News From Cook’s Corner 05.04.10

Hi, hello and welcome to a special Tuesday edition of News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, filling in for Jeff Small this week. The special FOOTNOTES-FOR-ALL edition of his column will appear in this slot next week, assuming he remembers that he promised you all that for this week. I’m sure he will, he’s good people.

I had a pretty good weekend, thanks for asking! I only lost $10 betting on the Kentucky Derby, which is a good deal less than a lot of other people here in the Commonwealth. In my defense, I was in one of those deals where you pick the horse numbers out of a hat, so it’s not like I was using my insider horsey knowledge or anything like that. Most people who have been in Louisville long enough have insider horsey knowledge. Over my four years there I was lucky enough to pick up a little bit, and since I’m in a good mood I’ll share some of it with you fine people.

Here’s what I do: I look at the horses. Easy enough, right? They can’t be too fat or too skinny, they have to be just right. My first horse came out and he was looking like he’d had several big meals on race day. Not good. My second horse came out and he looked like he hadn’t eaten for a week. That’s really not good. Super Saver, the horse that won the Derby, was a good looking horse. Just the right size, good color and demeanor…he looked like a winner. And he was.

When you think of it, it makes a lot of sense. Horses are kind of like people…have you ever watched a fat person run? They start out strong, but blow up pretty easily and finish towards the back of the pack every time. Fat horses are the same way. They have the strength, but don’t have the stamina. A skinny horse, on the other hand, has the stamina and will often pop up towards the lead near the end. But you need strength in order to finish and beat the other horses. Skinny horses don’t have that strength, and end up getting bowled over by the stronger horses. You want a horse with a good combination of speed, strength and stamina. The 3 Ss, as I like to call them.

Looking good is important too. I know that I’m a lot better at my work when I feel that I’m looking good. When I get lazy and pack on a few too many pounds I grow tired, which makes me not so good at my craft. So it’s all about the 3 Ss, and looking good. That’s how you know when you have a winning horse.

It’s really that easy. Try it out the next time you’re at the track. Trust me, it’ll work.

You know how whenever you meet an attractive woman that you start to develop feelings toward there’s always that friend with “advice” that makes you have second thoughts? They’ll say something like “She isn’t too smart” or “I think one of her eyes is bigger than the other one” or something else to give you pause while considering letting her have your children. Pretty much all of my friends are like this. I can’t even count how many times I was dissuaded from asking out some chickadee in high school because of the wonderful advice of a friend.

And it was interesting how later on that friend would change their mind and end up dating the girl themselves. How peculiar.

Anywho, this phenomena is something I’ve run into a whole bunch in my life, not only off of the Internet, but on it as well. Recently it’s been Manu Bumb that’s been hating on any woman that I put over in this column. The main object of his scorn is Maryse, but lately he’s been doing a lot of character assassination on one Michelle McCool. Not like he’s the only one, but like I’ve said before, I think Michelle is vastly underrated by some fans that want to hate her because of her personal life. So I feature her here just to spite the haters. And to spite Manu, who loved Michelle as recently as 2008.

It’s time to dust off an old favorite…back in June 2009 I debuted the SFA Shandi Femalebag to the delight of those who preferred Lingo over Whammy!. I no longer get the Game Show Network, but it doesn’t matter because Lingo got discontinued and my girl Shandi Finnessey doesn’t currently appear on my television in any capacity. Why is this? There’s always a place for an attractive blonde with a balcony you could perform Shakespeare off of here at the Corner, so…

ARISE SHANDI ARISE!

From last week’s News From Cook’s Corner…

“I was never a fan of RVD. I think he looks sloppy most of the time, and mic skills bore me. He is not someone that I would pay to see. Jeff Hardy was somewhat interesting and way over when he had the WWE machine behind him, now he is just another TNA guy. That makes no sense to me.”

T-Mac is not the only person I’ve heard these opinions from, and they deserve mention here. Rob Van Dam is somebody that I’d say can have an interesting collection of spots or a nice little offensive exhibition, but usually isn’t capable of having great wrestling matches. His forearm shots to people make me roll my eyes with their weakness, and he has the unfortunate ability of doing offense that doesn’t look like it hurts his opponent much when it actually does. It’s much better to have offense that looks like it hurts when it doesn’t. After all, nobody makes money when everybody’s injured. And nobody’s explained to me why they keep having RVD & Jeff Hardy cut promos more often than they wrestle when neither man is capable of cutting a good promo more than once in a blue moon. The best you can hope for out of those two is that it isn’t embarrassing.

