wrestling / Columns

News From Cook’s Corner 07.05.11

July 5, 2011 | Posted by Steve Cook

Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, and I hope that all of my American readers had a nice, relaxing Fourth of July weekend! I hope all of my international readers will forgive me for this column not quite being up to the traditional NFCC standards. Hey, when I get a few days off of work, I try not to spend them working. Instead, I lay around the house, drink some beverages, mingle with family members & catch up on some Office & CHIKARA. Y’all understand. Hopefully.

We do have some interesting stuff set up for you this week. My 411 Rookie Wes Kirk requested some time to comment on WWE financial matters, and I’m more than happy to let him do so. Wes has really taken off since I let him fly solo in the Wrestling Sandwich, and it’s great to see all the people taking an interest and commenting on his stuff. Yes, it seems that a pretty good percentage of you don’t like what he has to say, but it’s interesting enough to keep you coming back.

There’s a little bit of news too, but not much because it was a holiday weekend here in the States and many of the people we steal news from were busy with UFC stuff. By the way, UFC had a pretty great show on Saturday night. I know many of you aren’t into the whole MMA thing, but people like me that are had a pretty enjoyable Saturday night. I watched most of the show at Buffalo Wild Wings for the price of one beer…it doesn’t get much better than that. Of course, the 411 MMA Zone is the place where you can find all the latest news on UFC and every other MMA promotion, and I’ll be back there on July 13th as part of the 411 MMA Tournament of Great Significance! I am hoping to pull a Tito Ortiz and shock the world with a victory. This is the part where I should make some sort of a Jenna Jameson joke…except for the fact that I wouldn’t turn her down.

And with that little fact revealed, let’s bring on the feedback!

Wow! Thanks so much for the Terra Calaway interview! great stuff!!!! I hope to see more of her soon.Ramone

I’m confident that you will. She’s a smart girl, has a willingness to learn and has improved a little bit in each match I’ve seen of hers. Lots of potential there, and it’s cool that we got to learn a little bit about her before everybody else does. Hope you guys enjoyed it, and it turns out that she made some news last week that’s worthy of mention in this week’s column! What can I say, the girl is WINNING, as people said all the time a few months ago.

Is the Charile Sheen fad officially dead? That’s a shame, it was fun while it lasted.

Cook, you anti-social shut-in, you’ll never go visit your Aunt in Arizona! However, you are right in that you would like it out there. Most people stay inside their air conditioning with the blond down, drink, and watch a ton of TV, so you’d do all right. Oh, and on the rare occasions when you want to go out there are plenty of chain bars and college girls to stalk. The only problem is at your age you should have been divorced twice and had three kids by now.

Boy, this is sounding a lot like the speech I gave at my brother’s wedding in Arizona in April instead of going to WrestleMania with Small.JP Prag

There’s a reason for JP’s discontent. Several years ago, JP contacted me about meeting up with him at an establishment in Oxford, Ohio. There were a couple of reasons that I couldn’t join him for a tasty adult beverage…I had no money, and I’d never been to Oxford. I do wish I’d had the funds to head up there, as Oxford is apparently full of hot college girls. Hopefully I’ll find a reason to go there someday. JP has never forgiven me for this perceived slight, and doesn’t understand why a kid struggling to get through school can’t just drop everything, drive up to some place they’ve never been & meet up with some dude they only know off of the Internet.

See, much like our friend Wes, JP’s financially well-off. People like them don’t understand the plight of people like you and me, the common men & women of this great nation. We fight, scratch & claw to put food on our plate & a roof over our head while they sit in their ivory towers and use $100 bills as toilet paper. JP travels across the country all the time without reservation and doesn’t have to worry about making ends meet. I do not have that luxury. Perhaps some day I shall, but for now I have to work for a living. This is why JP Prag refers to me as an anti-social shut-in.

That, and I dislike most people.

