News From Cook’s Corner 08.04.10

Hi, hello, and welcome to News From Cook’s Corner. I’m Steve Cook, and I did not have sexual relations with Karen Sypher. Apparently a lot of people in the city of Louisville did, but thankfully I was too busy living the college life to try and hook up with Krazy Karen. So if you hear about any mentally unstable people trying to extort me, don’t worry. I am an innocent man with nothing to hide.

Hope you all are having a good week…it’s been a bit of a slow one on the wrestling news front, but as usual I’ll do my best to present the news that’s fit to print, with the usual Cook tomfoolery thrown in for good measure. I’m not the kind of man to make a whole lot promises, but I can promise you this: it’ll take longer than fifteen seconds.

Let’s get it started, shall we?

This week is a pretty big one for fans of wildlife, especially of the aquatic variety. Discovery Channel is presenting its twenty third edition of Shark Week, an annual celebration of everybody’s favorite large fish that sometimes eats people. It gets huge ratings for the network every single year, as people who will never watch the channel the other fifty-one weeks of the year go crazy over sharks. And why not? Sharks are the epitome of cool. I thought it would be fun if we got into the spirit of Shark Week and looked at some of professional wrestling’s greatest sharks.

The only problem is that there really aren’t that many wrestling sharks. You’d think that lucha libre would have a few guys in shark masks running around, maybe even a few midgets. I’d think Mini Shark would be a pretty cool gimmick. Alas, the only one I could find in CubsFan’s archives was Shark, an opening match wrestler for IWRG for three months in 2004. I asked former Ask 411 Wrestling writer Chris Lansdell if he knew of any wrestling sharks other than the ones I named, and this was his response:

“Stretch it and use Isaac Yankem cos of the teeth thing. DDP in his motivational speaker mode too. Mickie James and Matt Hardy cos they are whales. Edge cos he sharked Lita.”

He demanded credit for his suggestions, and I said that if I was him, I wouldn’t want it. He does outrank me in the 411 hierarchy though, so there it is. Later in the column we’ll profile some famous wrestling sharks and the countless hours of entertainment they’ve provided us all. Here’s a hint to all you bookers and promoters out there…people like sharks! How does CHIKARA not have a guy wrestling in a shark costume? It boggles my mind.

(I could have sworn that somebody did a Shark Week gimmick on this website in the past, but our search function doesn’t work and peoples’ teasers generally aren’t helpful. Oh well.)

And now, the fake news!

There was a new WWE logo posted on the Internet that provoked a lot of fan reaction. I don’t really have an opinion on logos that are unofficial, but I do think that WWE has needed a new logo for a very long time now. The Attitude Era is over, so it’s time to get rid of the scratch logo. I’ve done a little work on it, and here’s my idea for WWE’s new logo:

What do you guys think? I think the smiley face helps establish WWE’s PG image and presents a friendly welcome for the kiddies to WWE programming.

A couple of weeks ago, it was reported that AAA Reina de Reinas Sexy Star was in talks with WWE. I thought nothing of it until last week, when it was reported that Sexy was in Florida for a WWE tryout. WWE did hold an evaluation clinic over the weekend for experienced professional wrestlers that were interested in trying out for WWE. Each wrestler paid $1000 for this, but obviously it could be well worth it for them if WWE ended up being interested in their services.

Let’s put it this way…I’ve spent $1000 on worse. Mostly exes. But enough about my social life!

Sexy has denied these reports on her Twitter, but has confirmed that she is in Florida, and pictures she posted indicate that former AAA luchadora Rain is also there. Now, I guess it is possible that two lady wrestlers working in Mexico could take a vacation to Tampa at the same exact time that WWE is holding tryouts at their FCW camp and it could be a complete coincidence having nothing to do with any interest in joining WWE. I’d have to be really, really gullible to buy into it, though. Fortunately for Sexy and her spot with AAA if WWE doesn’t end up signing her, Dorian Roldan is said to be rather gullible, especially when it comes to information presented by members of the opposite sex.

Maybe he’ll buy her story that she was there to see Mickey Mouse.

