News From Cook's Corner 12.23.09

Posted by Steve Cook on 12.23.2009

Kids talk about Bret while we send off an Innovator of Violence, welcome back some Wolfpac members and kill one of my favorite wrestling urban legends.I don't want to tear your heart out or eat your children, but a potential upcoming Raw guest host might.

Hi, hello and welcome to News From Cook's Corner! I'm Steve Cook, and I hope you're having a great Christmas Eve Eve. I don't know about you guys, but I think you'd have to be a pretty sad panda if you're not in a fantastic mood during this time of the year. We're two days away from Christmas, which is when we celebrate Santa Claus flying the world over, leaving presents at each and every house for all of the children across the world that believe in him. I still haven't figured out how he managed to do it before he went with turbo power for the sleigh a few years back. Now he can fly all over the world in about an hour flat. You have to love technology. Makes it much easier for parents to explain these things to suspicious children.

Yup, I love the holiday season. I also love the playoff season for fantasy football, which wraps up this weekend with championship games for the great majority of leagues. (Anybody with a Week 17 championship is absolutely insane…most NFL teams put their scrubs in then and you're trying to win a fantasy championship with Jim Sorgi. I did it once, but it left a bad taste in my mouth and I'm glad no league I've been in since has done that foolishness.) I won semi-final games in both of my leagues and am now preparing my Wagnermaniacs & SLAP THE PORPOISE~! for potential championship glory. Some may find it sad that I'm anticipating this almost as much as Christmas, but I say more happiness is much better than living in a shell and finding joy in nothing. Plus, there's the added bonus that my Bengals may clinch the AFC North one of these weeks. They sure are taking their time though…

Speaking of happiness, let's take a look at the latest news in our favorite entertaining sport!



TNA interviewer Lauren Brooke Thompson is leaving the company to pursue other interests, specifically her work with the Golf Channel. Look at her and tell me that Tiger Woods wouldn't hit that. White…blonde…those seem to be his two main turn-ons, don't they? Lauren wasn't the greatest interviewer of all time, but she looked good and I liked her interactions with the Beautiful People. The Abyss stuff I could have lived without, but what can ya do. For more Lauren pics, click here!

Some say she's leaving because she's getting married…why do chicks gotta leave the business when they get married? Trish, Lilian…Traci might as well have left the business because she's rarely ever on TV these days…I don't get it. Do the dudes make them leave? If that's the case, I hardly think a woman should leave her chosen profession because a man tells them to. I thought this was 2009, not 1949. Manu tells me this might be because the women have good heads on their shoulders and know to get out of the business before it's too late…this might be true, but I selfishly want them on my television. Does that make me a bad person? Probably, but at least I'm honest about it.

Ah, it's like that great philosopher Tom Keifer once said, you don't know what you've got...TILL IT'S GONE!

Longtime reader Geoff Eubanks complained that my column last week didn't have nearly enough chicks in it. This seemed like a strange complaint from our favorite resident of West Hollywood, but I shall do my best to appease him and continue my transformation into the AJ Grey of the Wrestling Zone. I suppose there are worse things to be…if nothing else it's a lot less embarrassing if people walk in on me looking at pictures of chicks than if they walk in on me looking at pictures of dudes in tights.



So it seems that the rumor I mentioned last week about Bret Hart going to WWE is true. Ever since then, almost everybody you've seen on this site, whether they're a writer or a commenter, has been yapping about how awesome it is and how it blows the competition out of the water and yadda yadda yadda. Heck, I said in last week's column that I would mark out like a little schoolgirl if the rumor was true and Bret appeared on WWE television on a regular basis. However…I think it's time to take a look at the other side of this story, if for nothing else to have this website keep its promise of being fair and balanced.