Really, The Movement has to take a good look at his life. Well both brothers do. He gloats that he totally worked the IWC during the Lita/Edge angle and he had made up with them. Burning his original core of supporters. Boasts that he makes more from his Youtube channel than low end WWE wrestlers do. Comes to new job out of shape and more importantly not so good in the ring. Characterizes suspension as rest time he asked for, which makes TNA tell the world it was a suspension. Doesn’t realize that if he was a draw that there would be chants and such. Or that if you aren’t Hogan or Flair in their prime that this would make most employers stick with the suspension or even increase it.

Really, the dark human comedy that the brothers act out is better than 80% of prime time tv.Guest#4274

The Hardy story honestly wouldn’t be a bad idea for a TV show. The best part is that the producers would find two guys that can talk to play the parts of Jeff & Matt. I won’t deny that these guys still have their fans, and they certainly had a lot more back in the day, but I wonder how big they could have gotten if it wasn’t for the drugs, their general insanity, and the fact that neither man can talk their way out of a paper bag.

The TV show would be fun though. Obviously Jeff’s your strung-out Charlie Sheen-type that’s always up to hilarious antics that make people laugh. I’d repackage Matt into what people thought he was back in the day, the well-meaning guy trying to keep Jeff on the straight & narrow but failing miserably. That’s probably a more interesting character than the constantly whining narcissist that he plays on the Internet. I think their wrestling school gimmick and wanting to reform their old backyard wrestling promotion would be a pretty good plot line, and that’d fill out the rest of the cast with wrestler trainees, potential love interests & whacky old wrestler friends. To be fair, I think this is what Matt is trying to do with his online show, but it comes up a bit short because of the acting & production. Get some trained actors & a good studio behind it, and it could work.

I don’t think Jeff’s character should have a wife, so I’d take some creative liberties there. It depends on if I want the show to be a comedy or a drama, and I can see good arguments for both. (Perhaps a dramedy like most of David Kelly’s stuff?) Ultimately I think the wife’s character would take too much attention away from Jeff, and the audience would spend too much time wondering why the characters are together, so I’m leaning towards leaving her off. On the other hand, Matt’s love life is perfect for a TV show. You’ve got a new girl character every season that he’s convinced is “the one”. I’d have Jeff constantly mock him for this and be with a different girl or two every episode.

I wouldn’t include the TNA stuff. Perhaps around Season 3 they get signed by a major wrestling company after years of being off TV, and that can lead to all sorts of hilarity. I dunno. If nothing else, the idea of somebody writing a TV show based on the life of the Hardys is pretty freaking hilarious. Maybe I can get Larry to help me out on this.

I’m gonna make a bold statement by saying that I think WWE did this to steal the thunder from ROH. I’m not saying ROH is any type of threat to WWE, but they just came off their biggest ppv to date with a World Title changing hands. I think this Punk thing has stolen the headlines among the IWC and IF that was WWE’s intention with this IWC catered promo of all promos, then kudos to WWE for showing some balls.bighustle

I don’t think that entered their thought process, but there’s a reason that Punk mentioned ROH along with New Japan. I kind of enjoy how Jim Cornette’s playing along with all of this and has invited CM Punk to come back to Ring of Honor. Colt Cabana’s also being smart about it by scoring himself interviews with legitimate media outlets to talk about the Punk situation. Somehow he’s become a bigger deal with one mention on Raw than he was during his entire run as “Scotty Goldman”. Gee, I wonder if the good people at the NWA are regretting their decision to take their title off of Colt on a show that nobody cared about. The dream scenario is Punk winning the WWE title, then taking it to Ring of Honor so he can defend it against Cabana. That is a world that I want to live in.

My first thought was to say that ROH isn’t on WWE’s radar as far as stealing headlines goes…but then again, the Kings of Wrestling are rumored to be heading there, and those of us that know our ECW history remember what the WWF did when ECW got their TNN deal. They signed away ECW’s World Champion (Taz), & their Tag Team Champions (Dudley Boys). That wasn’t a coincidence. Now, ROH’s TV deal isn’t nearly as big as ECW getting on TNN was, but WWE definitely knows that there’s some talent there. Don’t be surprised if more high profile ROH guys get contract offers from WWE in the next few months. Sinclair better make sure those contracts are worth the paper they’re printed on.