Jeff Hardy needs the WWE machine behind him, this has become painfully obvious during both of his TNA stints. If he doesn’t have somebody editing him, he gets all weird with his promos and does weird painting stuff. He also sings his own entrance music, which nobody wants to see or hear. Amazing how he’s gone from being one of the top stars in pro wrestling in 2009 to just another guy in TNA in 2010. Of course, the drug/legal issues aren’t exactly helping his cause either…

Cook: people who suddenly remember that they have forgotten their wallets (and honestly, who forgets their wallet) when it comes time to pay are jerks, and everyone at the table when you have now admitted to use that line, think you’re a cheapskate.

Just saying it’s not cool…

The guest missed my attempt at sarcasm, but in all seriousness Katie Lea was probably making less money than everybody else she was eating with. As long as she wasn’t having a five course meal and 15 margaritas I don’t see the issue with throwing a few bucks down to cover her part of the tab. I’m guessing the bigger issue was that she wasn’t willing to pay them back later with a certain extra-curricular activity. I know that always makes me feel a little better about paying for a lovely lady’s meal.

“It’s not like TNA gives Rob Van Dam a bonus for being 411’s Wrestler of the Week.”

Maybe they do Steve, maybe they do.”

TNA might be the one promotion silly enough to do something like that, so maybe the guest is on to something here. If he‘s right, AJ Styles needs to show up at Ryan Byers’ house and hit him with the pimp hand for costing him a huge bonus last year for missing out on 411 Wrestler of the Year.

From Buy or Sell, which I participated in with the blue-chipper Kevin Ford…

“Shelton’s the kind of guy that I’d think ROH would love to feature in main events”

In other words, flashy in the ring, zero personality outside the ring. Wouldn’t call that a compliment.…”

While a bit harsh, True Statement makes a valid point that I was dancing around like my boy Chad Ochocinco on Dancing With The Stars. Yeah, Shelton’s never been known for cutting money promos. But he can deliver good matches in the ring when given the opportunity, and ROH usually does pretty well with guys like that. Roderick Strong & Tyler Black are horrible promo guys, but you forget that when you’re at the show watching them wrestle. ROH has always been a promotion that’s valued in-ring performance over out-of-ring performance, so I think it’d be an ideal place for Shelton Benjamin. Unless TNA wants to give him a whole lot of money, in that case I say he should make like the Steve Miller Band.

And from Monday’s 4 Rs…

“Matt Hardy V1 disagrees with Steve Cook’s assessment.”

The fact that Jamal had to go back to 2003 to provide an example of Matt Hardy having personality pretty much proves my point, doesn’t it?

Matt Hardy as a face = No personality and more boring than paint drying.

Matt Hardy as a heel = Instantly awesome. His V1 stuff was fantastic and even his short heel run last year against Jeff was good.

The problem is that the dude moves a ton of Hardy Boyz merch so the WWE will never turn him heel (especially with Jeff going to TNA) because he makes them too much money.

I think Monty oversells Matt’s heel work, but he does point out that WWE does still sell lots of Hardy Boyz merchandise. I’ve always chalked that up to mass hypnosis.

And now, the fake news!

Jim Ross is still employed by WWE, but will not be used as a “talent”. It seems that Ross is not satisfied by this and is looking at other options. For now it’s on us to make up places that JR is going to sign with so he gets all pissy and complains about the Internet.

The possible employer list currently stands at:

-UFC
-HDNet/Ring of Honor
-TNA
-Oklahoma University
-Dragon Gate USA
-Israeli Basketball League

OK, I made up the last couple of those. I just wanted an excuse to have a link to a video of fellow Cardinal Larry O’Bannon pwning that league. Warning: the language in the song is a bit colorful, so I wouldn’t bump it at work.

Like everybody else in the Commonwealth, I have little use for anything or anybody coming out of Tennessee. The one thing I do love about Tennessee is their pro wrestling and how seriously they still take it.

Exhibit A: WWE was running a Smackdown house show in Knoxville over the weekend. CM Punk was there doing his whole Straight Edge Savior act, acting like he was better than everyone else. An old woman walked up to Punk (the story doesn’t specify, but I’m guessing he was right in front of the guardrail…Knoxville security isn’t great but they could probably keep an elderly woman from climbing over the guardrail), yelled “You’re not Jesus!” and slapped the Punker. It’s been too long since we’ve seen the overreacting grandmother at ringside. See, that’s the problem with TNA & most of the indies that make DVDs, they have too many people like me in their crowds and not enough old ladies and kids.