What's the possible downside of Bret Hart coming in? Well…hardcore wrestling fans like us people that write this crap and people like you that read this crap know all about Bret Hart, most of us saw a healthy portion of his career and remember where we were when the Montreal Screwjob took place over twelve years ago. However, when you take a look at a WWE crowd, you see a bunch of people that don't remember that era of pro wrestling, and a really good number of people who weren't even born when Bret Hart left the World Wrestling Federation. I thought I'd ask some younger WWE fans on their thoughts about the Hitman in the latest edition of…



All right, our first guest tonight hails from Omaha, Nebraska. Give it up for Billy! How old are you, Billy?

Billy: 6.

Six years old! Gosh, you weren't even alive when Bret Hart retired. When did you start watching wrestling?

Billy: Last year. The other kids at school were talking about it so Mommy and Daddy let me watch Smackdown on Friday.

Do you watch Raw?

Billy: My mommy tapes it for me. She won't let me stay up past 9 on school nights.

Good, good. Who are your favorite wrestlers?

Billy: Um, Rey Rey, John Cena, DX, Hornswoggle, I used to like Jeff until that mean CM Punk made him go away.

Yeah, he's pretty mean. What about Undertaker?

Billy: He's scary.

OK...Billy, what do you know about Bret Hart?

Billy: Uhhhhhhhhh...he's some old wrestler, right?

Yeah, I guess you could say that.

Billy: Mr. McMahon said "Bret screwed Bret". What does that mean?

Umm...

Billy: I asked my mom and she told me to go to my room.

Well, it's a long story. I'll e-mail you a link to a website. Anyway, I have a feeling that our next guest will be much more familiar with Bret. From Calgary, Alberta, here's Jimmy! How old are you, Jimmy?

Jimmy: 13.

13! Jimmy, I understand you're a wrestling fan...are you familiar with Bret Hart?

Jimmy: Yeah, Dad talks about him a lot. Says he was the best of all time. For my birthday a couple of years ago he got me a Bret DVD.

What'd you think?

Jimmy: The movie was sad, but the matches were cool.

Makes sense. So what's your opinion of Bret?

Jimmy: Bret's cool, man. Last year Dad got me his book for Christmas.

Ah, so you've read the book...

Jimmy: Dude, Bret's a pimp!

Oh boy.

Jimmy: Man, he talks about getting all these girls to fuc-

Jimmy! This is a family show!

Jimmy: Sorry. What can I say instead of the F word?

Well...we prefer "making whoopie" here in the States.

Jimmy: Yeah. Bret talks about how he gets all these girls to make whoopie with him! It rules!

Billy: Girls are icky!

Jimmy: Dude, wait until you get older. Their boobs start getting bigger-

JIMMY!

Jimmy: What, we can't talk about boobs? That sucks.

Billy: What are boobs?

Oh for heaven's sake...

Jimmy: Anyway, me and my friends all look up to Bret now. He's our role model!

So you're looking forward to seeing him on Raw?

Jimmy: Yeah, especially if he's gonna hook up with Melina! That bitch is fine!

JIMMY!

Billy: What's a-

BILLY!

Jimmy: Come on man, Bret's gonna get him some! That rules!

Who told you these things, Jimmy?

Jimmy: I read it in your column last week.

*sighs*

Jimmy: How come I can't talk about boobs when you post them all over your columns every week?

Jimmy, when you're my age you can talk about whatever you want.

Jimmy: Damn it, I gotta wait till I'm 40?

All right, all right, that's enough of that. Thanks to Billy & Jimmy for coming out today…they illustrate my point that while folks like us are generally pretty jacked about Bret Hart coming back to WWE, there's a large portion of the WWE Universe that doesn't know a whole lot about the best there is, was and ever will be. I'm not sure this will be the business boom that people are predicting…I'm still excited about it, but I wouldn't count on it leading to a wrestling renaissance.

Seriously though…how sad is it that the two most interesting talent acquisitions of 2009-10 have been two guys who haven't been in their wrestling prime in over a decade? For the sake of pro wrestling, let's hope that changes sometime soon.

Bret Hart may be returning on January 4, but we already know who the guest host of Raw will be on January 11…none other than "Iron" Mike Tyson! One has to wonder how DX will react to the return of the man who screwed Shawn Michaels out of the WWF title at WrestleMania XIV.