Jim Ross had some more news on this clinic in a recent blog post…sixty-three wrestlers showed up for it, and the top two to five talents would be offered contracts. My Louisville math tells me that at $1000 a head, WWE raked in a cool $63,000 by doing this clinic. It’s good to be the king, isn’t it?

Speaking of JR, he also commented on a rumor that Sting would be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011. I find that highly unlikely, especially if he remains under contract with TNA. I had originally thought that this year might be the last one for the Stinger, but I’m not really sure it will be with the way they’ve been using him. I think Eric Bischoff remembers that Sting was at his most popular when he was up in the rafters and not doing much on television, so they’re not having him do much on television. It’s an interesting strategy.

After a lot of speculation over the past few weeks, we’ve finally got an official update from Shawn Michaels…via his website!

Well, I can’t hold it against him that he’s letting himself go. He deserves it!

WWE is in the process of creating more products geared towards kids. The one that most interests me is WWE Mad Libs. Remember Mad Libs? Man, I had so many books of those things when I was a kid, and even a couple years ago we were playing Mad Libs on a long car ride with hilarious results. I am all about some WWE Mad Libs.

Former WWE employee Shane McMahon has been named the CEO of China Broadband Inc. CBI is a provider of cable broadband services and publisher of digital and analog program guides in the Shandong Province of China. I guess he decided he’d rather be in China.

AJ Styles had some interesting comments in an interview with PWI Weekly. I don’t know if they asked him about that new tattoo of his, but they really should have. More importantly, somebody should have talked with him before he got it. The design would probably be pretty decent if it was a bit smaller and not taking up half of his torso. I dunno, I’m not a tattoo guy, but to me that’s a pretty bad look.

As for the interview, AJ had the following to say about losing the TNA title to Rob Van Dam.

“I definitely didn’t understand it. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure it. I was very surprised that they would want me to lose that title after holding it for so long, and to somebody who hasn’t been in wrestling for over a year, and came from WWE to win the World Title so quickly…And he should have been tired from wrestling a match before that (against Jeff Hardy). I was very conflicted on that. It was like, ‘I have no idea what’s going on here anymore.’ I don’t know how to put it in words. I was pissed off – I don’t want to say that – but at the same time, I was very confused. ‘Okay, I guess I’m not the star that I thought I was here at TNA. I guess I’m just a TNA guy.'”

He was also critical of the decision to move to Monday nights & the release of Christopher Daniels, while being optimistic about the ECW angle and the job performance of Dixie Carter. Basically, Styles is the guy that’s been with TNA through the good times and the bad, and sometimes he gets pushed aside for a new fling. We’ve all been there. Eventually TNA will come to its senses and realize that AJ is the one for them. Will AJ be around when that happens? Probably. He seems like a pretty loyal dude. He just needs a little patience…

Or maybe he doesn’t. It’s nice to see somebody not giving 100% PC answers on one of these interviews every once in awhile.

Dave Scherer is reporting that Samoa Joe has been suspended indefinitely (or about a month) by TNA for attitude problems. My colleague Jeff Small discussed Joe’s issues with Jeremy Borash informing the fans that there were 30 seconds left in his match with Jeff Hardy, and I can’t really disagree with Small’s opinion. Yup, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in awhile.

While I don’t blame Joe if he’s upset with his status in TNA, he needs to handle it better than by going back to the production truck and yelling at everybody there. Besides, of all the things to get upset about…a time cue? Really, Joe? Really? The way your TNA career has been going, you should have been happy to be on Impact and not even having to lose to somebody. I remember a time when Joe was wrestling 60 minute draws with CM Punk in Ring of Honor…I don’t remember Joe getting upset and yelling at everybody if they gave a time cue.

I dunno, I miss the good old days when wrestling matches on television had time limits. The concept of the ring announcer giving time cues is something I would support. I’m not really getting Joe’s problem here…I could understand if he was upset about any number of things, but not time cues.

Dixie Carter announced on Monday that Sabu will be appearing at Hardcore Justice. I’d probably be more excited about this if I hadn’t seen him wrestle Dr. Wagner Jr. on an AAA TV show a couple of months back. I’d say he’s lost a few steps, but that’d imply that he actually has a step left. It’s all right though, he’ll just fit in with most of the people that will be appearing on the show. On the bright side, 2 Cold Scorpio will also be at the show, and people have said that he’s still in good wrestling shape. 2 Cold was rumored to be part of that new Florida wrestling promotion that’s supposed to become competition to TNA, so we’ll see if this leads to something more for him.

