News From Cook's Corner 09.23.09

Posted by Steve Cook on 09.23.2009

Dirt on Linda, TNA changes things, and some thoughts from ROH's latest Dayton revival.

"I had a feeling you were gonna mention Gail is a good cook when I saw it on Superstars last week" - Guest#1195

You know, I didn't even think about it in a weird sort of way until I read that comment. This is probably because the Masters vs. Marella match lulled me into a state of boredom that I hadn't experienced since reading the Lansdell column the day before. (Kidding…I didn't read his column) Perhaps with Brooks off the market this was Gail's way of endearing herself to me and taking her place in my pantheon of beautiful women. This happens to me all the time…sometimes a woman will flirt with me and it'll completely go over my head until later. These things happen when you march to the beat of your own drummer.

Maybe she has a thing for Kentuckians. Who doesn't?



Welcome to the Corner! I'm Steve Cook, and I am still celebrating my Bengals' victory over the hated Green Bay Packers in Lambeau Field on Sunday. First time they've done that, and it came seventeen years to the day that the Bengals lost to the Packers and some young jabroni quarterback filling in for the injured Don Majkowski. I wonder whatever happened to that guy…probably nothing important. Big win for the Bengals heading into Steeler Week, and quite frankly the Steelers have not looked all that impressive so far this year. Could an upset be on the horizon? We here at the Corner think so. However, we are biased.

Metallica was awesome, thanks for asking. There are few places I would rather be than on the floor during a Metallica show, banging my head to the music and actually being able to see the band up close. That was a bit different from my first Metallica show, which was at Ohio Stadium. I was up in the nose bleeds and didn't think to bring my binoculars...so it wasn't quite the same. My ears rang for a day after this show, which is always a good indication that the show rocked it hard.

Fantasy Update: My football teams went 1-1 and my baseball team bowed out in the semi-finals to the #1 seed, who finished 35.5 games ahead of us in the regular season. So I don't feel too bad about it.

Should I actually get to the news or continue talking about my fantasy sports teams and fantasy girlfriends? OK, we'll get to the news…



Indeed, Lilian Garcia is done with WWE as of Monday night. I've not seen any word yet on who will replace her, which is kind of amusing because I've seen headlines on many different sites (sadly, including this one) saying things like "who will replace her" and it says…

"WWE is currently negotiating with someone to take over her role."

Wow, that's really informative. That's the kind of reporting I expect from Fox News, not a wrestling website. For shame, wrestling websites! For shame!

Linda McMahon is wasting no time in starting her Senate campaign, as she's already started mailing out propaganda to voters for an election that isn't until May 2010. And people thought the presidential election started early. Other interesting Linda news includes the fact that she didn't vote in the 2008 Presidential Election. I can only assume she didn't vote because she knew that the Republican ticket was a stinker and didn't want to be associated with it. Expect lots more Linda news in our news section because the media tends to cover candidates for public office pretty intensely. Which is for the best, unless you're one of those people who like to know nothing about the people representing them in Congress. On one hand it's pretty dumb, but on the other hand, the less you know the better off you are.

Did you know that Undertaker wasn't in good shape? It shouldn't come as much of a surprise due to the years of wear and tear, but apparently WWE was hoping for better when he came back and so far he hasn't been looking so good. This is why his match with CM Punk at Breaking Point only went eight minutes. Some are even wondering if he will retire at WrestleMania 26. Haven't we been wondering this for the past few years?

Rumors have come out that WWE has offered Kanye West ten million dollars to appear on their programming. I wouldn't be surprised if WWE was interested in having Kanye make some appearances, since he's appearing on every other television show under the sun and bringing them ratings because television viewers are idiots. I don't think they'd offer him ten million dollars. I don't know who would be worth ten million dollars for a handful of appearances in this, or any day of age. I would take any report of a celebrity wrestling for ten million dollars with a grain of salt.

You guys want some CM Punk news? OK…apparently the creative team would like to give the Punker a bodyguard, and have narrowed it down to such names as Ezekiel Jackson & Festus. I actually really like one of the ideas for Festus, as the deal would be that Punk would be feeding him pills to keep him under control. Nothing says evil like a straight edge guy feeding people pills. Also, it was Vince McMahon's idea for Punk to call out Jeff Hardy during the Breaking Point show. I'm not sure if that means that Hardy will never be welcomed back, or if it means that Hardy will be feuding with Punk in a few months when he comes back.

Florida Championship Wrestling is offering a tryout clinic from December 4-7 for those who would like to be part of WWE's developmental territory. One wonders how fast Boss Csonka can recover from his broken freaking neck, or if Sforcina has the funds to fly over to Florida, or even find an airplane big enough to hold him for such a flight.

Warning to those of you sensitive about such things: Chris Benoit appears in footage on the Best of Smackdown DVD. Personally, I've gotten over such things and now crack Benoit jokes whenever he appears on something I'm watching. Laughter is the best medicine, after all.