UPDATE: I wrote the previous paragraph on Tuesday afternoon, and when I got back home I clicked on this site and found out that WWE.com removed the article announcing Tyson's upcoming appearance on Raw. Either negotiations have stalled or April Fool's Day came early to WWE.com. I'm leaning towards somebody in WWE not wanting this announced yet having it pulled from the website. In any event, the seeds are there for a Tyson appearance...I'd be surprised if he didn't want to do it because I'm pretty darn sure he needs the money.

Apparently Tommy Dreamer is on his way out of WWE and it isn't a rumor this time. Dreamer's a very well liked guy, but I think it's time for him to head off into the sunset…or have another feud with Raven before doing so.

CM Punk talked some smack on the radio about Hulk Hogan only being out for himself and not caring about TNA. This is simply not true…if Hulk Hogan was only out for himself, would he have an army of wrestlers following him everywhere he went and getting paid good money for not doing much of use? Brutus Beefcake, Brian Knobs and many others would disagree with you, Mr. Punk.

Jim Ross has signed a short-term deal with WWE that will keep him under contract at least until he heals from his recent Bell's Palsy attack. That sounds very vague, but Ross isn't obligated to share his contractual information with me. I can tell you that TNA was very interested in signing JR until he re-signed with WWE, which comes to great surprise from absolutely nobody.

Speaking of good ol' JR, I'm going to plug this Red Hot Tag deal on his website that I ordered this week…I finally broke down and decided to order some of JR's sauce after seeing this deal. You get two BBQ sauce bottles, some beef jerky and an autographed picture of JR for under 20 bucks with no shipping charge…sounds like a good deal to me. Besides, it's the holiday season and I don't mind sending some money to one of my favorite wrestling announcers of all time. Even if he hates us Internet peeps we should still show him some love, right?

Jack Swagger may be receiving less of a push than he deserves, but at least he goes home to this…



This is Catalina White, who was known as Saylor James during her time in Florida Championship Wrestling. Not bad, right? However, Ms. White has recently been in the news for videographic material of a sexual nature, which may or may not have been released. This of course leads to the age old question…would you have a relationship with a woman who's been in sex tapes?

To me the answer is pretty obvious…it depends on whether she was good on the tape or not. I could see it leading to a problem if you watch the tape and the girl seems a lot more into it than she does when she's with you, but I can't say I've had that particular problem. Not that any of my exes have been in sex tapes…not that I know of, anyway. I can't say I'd be surprised if something did turn up with some of them. Maybe together! These are the important ethical questions that determine what path your life will take.

In any event, I must say that the All-American American is at least doing well for himself in one aspect of life, at least from where I sit. I've learned that my standards may be a bit lower than many of you readers, and I think this has to do with the fact that I live in Kentucky. After all, do you know what they call an attractive woman at the University of Kentucky campus?

A visitor!

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Twice on Saturday!

Say what you will about Swagger's push, but I think his match with John Cena on Raw was longer than Cena's matches with Punk & Randy Orton combined on the previous week's Raw. So I don't think they've "given up" on the kid just yet. He's got a world of potential, that's for sure.

ROH wrestler Rhett Titus was one of several wrestlers trying out at FCW a couple of weeks ago, and some have speculated that he might receive a developmental deal. I gotta admit that I'm not the biggest fan of Titus's work so far in his career, but he might have some potential with WWE. His backstage stuff has mostly been good, his gimmick is pretty funny, and he's progressing at a rate slightly better than most ROH students…which isn't saying much, but still. People say he's a great student and learns quickly, which is a character trait that would serve him well there. Nothing official on this yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. One does have to wonder what he'll do when they don't let him use the "Thrust is a Must" catchphrase.

In other ROH wrestlers going to WWE news, the Briscoe Brothers can not leave ROH until their contract expires, but due to the mutual interest between WWE & the Briscoes one can assume that Jay & Mark will be heading to WWE as soon as they are contractually able to. They'll be good fits, assuming WWE has any interest in having a tag team division. I'm certainly not sold on that, but good luck to the guys if that's where they want to go.



