News From Cook’s Corner 08.19.09

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends! It just takes very long commercial breaks…kinda like MTV. I’m Steve Cook, and at this point I really don’t feel like doing an over-dramatic introduction. If you’ve been here long enough you know me, and if you don’t know me you ain’t my homie. Steve Sullivan has passed quietly into the night, and as a fellow Steve from Kentucky it’s only fitting that I take his place. Next week will be a more formal premiere, as I found out I was making my big return to regular news reporting on Monday and am still formulating all sorts of new concepts and ideas that will either excite you or beg Csonka & Ashish to fire me. I’m not sure there will be much of a middle ground.

I would have liked to include lots of funny pictures with women not wearing very much clothing this week, but my computer nearly killed itself earlier when I tried to save something onto a disk. I really need to get a new computer, what with the fantasy football season fast approaching and my return to regular 411 news reporting, which requires a lot more flash than back in my day. You know, when we walked ten miles to school in ten feet of snow. And the teachers beat us with our own textbooks whenever we got a question wrong. Yes, back before the pussification of America.

Sorry…I read the 411 Forums sometimes and I start speaking in tongues. Let’s get down to business.

What We’ve Missed

Many things have changed since the last time News From Cook’s Corner was a regular feature on the 411. With the exception of my occasional fill-in columns and a brief stint on Saturdays with the Saturday’s Morning Main Event, I haven’t had a chance to cover many important events in the world of professional wrestling since January 11, 2007. So what exactly has happened in pro wrestling since then?

Triple H returned from his quad injury – Yeah, apparently people were saying he might retire back in January 2007. I think these people were high on marijuana or something else that I really need right now.

Chris Benoit killed his family and himself – OK, I did not see that one coming. Especially since I put over Benoit as my third-favorite wrestler of all time, ahead of people like Shawn Michaels, Ricky Steamboat, Bret Hart, Mick Foley, Dr. Wagner, Jr. and many, many others. If I could have something I’ve written on the Internet back, it would be that. God, how embarrassing!

TNA is now on Thursday nights at 9:00 with a 2 hour show on Spike TV – I know we all like to bash TNA for the various nonsensical things it does (and I plan on doing a little bit of that later…oh yes.), but I remember debuting on this site five years ago writing a recap on a one-hour show on Fox Sports Net at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon. Yes, my college life probably wasn’t as sex-filled as yours was. They’ve come a long way, baby. They’ve still got a long way to go, and the ride certainly looks like it’ll be interesting, whether it’s ultimately successful or not. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Mahalo.

John Cena is a movie star – OK, he isn’t. But isn’t it fun to act like he is?

ROH is now on weekly television and no longer has the services of Gabe Sapolsky who is now with Dragon Gate USA. – I liked making fun of Gabe back in the day, but I do have to admit that ROH has missed Gabe terribly for most of the past several months that he’s been gone. They’ve shown signs of getting back on track and there are plenty of things going on there that don’t suck, so I remain cautiously optimistic for their future as long as they don’t blow more money on things like Ric Flair cutting promos without knowing anything about the talent on the roster and promoting Jerry Lynn as a world champion in 2009. And I don’t care if Alex Payne was really nice to Chris Lansdell, he still needs to either learn how to wrestle or go on the Kurt Angle diet. Speaking of which…

Jeff Jarrett got sent home in favor of a jacked-up juice monkey because he had the temerity to welcome the juice monkey’s ex-wife and children into his home – Yeah…I don’t know how to explain that one. Manu Bumb tells me that it falls under the principle of “don’t take another guy’s girl”, but that doesn’t account for the following:

-They were divorced
-Kurt Angle is fucking insane

Yeah, TNA made a good call on that one. And it looks even better after this weekend’s events, but everybody’s already got to talk about that and nothing new happened yesterday. Damn my luck!

WWE has had some really successful WrestleManias. Unfortunately, that’s about it. – It’s quite amazing to me how WrestleMania constantly outdoes itself and does bigger and bigger numbers every year. Somehow, the name WrestleMania has become a huge draw…in fact it’s a bigger draw than anybody currently in the business. WWE’s numbers aren’t horrendous by any standards, but we’re still not seeing the pro wrestling boom that I’ve seen many people on this very website prognosticate for many years. It’s funny…back in the Attitude era when wrestling was more popular than it’s ever been, the internet wrestling community was full of pissed-off young men who constantly bitched about how bad things actually were and how the Benoits, Guerreros and Malenkos of the world deserved more of a push. In 2009, when wrestling isn’t so popular and it’s pretty much the fringe thing it has been for most of it’s existence, there are more IWC people than ever praising WWE for everything that they do…the biggest thing I see people complaining about now is people that complain too much.