In case you're wondering when Rey Mysterio will be returning, it will reportedly be on October 6 at the Smackdown/ECW tapings in Trenton, New Jersey. Jersey deserves it, I mean, anybody who has to live in New Jersey should be awarded something for their efforts, am I right?



Change is afoot in TNA…so what else is new? What was old is new again, as Ed Ferrara, who previously wrote for WWE, WCW & TNA alongside Vince Russo, has returned to the side of Vinnie Ru and is now part of TNA's creative team. Since everybody else has commented that TNA's creative team now consists of most of WCW's creative team in 2000, I'll just point out that the person on TNA's creative team with the most in-ring experience is Vince Russo. Let's just hope they don't pull a "Nash"…or a "Jarrett", for that matter.

To be fair to Russerara, they've been responsible for some good things…it seems like AJ Styles always gets a big push when Russo has more control. And one thing you never hear with Russo in charge is that creative has nothing planned for somebody. They've always got ideas for people…now, whether they're good ideas or not is certainly up for debate.

D'Lo Brown & Pat Kenney have been re-hired by TNA and will be serving as road agents/producers/whatever. Brown has said that he will finish his current wrestling commitments and then retire from active competition. They are pretty much replacing Jim Cornette & BG James, as both were let go last week. James was the only road agent going to the house shows, so one assumes that one of the newbies will be saddled with that job.

There was a story about Cornette getting fired for throwing a temper tantrum, but that has since been retracted by The Sun, who published the report. Cornette claims he was let go because he "wasn't 100% behind creative", which is probably a nice way of saying he was less than 10% behind creative. Dixie Carter apparently likes everybody to be on the same page, even if the page is written in Chinese and being read by Eskimos. Whether you agree with Jim Cornette or Vince Russo on how pro wrestling should be presented, one would think it would behoove TNA to have both sides represented in their company instead of one side exclusively. But maybe that's just the American in me speaking out.

I think the biggest surprise so far is that Cornette didn't fly off the handle when discussing the situation. Hopefully we'll get that whenever he does his next shoot interview.

Jeremy Borash reported Colt Cabana & Puma were to work a dark match at the Impact taping last night, which strikes me as odd because TJ Perkins, Puma's alter ego, was to sign a deal with Florida Championship Wrestling some time ago and that was the reason he left the West coast and moved to Florida. I guess that didn't work out as he had planned.

Lacey Von Erich has signed with TNA, and will be appearing very soon because Jimmy Hart helped her get out of her Wrestilicious deal. Is that whole Wrestilicious thing going anywhere or doing anything? Whether it is or not, Lacey will continue to follow in her father's footsteps in TNA.

What?



To clarify something that has come up a couple of times in the comment section over the past few weeks…the two lovely ladies in our "Other Wrestling News" picture are MsChif (left) & Daizee Haze (right), who were wearing each others' wrestling attire for Halloween when the picture was taken for Chif's MySpace. Yeah, it's a little dated because nobody uses MySpace anymore, but I can still dig it. They can most commonly be found in the SHIMMER promotion these days, along with other various indy promotions.

Bret Hart was said to be very professional backstage and got a great response from fans at the ROH show in Chicago this weekend. I can't say I blame him for not going to Dayton, and I'm not surprised that anybody comes off looking more professional and easier to deal with than Ric Flair. Apparently there was a report that Ring of Honor filmed their shows in Dayton & Chicago with older cameras. Having been at the Dayton show, I can say that…oh come on, do I look like a cameraman or something? For all I know they were filming with Spectravision.

Former WWF/NWA wrestler Sam Houston was sent back to prison this week to complete a ten-year prison sentence for repeated DUI violations after violating his probation. The original sentence was reduced to probation due to Hurricane Katrina hitting the area a month after his sentencing, and Houston violated probation when he left a 90-day rehab program after 30 days. I don't know about you, but after reading all of that I feel violated.

Lester Welch passed away over the weekend. For the 99% of you not familiar with him (to be fair, it's not like I've seen any of his matches), Lester was part of the Welch/Fuller/Golden/Fields wrestling family that helped keep a lot of southern territorial wrestling promotions going throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s. Trying to figure out the family relations there is a lot like trying to figure out the Samoan family tree. Lester was most active as a tag team wrestler, holding various tag team titles with Jackie Fargo, Buddy Fuller, Eddie Graham, Herb Welch & Joe Scarpa, who went on to become Chief Jay Strongbow in the WWWF.

Somebody who did not pass away last week was Karl Afflis, son of Dick the Bruiser. Apparently somebody played a prank on his family and the story ended up getting in the media. That ranks somewhere between telling people you were a New York firefighter on 9/11 and spoiling the results of a football game somebody hasn't seen yet in the ranks of douchebag things to do.