TNA's long-awaited Australian tour has been postponed due to what TNA claims are "changes in the US TV production cycle". This could mean absolutely anything, or maybe they saw that the numbers for the Hulkamania tour didn't exactly set the world on fire and decided to hold off on expanding to the Land Down Under. Maybe ticket sales were way too slow for their liking. Or maybe the Massive Q pissed them all off when they did their press tour a couple of months ago. One never knows.

Lots of independent wrestlers were brought in this week to try out at the Impact tapings. The Knockouts Eve taping featured April Hunter, Lorelei Lee, Amber O'Neal & Lizzy Valentine being brought in for various tryout matches, and the Young Bucks had an indy dream match with the Motor City Machine Guns. I wouldn't be opposed to signing any of these people, but I don't make the decisions for TNA. I do think that the Bucks would be a very smart signing for TNA, as they seem to have limitless potential and will be big names somewhere. Apparently TNA management was very impressed with their match and Jeremy Borash even tweeted about it, which obviously means it was a big deal.

Unfortunately for Larry Csonka, his newest flavor of the month Alissa Flash will not be appearing on that show due to an injury suffered when she stepped on a broken Christmas tree ornament at home. That's gotta hurt…as somebody with very sensitive feet I feel her pain. My girl Sara Del Rey was rumored to be coming in for this taping, but she couldn't make the show…no word on why not, but I wouldn't mind seeing me some Death Rey on TNA. ROH isn't going to do anything with her except let her get suplexed by whoever's feuding with Chris Hero, so why not send her somewhere she might actually wrestle once a month? Some will say "What about SHIMMER?" to which I reply "Are they going to run shows more than once every few months?"

Speaking of injuries, Roxxi suffered a broken ankle during a match at the Impact taping. So it was a pretty rough week for the TNA Knockouts that I first saw in SHIMMER.

There has been a lot of talk of retiring the six-sided ring ever since Hulk Hogan & Eric Bischoff have partnered up with TNA…apparently they favor a more traditionalist approach and think the ring should be like every other ring. Honestly, I like the six-sided ring all right, but it wouldn't break my heart if they switched it. What's in a ring? That which we call four-sided by any other ring would smell as sweet.

OK, that made no sense. But it's not often that I get to work Shakespeare into my news columns, so work with me here.

Here's some interesting news…Sean Waltman has been telling people in Mexico that he's going to be heading back to TNA, and none other than Scott Hall will be coming with him. Apparently there is a lot of viability to this rumor, and people are saying that indeed Waltman and Hall will be heading to TNA sooner rather than later. Waltman looked in his usual shape the last time I saw him in AAA, and when motivated he can have some pretty darn good matches, so I'm not entirely opposed to bringing him back. Hall…well, he can say "Hey Yo", do spooky fingers and get a good reaction, so I'd consider him as long as he wasn't asking for too much money.

Word has it that Sheik Abdul Bashir has actually left TNA, so in a shocking development we might not see the loser of the Feast or Fired match return under a different gimmick. Bashir was telling people backstage at the PPV that he requested his release, although TNA management seems to think that it was their decision and had been coming for quite sometime. To be honest Bashir hadn't had much purpose in TNA since becoming the sixth-ranked guy in the World Elite…and that might be a generous ranking on my part. OK, there's Eric Young, Williams & Magnus, Homicide…is Nash officially a part of the group or not? If not you might rank Bashir at 5 depending on how you feel about Kiyoshi. Rob Terry's gotta be at the bottom of the pecking order.



The snowstorm that blasted the Northeast last week ended up canceling the NECW TV taping that was set for last Saturday in Quincy, MA. NECW's show is scheduled to debut on Comcast SportsNet on January 8, but it is unknown when the TV taping, featuring such NECW talent as Max Bauer, DC Dillinger (is he related to Doug?), Alex Arion and Robbie Ellis, who may have one of the more interesting pro wrestling lives of all time. Mostly because he's wrestling at the age of 66, which is older than even Flair & Hogan.