One nitpick – when TNA had Impact air from North Carolina, Beer Money got the best reaction of the night, not the old timers.Guest#9582

I wonder if it was a coincidence that Robert Roode was taken off of TV for an injury storyline a month or two after the NC shows so they could kill Beer Money‘s momentum. Steiner got a huge pop in Cincinnati, so they made him a heel at the next Impact tapings. Ric Flair basically has to beg people not to cheer him. I never understood why some wrestling promotions have such an insane desire to not give their fans what they want to see. Then I read some of the comment sections around here and it started to make sense. People like to complain!

Punk vs HHH WM 28Nicole

That would be a lot more interesting than the HHH/Undertaker re-match I’ve been predicting, and I’m somebody who was a big fan of the HHH/Undertaker match. I re-watched it over the weekend when I wasn’t at the bar having a couple of cold ones to see if I changed my mind on it. Here’s what I originally said:

I was a little worried that these guys wouldn’t be able to deliver this time. Turns out I was wrong. The entrances were as epic as it gets, with “For Whom The Bell Tolls” at least making H’s entrance equal to Taker’s, if not better. The match was epic as well, similar in setup & style to Undertaker’s matches with Shawn Michaels at previous WrestleManias. I’m going to stop short of saying it equaled those matches, but it was a great story and both guys delivered the goods. Some people were actually believing Triple H was going to win, which says something because I’m sure everybody knew going in that he wouldn’t. Easily the Match of the Night, and it very well could end up being Match of the Year. I will say that I didn’t really care for the whole thing where Undertaker was dead after the match. It was a little bit much.

I’m cooling off a little bit on the MOTY talk. It was still a really fun match and a great spectacle, but it suffered from the same problem that a lot of H’s epic matches have: waaaaaaaaaay too much time between moves. It probably had to be that way because of who was in the match, but they could have shaved five minutes off and still had an incredible showing. Sometimes less is more, and if HHH only Pedigreed Taker twice & Taker only held HHH in Hell’s Gate for a minute instead of two, the “overkill” factor wouldn’t have been as high. Metallica not being on the DVD release hurts H’s entrance, but the traditional Undertaker theme replaced Johnny Cash just fine.

It was still a fun match, but I’m not dying to see another one. I can’t remember if Triple H & CM Punk have wrestled off the top of my head…I know that one week when the volcanic ash was keeping the Raw crew in Europe they cut dueling promos on Raw, but I don’t think it led to a singles match. Certainly nothing of a WM-type quality. Assuming Punk comes back (or sticks around), a feud with Triple H could result in a lot of good things.

steve cook have you seen the expos play?Phil

Sadly I haven’t seen them in a few years. Remember Youppi? Good stuff.

And now, the fake news!

CM Punk is creating a stir all across the world. A YouTube video of him in Australia popped up where he was verbally berating a fan for being a fan, and the PC police is kicking and screaming about how evil the Punker is because he happened to refer to the fan as a “homo”. TMZ posted it, and I assume that everybody who’s wanted to see it has already done so by now. We here at the Corner do our best to avoid such derogatory terms for people as it’s a sign of poor vocabulary & intelligence when the only thing you can come up with to insult somebody is a term that the homosexual community finds offensive. Frankly, it isn’t worth the trouble and it’s a lot more fun to insult people with words that they don’t understand.

(And honestly, most of the people we regularly insult in this column wouldn’t know what an “idiot” is. They‘re pretty easy to get one over on.)

A WWE representative said in response: “WWE does not condone this type of language or bias and we reinforce that with our talent who are independent contractors.” Notice how they reinforce the fact that their talent are independent contractors & not employees in an attempt to separate themselves from Punk’s comment. Will it work? Probably not.

Punk has shown remorse for the incident, tweeting the following last night:

“I’m glad TMZ posted that video because everybody needs to be held accountable for their bullshit, me included. What I said was bullshit….I’m embarrassed. I own up to being a total douche in this situation and I offer a sincere apology to anybody I hurt with careless words.”

Good on Punk for stepping up and admitting that he went about things the wrong way. Not everybody would do that, and I have the feeling that those are his actual sentiments and weren’t coached to him by somebody else, which happens a lot with people in this business. It takes a big man to admit when they’re wrong. The guy got worked up in the heat of the moment, went to a place where many heel wrestlers will go to get a reaction out of a fan (people don’t like having their sexuality questioned), and went too far. He knows that, and he owned up to it.