Anyway, Punk replied “I forgive you.” and genuflected while the lady was taken away by security. This proves the awesomeness of wrestling fans that still believe and makes it harder for me to continue hating CM Punk. I shall persist, as it’s the only proper thing to do as a fan of pro wrestling.

Besides, if I start liking him he’ll become a babyface again. And who in the blue hell wants that?

In other wrestlers vs. fans news, Great Khali was accused of striking a fan at the airport in Dehli, India upon his return to the country. The Great Khali says that he was just trying to keep the fans at a distance from him. The Great Khali also says that he wishes Jeff Small was here to come up with some sort of an excuse for him.

Former WWE wrestler Jake Roberts is currently unable to leave the country, so he won’t be making some appearances for indy promotions in Canada. That’s probably for the best. I saw a Canadian indy show from four years ago last week…it was likely one of his more coherent performances in years and it still made no sense.

Kane recently commented in an interview that going PG was a good thing. Of course he did…you think he wants to attach jumper cables to people’s scrotums for the rest of his life?

You know, the last time I did this I tried to be helpful and give people thoughts on Raw & Impact at the same time. But a few people were all like “he didn’t actually watch Raw/Impact, he made it up off the Internet”. Which was not true, but in order to please these folks I am only going to comment on Raw this week. I can watch Impact on Thursday, and I have to watch a Senate primary debate on KET during the 8-9:00 hour anyway. It’s important to stay informed, and with all the business in life & wrestling keeping me busy I’ve not done my due diligence on these candidates yet. Sorry TNA, I have to do my patriotic duty!

No, this isn’t an excuse to get out of watching Impact. Why would I do such a thing? Considering their first hour had one match according to 411’s recap it doesn’t look like I missed too much though.

I watched the debate, and I’m still undecided. VINTAGE KENTUCKY POLITICIANS!

They did a pretty good job of updating the Raw theme song video, but I still want a better ending than Cena saluting somebody. I hate it when my ending is unhappy.

Batista should have been a heel like two years ago. If not for injuries and an insistence by WWE on keeping him babyface so long, he could have been pretty awesome. His promo chronicling the Last Man Standing Match ruled it.

I gotta admit, Sheamus has really grown on me over the past couple of months. You have to like a pale ketchup-haired guy that calls everybody “fella”. YOU LOST, FELLA! He sounds more comfortable on the microphone than any WWE newbie that I’ve seen in a long time. Unlike some people who refuse to admit when they were wrong about somebody and won’t admit it when they exceed their expectations, I like it when I’m wrong about people that I don’t see much potential in at first, and it looks like I was wrong about this fella.

Daniel Bryan vs. Batista was easily Bryan’s second best match in WWE thus far, only behind his match with Jericho. I’ve been a bit hard on Bryan’s NXT run, but it looked like he was trying his best tonight and showed some of the fire that I think may have been missing the last couple of weeks. I mean, if he showed up like that against Darren Young he would have killed Black Cena. I enjoyed Bryan running through various submissions and generally bugging the hell out of Batista before getting killed.

Big ups to Larry Csonka, who rescued me from flipping over to Impact and seeing the O-Zone. You’re a good man, Larrold!

MARYSE~!

Yeah, she appeared for like ten seconds. So?

OK, I flipped over after a nothing Raw segment and caught a little bit of AJ vs. Abyss. They’re always good, but how many people will see it after TNA spent the first 90 minutes of their show trying to drive away their audience? And why is Desmond’s valet wearing a trench coat? Impact always gives me so many questions and bothers answering so few of them.

Meanwhile, it looks like John Morrison is going to complete his run of jobbing to Legacy members. I’m still wondering how he managed to beat Jack Swagger one week and then lose to Cody Rhodes the next. At least he does fun moves.

A “That was Awesome” chant from WWE fans? Huh.

OK, Impact’s just pissing me off tonight. They had this big online fan poll to see who would face RVD. The Internet picked Desmond Wolfe. So, of course, Wolfe jobs in less time than it took Batista to beat Bryan, and then AJ Styles does the big run-in afterwards to make sure we all forget about who people actually wanted to see get a title shot.

I’m sure all of the TNA fan boys (©2010, 411 Comment Section) will defend this nonsense, but I have no time for it. The only reason I’m even writing about this is that Ted DiBiase bores me so much that I need to find something to watch and write about.

This just in, I’ve discovered TNA’s new logo that they’re going to reveal later this week…

OK, back to Raw.