UPDATE: Since I wrote that on Monday night, NECW has announced that their first taping will be on January 23rd, and their first shows on Comcast will feature recent matches, profiles and historical video packages. Probably a good idea to establish some characters and whatnot.

I saw some shocking news recently that killed one of my favorite Internet wrestling legends. From an interview Sid Vicious did with Live Audio Wrestling…

Lovranski: One of the other stories I used to hear a lot when I was younger too, when you would disappear or reappear in a promotion or wouldn't show up for a match, is that you were blowing of wrestling matches to play softball. Is there any truth …

Vicious: No, there's no (Expletive) truth to that. Listen, first I had my lung taken out when I was working for WCW. I came back, I wasn't physically what they wanted me to look like. So they said, "Go back home and work out some more." I go back home - of course, right here in Memphis is a big softball place … I really have a feeling that Jerry Lawler was the one that started that (Expletive). And so I got in a lot of trouble for it, but I was told to. And that's how that all started.

Lovranski: Right. Yeah, because that was a story I kept hearing for years, and I couldn't understand - why would he leave wrestling to go play softball?

Vicious: That's why I'm saying this. It doesn't make any (Expletive) sense.

He also denied that he attacked Brian Pillman with a squeegee, but I've seen that story confirmed by too many sources to let that myth die. It was hard enough letting this one go the way of the dodo. Sid looks to be in great shape in recent pictures I've seen of him, so it's nice that somebody who was a wrestling star in the 90s is doing well.



Yeah, there were no Superstars Rs this week. Here's my explanation from the super secret staff forum:

So here's what happened...

On Thursday night I had an office Christmas party at Hooters. Naturally I got hammered because I wasn't driving and it was an office Christmas party and it was at Hooters. I'm only human. I thought I could catch the midnight airing of Superstars, and I watched the first match and thought it was pretty good.

But then Vance Archer appeared on my television screen...

and I fell asleep.

Normally I'd try to catch the Sunday airing, but I'm going to have to go to work on Sunday and take care of some business. I hear the show's on that Hulu site, but my ancient computer has a difficult enough time accessing this site, let alone trying to play videos. I lost YouTube capability a few months ago and my life hasn't been the same since.

So this is my explanation to my bosses and a request to one of you fine people with a working computer and/or time to watch the show on WGN Sunday to actually watch Superstars and do the R thing. I know it's not easy, but think of the children dangnab it.

And nobody thought of the children. This staff is not gaining points with me.

Peters ranks the top ten worst Raw guest hosts. How did Ben Roethlisberger not make this list? Outrageous, I say!

Ari was not a fan of the Final Battle main event. In other Final Battle news, Lansdell needs to watch himself some AAA. Teddy Hart & Jack Evans have both been kicking ass down there this year…the booking's fairly repetitive, but they usually put on a good show and are two of the most exciting wrestlers on the AAA roster not named Dr. Wagner Jr. Nobody compares to Wagner and the Wagnermaniacs, who are the most awesome faction in wrestling today mostly due to the awesomeness of Wagner. Why do you think I named one of my fantasy football teams after him?

Lansdell hates lucha, by the way. He has no soul.

Eubanks and I both like Dusty Claus. Chris Remington never would have seen that one coming. (whatever happened to that guy anyway?)

Csonka talks about Final Resolution. Spoiler Alert: Look for the annual Impact Playaz reunion to happen very soon.

And in our AJ Grey post of the week, Olivia Munn looks pretty hot in some magazine she has. I'm not convinced that her geek act isn't just a geek act to win the money of dweebs and nerds everywhere, but more power to her if that's what she wants to do. We need more women trying to appeal to dweebs and nerds from where I sit.

Well, that's all we have time for this week! To Prezident Asterisk and the Killer B's…my prediction? Pain. To everybody else, have a Merry Christmas! The honorable JP Prag will have all of your pertinent Christmas Eve business news tomorrow, and I'll be back here next week with more News From Cook's Corner. Until then…