With that being said, getting all worked up about a wrestler insulting a fan is pretty silly. Go to any indy show south of the Mason-Dixon line and you’ll hear fans & wrestlers yelling things ten times worse than the phrase that Punk used at each other. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it happens. I’m surprised this sort of thing doesn’t pop up on WWE television more often.

What’s that? It has?

Yeah, I know it was a different era, but this is still pro wrestling. (Even if WWE claims it isn’t.) Like I said in the Sandwich this weekend while talking about the Sgt. Slaughter Iraqi angle, wrestling & tastelessness go together like peanut butter & jelly. You’ll never completely get the sleaze out of wrestling no matter how hard you try and clean it up and make it all politically correct. As long as you’re appealing to the lowest common denominator at the end of the day, there will always be a certain amount of sleaze. It is what it is.

GLAAD will probably not be happy about this whole Punk thing, but there’s not a whole heck of a lot they can do about it. The dude is leaving the company. Are they really going to bother sending him to a seminar when he’ll be gone in a couple of weeks? In fact, WWE will actually look good coming out of this by having that evil gay-hating wrestler out of the company. Never mind the fact that Punk is pro-gay marriage & generally accepting towards alternative lifestyles (He tweeted congratulations to New York after the legalization of gay marriage there), GLAAD & these folks shouldn’t be bothered with the facts.

Another noteworthy thing about the clip is Punk’s choice to rock the mustache. I like a good mustache…it’s not as glorious as a good beard, but a mustache is just the thing that Punk needs to look even sleazier than he already does. Nothing says “dirt bag” like a mustache, and that’s not a bad thing…that’s a good thing!

*cheesy smile*

Randy Orton is probably very happy that Punk’s taking some heat for saying something offensive, as now people have forgotten his random radio interview from last week where he admitted to almost overdosing in 2006, threw Rock and some other people under the bus, and mentioned that several of his co-workers had done some “method acting” with Kelly Kelly. Manu Bumb is always asking me why WWE is so insistent on pushing guys like The Miz, and I always tell him it’s because Miz can go on various media outlets without embarrassing himself or the company. There’s a reason you don’t see Randy Orton on all the shows that guys like Cena & Miz appear on. He’d say something he shouldn’t say and they’d have to go into spin control mode. He’s just not a great representative of the company 90% of the time.

For some reason a news item popped up over the weekend that WWE had trademarked “The Last Outlaw”. I’m pretty sure this is a re-run, because months ago it was reported that WWE had obtained usage of this nickname from an indy wrestler. Ron Price was a wrestler up in the Northeast that called himself “The Last Outlaw” and owned the wrestling rights to that name. WWE signed him to a developmental contract, apparently for the sole purpose of obtaining rights to that name, which they gave to Undertaker for his return earlier this year. I can’t explain why WWE felt it was necessary to sign some guy just so they could give Undertaker another nickname. Dude already had a few, right? Originally they offered Price a cool $30K for the name, but Price wouldn’t take the money & asked for a developmental contract. So he got that, and they cut him not too long afterwards. Whoops.

No word on when The Last Outlaw Dead Man Phenom Big Evil Red Devil Booger Red Creature of the Night American Badass Undertaker will be returning to action.

Val Venis stated that he has been blacklisted from WWE. I dunno, I think Val is being a bit dramatic when he puts it that way. Trevor Murdoch just came out and said that WWE wouldn’t hire him, and nobody thinks any less of him for it. If I applied for a job with the New Yorker and got turned down, would I tell people that the New Yorker blacklisted me? No.

In our Zack Ryder Newsbite of the Week, the Woo Woo Woo Kid defended his Internet Championship against Primo during the Raw tour of Australia. I have no idea if this happened because there’s plans to bring Ryder’s championship to TV, or if they figured they could get away with it because the bigwigs weren’t around. Probably the latter, but I think it’d be really cool if they turned the WWE Internet Championship into Ryder’s equivalent of Larry Sweeney’s ICWICWA Texarkana Television Title. Heck, say he won a tournament in Rio. I’m down with that.