One thing that won’t be happening at the PPV will be a match between Shane Douglas & Ric Flair. The Nature Boy rejected the idea when it was presented to him, which I think is smart on his part. (Wow, when’s the last time I said that something Flair did was smart?) Seriously though, Ric Flair only has so many matches left…why would he waste one on a 2010 Shane Douglas?

TNA Reaction will finally be making its return on Thursday, August 12th right after Impact. They’re saying it will air every week after Impact. I thought it was a pretty interesting show the first time it aired, but honestly, there’s little chance I’m going to be staying up past midnight to watch it when I’m working early on Friday morning. There are certain things I would stay up for…TNA Reaction isn’t one of them.

The press release on this noted that the project was created and produced by Bischoff Hervey Entertainment Television, which finally answers the question of what exactly Eric Bischoff does with TNA. Apparently they’ve been using some cutting-edge cameras, and I hope those weren’t the blurry shots because that’d be pretty embarrassing. It does seem like an interesting concept that I’ll be sure to catch at a convenient time.

The two security guards that wrestled on Impact last week were NWA Anarchy Heavyweight Champion Mikael Judas and NWA National Champion Phil Shatter. I’m not familiar with the work of either man, but somebody (I think it was Csonka, but am not 100% sure) told me awhile back that Shatter was somebody to watch out for during a discussion about the NWA title change when Adam Pearce defeated Shatter & Blue Demon Jr.

TNA is running the former ECW Arena on September 24, which makes them the 956th wrestling promotion to run that particular facility in the last year. They must not charge people very much to use it.

Former WCW wrestler & New Japan star Scott Norton used the power of Twitter to suggest to Dixie Carter that he should be brought into TNA to serve as her bodyguard. If nothing else, it’s a pretty good usage of networking skills by Norton. I can’t say I’d be all that excited to see Scott Norton back on my television, but they have done worse. I wonder if he’s in better shape than Balls Mahoney. He’d have to be, right?

Sarita was taken off of a CMLL card over the weekend due to an arm injury. Figures, now that she’s on television semi-regularly and wearing awesome shorts, she gets hurt. Boourns!

Gene Snitsky has been trying to sign with TNA & ROH. I think he’d definitely be a better fit in TNA due to his size, but hope he goes to ROH. Why? Because I don’t get HDNet.

Hamada will be appearing on the next SHIMMER DVD tapings. She is still with TNA, right? Just checking…

Johnny Fairplay was backstage at TNA’s house show on Saturday night in North Cakalaki. You know, it’s kind of amazing that he hasn’t been back with them for a couple of years now. I guess they got distracted with Jenna Morasca for a little while, but since she’s gone they’re going to need another Survivor person around.

Wow, I almost forgot that I’m contractually obligated to mention Paul Heyman in this section at least once a week! Tommy Dreamer said on a radio interview that Paul E. has been invited to Hardcore Justice. He’s been invited to the last couple of TNA PPVs and hasn’t shown up yet, so I wouldn’t get too excited.

OK, this isn’t really a newsbite, but a question…what is up with TNA’s horrible capitalization skills? I tend to ignore these things when writing the news for the sake of my sanity, but here’s some examples of some words in the way TNA writes them out:

TNA HardCORE Justice
TNA ReACTION
TNA iMPACT!

I gueSS ranDOM cAPTIAL LETters are the FutURE Of wrestLING?

Is it just me, or would that cake look a lot better in orange with some black stripes mixed in? Oh well, it’s not my birthday that’s coming up. I’ve never been too picky about cake anyway.

ROH has a pretty good looking match booked for their Glory By Honor show on September 11, as the Kings of Wrestling will be taking on Charlie Haas & Shelton Benjamin. Charlie & Shelton have always been pretty popular with the type of fan that ROH draws, so they should do some pretty good ticket sales for that one.