Hey, Morrison wins one. Here’s guessing he’ll lose one next week. And did we really need the continuation of the R-Truth/Morrison pairing? It’s like the Biel/Timberlake pairing…it just won’t end!

First Miz weasels his way out of facing Batista, now Jericho won’t wrestle Cena? If we had a Raw Guest Host worth a damn we wouldn’t have to put up with this stuff.

If I had a dollar for every time the girls squealed when I took my shirt off like they did here for Cena…

I thought Wade Barrett had a pretty good showing tonight. He & Bryan should both have bright futures once NXT ends. Emphasis on “should” because you just never know with this company.

MARYSE~! Lawler is wrong, evil should look that good. Evil always wins because good is dumb. In completely unrelated news, it’s nice to see the Bellas show some Cinco de Mayo flavor. I think they started celebrating last week.

McNew would have given it -*****, but in my eyes it wasn’t long enough to suck too bad and it involved hot chicks. Maryse’s new photo shoot ruled, Eve’s run-in sucked, let’s move on.

Why do Zack Ryder & Rosa Mendes have to split up because they’re on different shows? It’s not like Randle & Josh Grut broke up when Grut got drafted to the B-brand.

There’s a joke maybe five people will understand.

Zack gets squashed by Mark Henry and Mizark takes his ladies. Poor Zack, I’m sure he’s heard the line about what happens when girls go black.

Yay, as soon as Big Zeke comes back the Ruthless Roundtable can reunite! I know I can’t wait for that one. I think Regal tapped out to DH Smith’s Sharpshooter before he even applied it. JeriMiz as a tag team could be pretty dangerous.

Wayne Brady had that RKO coming. So did Edge, though I could have lived without the ten minute monologue from the Rated-R Superstar.

Honestly, this show kind of lost me after the Beat the Clock stuff with Cena & Batista was over. It didn’t piss me off like parts of Impact did, but it just wasn’t all that interesting. It felt like one of those old Saturday Night’s Main Events where Hogan and all of the stars would be on early, and then the lesser people were on later when people were going to bed. I think the real shame about this whole Monday Night War thing is that it just hasn’t resulted in better wrestling shows most weeks. WWE isn’t threatened by TNA like they were by WCW.

Speaking of which…

TNA Impact is moving back to Thursday nights next week after an ill-fated run on Mondays. Sources say that they will re-evaluate things in a few months. Of course they will. Neither TNA or Spike TV specialize in long-term planning…they just go with whatever works at the moment. Impact on Mondays isn’t working for TNA, and it isn’t working for Spike.

I think many of us wanted the Monday Night War to re-ignite again. I know I’d be pretty happy if we had two popular wrestling shows on Mondays again. The bottom line is that TNA just isn’t ready. And it’ll be hard for us to know if they’ll ever be ready because they’ll change their company’s direction at the drop of a hat.

Honestly, I’m pretty happy with this decision. As much as I enjoyed the ability to change channels between wrestling shows again just like the old days, I’m in a place where I like to chill out, sip on my Dos Equis (or whatever alcoholic beverage I happen to have, that’s the one I’m rocking at the moment) and watch one show at a time. I don’t have DVR or TiVo, I do have Hulu for however long that’s still free, but I’m perfectly fine with being able to watch Raw & Impact in their entirety.

But it really needs to be pointed out that TNA & Spike TV came to this decision after two months of the show being on Mondays, and three weeks of it being in the 8:00 time slot. So while it may be a smart move to move the show back to Thursday, it’s not like Impact had a lot of time to draw an audience on Mondays.

And here’s something that I haven’t seen anybody else mention…how is all of this time slot changing business helping the show at all? I don’t know about you guys, but I often give up on a television series right around the same time it switches nights, timeslots or even networks. My Buffy watching concluded right around the time it moved to UPN. Boston Public stopped getting my viewership when it switched from Monday nights to Friday nights.

So, we here at the Corner wish TNA Impact luck back on its old night. But we won’t be surprised when they move to a new night again.

In the “How Did This Take So Long?” department, Bubba the Love Sponge was relieved of his duties with TNA late last week. The last straw came when he verbally attacked former TNA employee Awesome Kong on the “Cowhead Show”.

OK, first things first. Cowhead? Really? What’s with all of these horrible radio personalities having “cow” in their name? You’ve got Mancow, Colin Cowherd, this goofball…enough with the cows! It seems that if you’re on the radio and you name yourself after a farm animal, the odds are pretty good that you’re a talentless hack. Cowhead’s not on in my area so I probably shouldn’t pass judgment like this…but let’s face it, if he learned from Bubba he couldn’t have learned much.