I suppose that’s because most of the people that complained during the Attitude era got tired of complaining and moved on to other things. Unfortunately for pro wrestling, they weren’t the only ones that did that. What we’re left with is a couple of echo chambers…you’ve got the WWE side where everything they do is right and a smaller TNA side where everything they do is right. There aren’t many voices for the middle ground these days, and that’s sad. I guess what we need is for somebody to shake things up.

Not like that! Let’s get on with things that actually happened this week…

Hopefully I’ll have a fun news graphic next week

In case you were wondering what was going on with WWE’s upcoming Breaking Point show (I’m sure somebody out there is), the latest word is that only the main events will be submission matches, while the rest of the matches will be your usual fare. Which is probably a good thing because nobody wants to see Kane & Great Khali trading submission holds…except for people with a very twisted sense of humor.

MVP vs. Jack Swagger is on for SummerFest. At least for now. If it’s anything like it was on Raw it should be quite the humdinger. Yes that’s sarcasm. I do that a lot, in case you’re scoring at home…or even if you’re alone. Speaking of the PPV this Sunday there’s a hot rumor that John Morrison could be added to the TLC match with CM Punk & Jeff Hardy. I’m not really sure why they would do this because the Punk/Hardy feud is going well enough, but if you read the Smackdown spoilers you’ll likely find out. I wouldn’t be totally opposed because we’ve already had a couple Punk/Hardy matches on PPV and Morrison has been pure awesomeness as of late.

This week’s Variety Magazine (which I have never read…what? I’m from Kentucky, the only magazine we’d be caught dead reading is Hustler) listed some upcoming Raw guest hosts, who I will list and rank using the Cook’s Corner Awesome-O-Meter.

Bob Barker: 10…who doesn’t love Bob Barker? I may be biased because I grew up with the Price Is Right being on in my house every day during summer vacation, but this will rule everything, especially if they determine the winner of the main event by having wrestlers guess the price of a new car or something.
Rev. Al Sharpton: 10…when isn’t Sharpton entertaining? You certainly don’t have to agree with his stance on anything, but he’s always interesting to listen to.
Access Hollywood’s Nancy O’Dell: 5…she’s pretty hot in the blonde cougar with decent melons kind of way, but I don’t know if she has the proper charisma for the wrestling guest host role.
Floyd Mayweather: 8…I’m not as high on Money May as a lot of people are, but he should be better than most have been so far.
LeBron James: 6…I dunno, LeBron doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to thrive in the wrestling environment. One thinks this may lead to another Shaq appearance where he hopefully tackles Big Show again, so there’s that to look forward to. As long as LeBron doesn’t get dunked on, he should be tolerable enough to deal with.

We also have a list of people that WWE is in negotiations with…

Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz
Ashlee Simpson
The Osbournes
Danny DeVito
Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa
Jimmy Fallon
Rachael Ray
MC Hammer
Woody Harrelson
Serena Williams
Ashton Kutcher

I will probably not be watching the Raw with Jimmy Fallon guest hosting. I dunno, in general the guest host thing has either been pretty amusing or really bad, like it was with Freddie Prinze Jr. on Monday. I’m sure plenty of you liked whatever it was that Santino was doing in the opening segment, but I was asking Csonka what the hell I was watching. I think it rhymed with mepic sale. At least it’s something to talk about, which is more than can be said for most of what Raw trots out there these days.

Linda McMahon is contemplating running for the U.S. Senate. I expect her to have no chance…no chance in hell for two reasons:

-She’s one of the top five least charismatic public speakers I’ve ever seen
-Her batshit crazy husband

But when you think about it, if Sarah Palin can get elected to public office anything’s possible. I hear you conservatives bitching and moaning about my Palin bashing, so I’ll change the punchline just for you…if Ted Kennedy can get elected to public office for over forty years anything’s possible. See, I just took a shot at a guy with a brain tumor. That might be too hardcore even for Rush! OK, probably not.

TNA has signed a new three-year contract with Spike TV, which includes the continuation of TNA Impact and the addition of ten one-hour specials featuring clips from TNA’s video library. This is obviously good news for TNA, as it would be very tough for them to find a better home on cable television than Spike TV. I mean, what is there that isn’t owned by NBC Universal? ESPN’s not going to air wrestling other than classic AWA matches anytime soon, I don’t think FX is actually interested in airing wrestling, and not enough people get the Playboy Channel.