Tough times for Mikey Whipwreck…the former ECW Triple Crown Champion has been suffering from an extreme pain in his neck, causing his arms to go numb. He had an MRI done on Monday, and the results should be in by Thursday. We at 411 wish Mikey a speedy recovery, and tell him to lay off the Doritos.

While recovering from a fractured hip suffered after falling, Bobby Heenan got a fractured pelvis and a broken shoulder after falling once again. Everybody says that it sucks getting old, and sadly it seems to be especially sucky for the Brain.

Nick Hogan (oh, there’s a reliable source) says that his mother Linda is not actually engaged to twenty-one year old Charlie Hill. They are apparently wearing “promise rings”, which is nothing more than an excuse to make a man buy a woman another ring from where I sit. There’s already the I-really-like-you ring, the engagement ring, the wedding ring and the I-still-like-you-after-all-these-years ring. Now they gotta add one for the thumb? Do they think we’re made of money or something?

CHIKARA has completed the twenty-four man field for their Young Lions Cup VIII tournament, to be held in Reading, PA on August 27-29. Here’s the field!

1) Lince Dorado
2) Green Ant
3) Sugar Dunkerton
4) Ophidian
5) Amasis
6) Johnny Gargano
7) Kaio
8) Adam Cole
9) Skull
10) Manabu Soya
11) Kyle O’Reilly
12) Frightmare
13) Akira Tozawa
14) Brendan Michael Thomas
15) Christen Able
16) Eric Ryan
17) Cameron Skyy
18) Sindarin
19) Obariyon
20) Chrisjen Hayme
21) Josh Pain
22) Andy “Right Leg” Ridge
23) Dustin Rayz
24) Keita Yano

Bonus points if you can name one interesting fact about every person in the field!

Bryan Danielson is running a contest where you can win a date with ROH official Todd Sinclair. You know, I’m as big a Danielson fan as anybody, but it’s hard to argue that his career’s going well when I’m reporting things like this. Though the fact that people are apparently applying for this gives me hope for the contest I’m running later this year where people can win a date with Manu Bumb.

Time for SHARK WEEK! I tried to get Craig Ferguson to host, but he said that he stopped working for fat guys when the Drew Carey Show got cancelled. Speaking of which, have you guys seen Drew lately? Man, I never thought I’d see the day where that guy would look good. At least Cleveland has that going for it these days…ok, on to the sharks!

The Shark

The Dungeon of Doom was a merry band of monsters at the beck and call of “Taskmaster” Kevin Sullivan, a devious man who had no desires in life but to end the scourge that was Hulkamania. You had Ugandan giants like Kamala, bad ass Tongans like Meng, Scottish lake monsters like Loch Ness, abominable snowmen like the Yeti, people like the Zodiac, who…well, I’m still not exactly sure what Zodiac was supposed to be. And…The Shark.

You might think this shark looks somewhat similar to John Tenta, the man who previously worked in the WWF as Earthquake, and in WCW as Avalanche. At this point in time, John Tenta was not a man. He was a shark that wanted to take a bite out of Hulkamania, brother. Sadly, it took a lot more than just one Shark and a group of oddities to destroy Hulkamania, which in fact lived forever. The Shark would disappear in May 1996, at which time John Tenta would emerge yelling and screaming about how he was a man and not a fish. See, if he had been more dedicated to being a fish, this gimmick would have worked out a lot better for him.

I’m 99.9% sure that Shark’s name was originally given as “Shark Attack”, which was meant to be similar to the other disasters that Tenta was named after over the years. Eventually they shortened it up to “The Shark”.

Our next featured aquatic athlete had a much longer career as a shark than Mr. Tenta did, but lost a lot more matches. Call it a push, I guess…

Shark Boy

Shark Boy started out in the Greater Cincinnati area back in the mid-90s, training with Les Thatcher’s Heartland Wrestling Association group. He became a cult favorite among WWF & WCW wrestlers who would come to the HWA and work Thatcher’s Brian Pillman Memorial Shows. Who doesn’t like sharks, right? After appearing in various media outlets (including Discovery Channel’s Shark Week) and having a very brief stint with WCW in 2000, Sharky made his home with TNA throughout the 2000s. Eventually he became Stone Cold Shark Boy after getting hit in the head a few too many times, but he hasn’t been seen much around TNA lately. For what it’s worth, he’s still listed on their roster page.