Bubba responded to all of this on his radio show, so I’ve decided to cut and paste parts of a recap from the good people of PWInsider (anybody who listened to Bubba and recapped it deserves my sympathy). Bubba did make some good points about the product not being very good, but there’s no chance he would have admitted it if he was getting a paycheck.

Bubba noted how the incident with Awesome Kong started over his comments about the relief programs for Haiti after an Earthquake caused significant damage in January. He discussed the way that the relief has been distributed to the people and how a lot has not been given to the people and he said that he “looks right” about Haiti.

I don’t recall Bubba being that specific when he said “f*ck Haiti”.

Bubba said that Dixie sent him an e-mail regarding the firing and there was discussion of having zero tolerance for racial insensitivity. He said that Dixie has advertisers, investors, and a board to answer to…He wondered how Kong could say “kiss my black a**” on the radio, but Bubba is considered the ‘racially insensitive’ one…One of the people on Bubba’s show wondered how they could complain about Bubba being ‘racially insensitive’ when they have a wrestler called Awesome Kong when ‘Kong’ is usually associated with King Kong. [They did not mention on the show that Kong was known as ‘Amazing Kong’ before she signed with TNA, so the name existed long before TNA hired her]. Bubba mentioned that he did not want to be considered a racist when he talked to her on the Cowhead Show by calling her by her real name.

Well, he’s proven that even white people can play the race card. That’s a discussion I don’t really want to delve into, but if you can’t tell the difference between a black person talking about their own ass and a white person calling a black person a “black bitch”, well, you’re pretty freaking dense.

Bubba also wondered why Dixie still followed Kong’s Twitter account after she was no longer with the company while Dixie never followed his Twitter account. Bubba called Dixie a “mark b***h”.

He’s whining because Dixie wouldn’t follow him on the Twitter? Wow…sadly I know enough people who whine because people won’t be their friend on Facebook. So it’s really not as strange as it sounds. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still quite pathetic, but sadly it’s common.

But I wouldn’t go on the radio and complain about somebody not following my tweets.

One of Bubba’s callers said to watch the ratings drop now that Bubba is gone.

Hell, their ratings plummeted while Bubba was there. I can’t imagine them being much worse now that THE BUBBA ARMY won’t be watching.

Bubba said that he has not mobilized his Bubba Army to deal with the firing, but said that a “modern day war” is going on…Bubba said that Dixie’s decision to fire him was “knee-jerk” and that TNA will “feel the wrath of Bubba.”

The wrath of Bubba, huh? Let’s take a look at Starship TNA in three weeks time…

So watch out, Brother Dixie & you TNAmaniacs! Whatcha gonna do when the Bubbster and his army runs wild on youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu?

Me, I’ll be hoping it cures my insomnia.

Eubanks was the lucky recipient of a drunken Cook voicemail last Friday. You’ll have to ask him about that because I don’t remember most of it.

Newbie Alert: Matthew Davis presents Right Move/Wrong Move. Seems like a good writer, but unfortunately I have to disagree with the conclusion of his very first column, as the result being what it was led to one of the greatest WWF moments of all time. The only thing I’d change about the Savage/Warrior WM VII match is I’d have Warrior throw in another splash at the end. Savage getting beat by a few shoulder tackles didn’t really work for me. The rest of the match and aftermath ruled, though.

The High Road/Low Road crew look at the breakup of Cryme Tyme. You know, if they’d waited a couple more weeks the Hart Dynasty would have been tag team champions, and they beat those guys in most of their matches. Not a smart move on their part.

Sarnecky is profiling the life and times of Shawn Michaels. Wow, it’s been over a month and he’s still retired. That’s gotta be a modern record, right?

Ford talks about the King of Trios tournament and the craziness of heel referees. I’ll bet this guy isn’t half the heel that Tirantes is. And with all due respect to CHIKARA fans, whining about heels winning and not wanting to support the promotion anymore is as markish as it gets. You can’t have Quack and the gang winning every show, that stuff gets old real quick. Have some patience, CHIKARMY! I thought you were better than this.

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Fear not, Smallophiles, for your fearless leader will be back next week! Come back tomorrow, when…

Wait a minute.

Tomorrow?

Yeah, that’s right. It’s been a long time since somebody’s done the Tuesday-Wednesday double shot around here. But I think I’m up to the task, and there’s plenty of things for me to talk about that didn’t make today’s column. Expect a special CINCO DE MAYO edition of the Corner!

So until tomorrow…