Don West has been replaced in his duties as a color commentator, and depending on who you believe has either been promoted within the company or let go. I’ll miss ol’ Don, as he’d gotten progressively better during his stint as an announcer and had really hit his stride lately with his sarcastic heel act. Hopefully Taz will be more like the Taz that cared when he was announcing in WWE, and less like the one that was utterly forgettable for the last couple of years of his run there.

John Cena will be throwing out the first pitch at a Los Angeles Dodger game tomorrow. Does this mean we’ll get more internet wrestling columnists complaining about how Cena isn’t for their team?

Jerry Lynn suffered a stinger after taking a spike piledriver from Kenny King & Rhett Titus at the ROH TV tapings last weekend. Lynn will be ok, but who in the blue hell thought it’d be a good idea for him to take that move from two green guys like King & Titus? I think at least 90% of pro wrestling injuries would be avoided if wrestlers stepped back for a second and actually thought about what they were going to do. Accidents are still going to happen, but there’s no way anybody should be taking that kind of a move from two guys who are still learning on the job.

D-Lo Brown no-showed the ROH TV tapings, but it was for a good reason as his wife was giving birth to what I’m sure is a beautiful daughter. Congrats to D-Lo and the rest of the Brown family.

You can catch OVW television online at ovwrestling.com. Maybe when I get a computer that works I’ll watch it and see what my buddy Kenneth Bolin is up to these days.

Kim Couture talked about a potential MMA match with Tara Victoria Varon on some radio show yesterday. I’m not sure if it qualifies as news or not, but these rumors about Tara wanting to do MMA keep popping up. I guess she’s just hoping no female fighter knows how to apply a kneebar or some other submission hold that could tear her already bum knee up. Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea? Then again, I also think that I have a chance with Gina Carano now that she’s actually lost a fight. I may be a bit delusional.

We close with some sad news this week, as Jim Ross reports that “Dr. Death” Steve Williams is once again battling throat cancer. We here at 411 hope Williams hits cancer with either the Doctor Bomb or the Oklahoma Stampede, depending on which move he feels like using. You can go to WrestlersRescue.org for more information on how you can help Steve Williams and other retired wrestlers with their medical issues.

Plugs!

Holy crap, the Gun has a column now? I think that means everybody who used to write at TWTF has had a column here. Well, except for the Penguin, who won’t even talk to me anymore. That’s probably got more to do with his upcoming nuptials than any bitterness towards me for not getting him a column, but I like to overestimate my importance in the great scheme of things. Chicks dig that.

There’s another top ten column now, and I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that your humble correspondent invented the usage of the Top Ten in wrestling columns. Not that I’m one to toot my own horn, or take credit for concepts that I obviously didn’t invent. Of course not.

Speaking of glossing myself, I was in Buy or Sell a couple of weeks ago with none other than my old arch-nemesis Bayani Domingo. Since Domingo has pretty much disappeared I was surprised to hear that he’d actually be taking part in it, most likely in an attempt to shut me up for good. He failed, but it was still nice to see that he’s still alive.

And if you want even more Cook goodness, you can catch me in the Tuesday edition of the Rs every week, where I cover WWE Superstars. Somebody has to do it, and there’s usually at least one match on the show that’s worth my time. It can be difficult to fill so much space talking about an hour-long show with almost no storyline development, so I often bring up things that aren’t remotely related to the show, like Allison Wonderland, bisexual love triangles and Bengal preseason games. It depends on whatever hallucinogen I’m using while writing.

Lansdell promises intelligent wrestling discourse. Lansdell leading intelligent wrestling discourse is like CM Punk leading a pot-smoking seminar.

Eubanks talks about TNA booking. How he does it without taking plenty of Excedrin first, I’ll never know.

And in our AJ Grey Article of the Week, Katy Perry used to pray for big boobs. Perhaps I should have been more realistic with my prayers when I was younger. I’m sure my ex-girlfriends wouldn’t have minded a bigger-ok, I’d rather talk about Katy Perry’s boobs than anything involving me.

ECW Thoughts!

This will likely not be a regular feature of the column, but since I’m waiting until next week to break out the big stuff I need to fill some space somehow. I was one of those people who were shocked and appalled by the new WWECW when it first started, but eventually I got over it. I learned to adjust partially because I stopped watching the show every week, and partially because it got a lot more interesting when they started using it to build up young talent like CM Punk, John Morrison and Christian Cage. OK, so not all of that talent is young. But ECW is becoming the training ground for FCW graduates to get their PHD in whooping ass and taking names, and I approve of it. Hell, wasn’t the original ECW the training ground for the WWF & WCW? Recently ECW’s been going through a transition phase with all sorts of young talent coming in trying to find their place. Like I said, I haven’t been watching ECW every week, so in the next few paragraphs I’ll probably say a lot of things that sound dumb to all 365 of ECW’s regular viewers.