Speaking of TNA, it’s been said that our next entrant is actually a current TNA lady wrestler…which makes me wonder why they haven’t reunited. Perhaps there was only enough room in their pool for one shark.

Shark Girl

Shark Girl was the valet of Shark Boy back in 2002, when Sharky was trying to make a name for himself in TNA. She disappeared for several years, but re-emerged in April 2008 wrestling for the SHIMMER promotion. Now, it’s been said that this character has been played by Daffney, but I saw a match on YouTube with Daffney wrestling Shark Girl. So I’m not sure what to believe.

These sharks need somewhere to swim, right? Fortunately, pro wrestling has just the place for them…

The Shark Tank

The HP Pavilion in San Jose, known as the “Shark Tank” due to its primary tenants (the NHL’s San Jose Sharks) has played host to many editions of Raw & Smackdown over the years, and has been host to three WWE pay-per-view events. Royal Rumble 1998 featured a victory in the Rumble match by Stone Cold Steve Austin and the infamous Casket Match between Shawn Michaels & Undertaker where Michaels suffered the back injury that forced him into retirement for four years. SummerSlam 2001 featured the Rock defeating Booker T for the WCW title & Steve Austin retaining the WWF title against Kurt Angle by somewhat nefarious means. Finally, the 2007 edition of the Great American Bash had John Cena defending the WWE title against Bobby Lashley while Great Khali defended the World title against Batista & Kane. Hoo boy, that was a barn burner.

In an odd coincidence, the building had different names for each of these shows. The San Jose Arena hosted the Rumble, the Compaq Center in San Jose hosted SummerSlam, and the HP Pavilion in San Jose hosted the Bash. San Joseans can look forward to hosting another PPV event when the building changes its name again.

We hope you have enjoyed this special edition of 411Mania Shark Week! (We also hope that Discovery Channel doesn’t sue us.)

Note to people who read the Rs: Different people do each section of the column, and they don’t get together to decide what rating each show gets. I know nobody has ever asked me what I thought Impact should be rated. So complaining about one show being rated higher than the other is a pretty futile effort. That being said, I think it’d be great if we could go back to the days where one person did the whole column so we could avoid confusion amongst the readership. The problem is finding somebody willing to do it.

Hubbard ranks the top ten Randy Savage matches. He actually says that Savage doesn’t have as many great matches on tape as he thinks he would have. Aaron, you need to watch yourself some Memphis, because he had some great stuff there that would definitely make a top ten list. Unfortunately most of his ICW stuff has been lost to the ages, but many folks who were watching Savage before he got to WWF would tell you that he was a much more exciting wrestler when he was kicking it down South.

Ari comes up with crazy tag teams in the spirit of Lucha Libre. I would love to see a Tyler Black/Rasche Brown teaming. It’d certainly be a Dream Team from a kayfabe standpoint, as Black’s the champion of the company and Brown is the consensus pick for “Guy in the ROH Locker Room You’d Least Want To Pick A Fight With”. Yeah, that’d be a tough team to beat.

The Triple Threat talks about Randy Orton, among other things. Remember when most of the big pundits didn’t like Orton very much? Indeed, times have changed.

Grimm talks about a WWE title match at a SummerSlam as a Forgotten Favorite. Are we really that forgetful?

Byers talks about Beyond Wrestling. Didn’t Jake Chambers use to talk about Beyond Wrestling during his PCP fests he passed off as columns? It all makes sense now…RYAN BYERS AND JAKE CHAMBERS ARE THE SAME PERSON! OMGLOL2010WTFSNOOKI!

Ahem.

Stay tuned next week, when hopefully I’ll have a super special feature to present you guys in celebration of my sixth anniversary with 411Mania! Don’t worry, it won’t be one of those ego fests where the writer talks about how great they have been and gets everybody they know to say something nice about them in exchange for booze and/or sexual favors. No, we’ve got a little something special in mind that we haven’t done in over three and a half years. This is assuming that plans don’t fall through…

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