000s matches in his top ten than I would. I’d take out those two and the Starrcade ‘83 match (which I think is tremendously overrated in some circles), and put in the Chi-Town Rumble match, the Sting match from Clash I & the Barry Windham match from Worldwide that was on the first Flair WWE set.

I can’t believe that people in that comment thread are going to the “routine” argument. Listen, anybody who’s wrestled for over fifty years is going to have certain spots that they rely on at certain points in a match. Really, it’s hard to think of any big-name North American wrestler over the past half-century that can’t be accused of doing similar things in all of their matches. I hate watching Flair try to wrestle in 2010, but it is kind of amazing that he still remembers a couple of his spots.

Byers cracks me up sometimes. In the WOTW thread in the super secret writer forum he was telling everybody about everything going on Japan so they knew how to vote, and he mentioned this joshi fed called “Ice Ribbon” that apparently features a lot of teenage girls. I refused to believe this actually existed and posed the question of what in the blue hell “Ice Ribbon” even meant. He replied with the following:

ICE is actually an acronym for Innocent Candies Evolution.

So it’s Innocent Candies Evolution Ribbon. That should make things more clear.

I’m pretty sure Byers despises me and the things I stand for, but I found that hilarious. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week! JP Prag will be in tomorrow and every Thursday until he gets that job as WWE’s Vice President of Talent Brand Management. I’ll be back next week with more News From Cook’s Corner. Until then…