Sylvain Grenier has a wrestling school. Really? Grenier teaching people how to wrestle is like having Bill Clinton teach an abstinence class.

Finally, here is a poster for Dwayne Johnson's next movie, "The Tooth Fairy"…



Tremendous. Rock's Disney movies aren't really my kind of thing, but good for him for having a successful career after wrestling that doesn't involve the North Carolina Lottery.



Last Friday night, Ring of Honor made its way back to the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Dayton, Ohio. As usual, your humble correspondent was in the second row watching the action. I won't bore you with a full review of the show, but here are some thoughts and observations from the evening…

The Never-Ending Pre-show - We arrived at the venue a few minutes late and figured we had missed a good portion of the pre-show. Usually the actual show starts at 8:00, but tonight it didn't start until 8:30. It seemed a bit odd at the time that we were "treated" to several pre-show matches such as Sal Rinauro vs. Alex Payne and Bobby Dempsey teaming with Tim Donst against two people I forget, but apparently Austin Aries had car problems and was late in getting to the building, along with Silas Young & Rasche Brown. With that information, it made sense that they were stalling, but at the time it was a bit different. Luckily I was looking at other things during most of the Rinauro/Payne match and missed Sal Rinauro's exposed ass. I was told that was not something you could un-see.

When will you be able to see me on the DVD? - I think the best chance to see an Internet wrestling god on the DVD will be during the Necro Butcher/Jimmy Rave melee in the crowd. At one point they cleared out my row and Necro was beating Jimmy down right in front of me. Jimmy & I have a love/hate relationship…he called me an asshole once but I'd rather root for him than Grizzly Redwood. There were a few instances of wrestlers getting thrown into the crowd or just flat-out diving into the crowd, which is always fun as long as you're not the one getting hit.

Match of the Night? - Those who I've read online seem to agree that Bryan Danielson vs. Chris Hero was MOTN, and it was certainly an outstanding match with lots of drama and hard-hitting action. But if you ask me what my favorite match of the night was, I'll tell you it was Davey Richards vs. Claudio Castagnoli. Heel vs. Heel matches can be hard to work most places, but Richards finally showed Dayton what he's been showing other places in 2009 and Claudio is one of the best at working with a smaller opponent (which is a good thing for him because everybody in ROH is smaller than him). Amazing stuff in this one, though it didn't have the emotion of Danielson having one last match in Dayton and Hero's usual 50/50 split of the audience, it still got a great reaction from the crowd and made it tough for anything else to follow. Briscoes vs. Young Bucks was a little disappointing and it probably had a lot to do with following Davey & Claudio's show.

Did anybody impress me? - I thought the Dark City Fight Club adapted very well to being default babyfaces in a match with the House of Truth (who knew Truth Martini was still around?). They seemed to dig the "DCFC" chants they got from our section of the crowd. This particular match had some…interesting moments, particularly on the HOT side of things with a couple of blown spots, but all in all it was an entertaining outing. I have a feeling the DCFC will be contending for the Tag Team titles sooner rather than later.

Question of the Night - Why do wrestlers complain about the gimmicks TNA gives them, and then continue to use them once they leave the company? Petey Williams told everybody he was none too happy about being "Little Poppa Pump", but he still does the posing bit and wears his Maple Leaf Muscle tights. Austin Aries' current persona is pretty much The Austin Starr with a much bigger push.

The next ROH Dayton show won't be until April. We will not be buying tickets immediately…might be smart to wait and see if they're still around.

Just kidding, Ari!



Did you know the Rs have been around for 400 editions? I remember when I gave Csonka the idea for the column and told him "eh, it'll give you something to do for a couple of months". Little did I know…

Chambers needs some medication.

Gun is probably taking too much medication.

Geoff talks about Jeff Hardy…man, he got so pissed once when Penguin posted a transcript of an MSN conversation we had where I referred to Jeff as the British word for "cigarette". I was young and immature then, what can I say?

Speaking of Penguin, how about Small totally ripping off my sidekick gimmick by inserting Slimmer into his columns? Too bad the flightless bird's too busy getting married to give them what-for.

Your AJ Grey article of the week features Megan Fox, a girl who causes a lot of controversy and hand-wringing for reasons I don't understand. I know this because my friend Manu Bumb tells me that she is an evil person for saying dumb things. I don't know how that makes her different from most people who just get by in life on looks, but apparently she strikes a nerve with some people.

That's it for this week. Roster Talk will resume next week…I didn't have time this week due to being back at work and the bosses are already gonna be pissed at me for turning this column in a half-hour late. I think they should cut me some slack because I turned in my column 12 hours early last week and they still didn't feature it at the top of the page, but they only remember what happened five minutes ago. It's all right, my grandparents are the same way.

JP Prag is in tomorrow with all the latest business news, and I'll be back next week with everything that has nothing to do with business! Until then, true believers…