-I get rewarded for watching ECW this week with the return of The Hurricane! Not sure what I think of a superhero with long hair and a beard, but what the hell. He also needs to bring back the green cape. He faces Paul Burchill, who is accompanied by the stunning Katie Lea Burchill. Well, so much for me paying attention to the match. I should take a drink every time Matt Striker calls her the “Seductive Sibling”. If it’s anything like it is on Superstars I’ll be on the floor halfway through the match. I like Burchill, but he fell into the trap that a lot of the young indy stars fall into…they get hired for doing cool things and then are told not to do the stuff that got them over. I’ll never understand that, at least some of them are smart enough to adapt and still be awesome. Hurricane can still fly!

-Commercials during a match generally piss me off. I wouldn’t mind it if they didn’t always do it the same way…a big thing happens, they go to a commercial, during which the tide turns and when we come back the heel has the babyface in a resthold or are generally beating them down. It’s really quite predictable. Let’s see what they do here…indeed, Burchill has the dreaded rear chinlock on Hurricane when we return. Switch it up sometimes, would you? Striker says every superhero has a weakness…I would say that Hurricane’s weakness is an affinity for jobbing. BAH-ZING. This is where I should make some sort of a Velvet Sky joke but I’ve got nothing. Josh says that Burchill likes to apply a European offense…I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything European about Burchill’s offense. Does he even do a European uppercut? Hurricane hits Ricky Steamboat’s finisher, but since he isn’t Ricky Steamboat it doesn’t finish the match. Wow, Burchill with a Pele kick! Helms wins with the Eye of the Hurricane, which I don’t think he’s hit in five years.

-Courtney Taylor debuts with the ECW announce team, and immediately blends in with every other blonde WWE Diva. Can you tell them apart? I wouldn’t know that was Kelly Kelly in the 7-11 commercial if they didn’t have her name in giant letters next to her. Apparently Johnny Ace has a type. Kozlov & Regal attack Tommy Dreamer backstage, highlighted by a Knee Trembler from Regal that looks pretty sick. I approve!

-The Abraham Washington show gives me a chance to write some more of the rest of this column. And I thought Conan sucked when he started hosting Late Night…yes, I’m talking about 1993, not now. I still like Letterman better, but I work too early in the morning to stay up and watch either. Getting old sucks. Anyway, Sheamus is decent on the microphone, and Courtney interviewing Tiffany just proves the point I made earlier about the blonde Divas looking the same. I’m not saying they’re not attractive ladies, I’m just saying I wouldn’t be able to point one of them out in a police lineup.

-Next is Zack Ryder vs. Yoshi Tatsu, which could either be a good match in five years or main eventing your local indy wrestling promotion in five years. Ryder working the arm must bring a smile to Arn Anderson’s face. Pretty fun little match here, but not nearly long enough to get a whole lot out of it. Perhaps this will be like the Ryder/Reks program, which had the first match last about three minutes and the second go fifteen. Strange booking from where I sit, but I can always use something to watch on Superstars.

-Holy crap, they do the Raw Rebound on ECW too? You gotta be kidding me. Why they use their other shows to promote the one that the most people watch, I’ll never know.

-Main event time! Regal & Kozlov were originally to take on Christian & Dreamer, but with Dreamer out of the picture Christian gets to team with…Ezekiel Jackson? Well, this is where not watching ECW regularly comes back to bite me, as I have no idea how this makes sense. Other than the fact that Jackson’s quite the hoss. He spends most of the match standing in the corner, which probably wasn’t what Christian was hoping for when he decided on Jackson. And since Jackson ends up attacking Christian at the end of the match…well, I always figured Edge was the brains of the E&C team.

-Not a bad way to spend an hour. I’d rate it a little ahead of ECW because there’s actually some storyline development here, namely the formation of Regozlovikel. There’s a formidable trio if I ever saw one, and Kozlov & Jackson can only learn from teaming with the Distinguished Gentleman. Take a drink everytime Striker uses that nickname for Regal.

Well, that’s all this week. Thanks for joining me for the return of News From Cook’s Corner! The honorable JP Prag will be in tomorrow, and I’ll be back here next week with new features that you will either love or hate. I’d say let’s hope for the former, but Larry loves the articles that people hate because they comment on those the most. Funny how that works…