It seems that people have taken to debating who should be in the WWE Hall of Fame. I have no idea why this is happening now, I can only assume that this is when Vince McMahon releases the ballots for everybody himself to look over & decide who should be in the HOF. Or maybe it’s just a slow news week. Anyway, two candidates have emerged over the past week and now’s as good a time as any to look at their candidacies in good ol’ fashioned Tale of the Tape style! Arn Anderson was one of the backbones of WCW. Billy Gunn had a long & successful career with WWE. Who deserves to be in the WWE Hall of Fame more? Let’s find out…

Notable Accomplishments:
AA: 5-time NWA/WCW Tag Team Champion with three different partners (Tully Blanchard, Bobby Eaton & Paul Roma), 4-time NWA/WCW Television Champion, 1-time WWF Tag Team Champion with Tully Blanchard (ending the reign of Demolition, which is still the longest in WWE history)
BG: 10-time WWF Tag Team Champion with three different partners (Bart Gunn, Road Dogg, Chuck), 1-time WWF Intercontinental Champion, 1-time WWF Hardcore Champion, 1999 King of the Ring Tournament Winner

Advantage: Arn Anderson. Billy’s tag team reigns make it close, but Anderson was part of better tag teams whose success had a bigger impact on their company. I also have to knock Billy a little bit for only managing one Hardcore title reign, as everybody in the company at his level or below had multiple reigns with that strap.

Factions:
AA:
Four Horsemen
BG: D-Generation X

Advantage: Arn Anderson. Don’t get me wrong, DX was great. But when HBK & HHH re-formed the group in 2006, did they invite Billy back? You damn well know that Ric Flair wouldn’t re-form the Four Horsemen without the Enforcer involved. Arn was also part of the Dangerous Alliance & the Stud Stable, two tremendous factions often overshadowed in WCW heel faction history discussions by the Horsemen & the New World Order. He was even part of the original Legion of Doom along with Hawk, Animal, Paul Ellering, Jake Roberts & the Spoiler. The bottom line here is that you weren’t going to form a successful heel faction in NWA/WCW without Arn Anderson being involved.

Notable Endorsements:
AA: Randy Orton, Chris Jericho, William Regal
BG: Billy Gunn

Advantage: Arn Anderson. Being the first person to endorse yourself takes points away, as does nobody notable backing you up.

Promos:

For the purposes of this experiment, I typed “Arn Anderson promo” & “Billy Gunn promo” into the YouTube search engine and clicked on the first thing that came up for each.

Arn Anderson:

Billy Gunn:

Advantage: Arn Anderson

Wins Over Hulk Hogan:
AA:
2
BG: 0

Advantage: Arn Anderson

Now, I know that some of you are going to be mad because I’m picking categories that Arn obviously has an edge in. So right now I will run down a list of things that Billy does have an edge over Arn in:

-Hairline
-Physique
-Making fun of Triple H in shoot interviews
-Length of time spent wrestling in WWE
-Number of different names & gimmicks

But I think we can safely assume that Arn Anderson’s HOF candidacy trumps Billy Gunn’s. Indeed, the numbers never lie!


By Wes Kirk

Recently I wrote about the WWE stock and got a bit of flak from the lovely ETards about how I don’t know anything, I can’t make any money as a day trader, and so on. Odd, I didn’t lose a single day in June but can any of you legitimately say the same? You might have WWE stock because you think it can only go up, but the truth is the last twelve years have not been kind to the WWE.

Last week the Dow ticked up over 500 points. How did WWE do? It closed at 9.70 on Monday, June 27 and closed at 9.80 on Friday, July 1st. 500 points, a huge rise in Dow stocks, and yet WWE made ten lousy cents in five days. But this is hardly anything new for WWE stock buyers, as the chart below is going to show you:

When the stock opened, it was $30.50 a share. Since that time, it has lost over 67% of its value and for its TTM is down over 36% from last year. Let us imagine that we have $10,000 and put that money into WWE on July 6th, 2010. How would we do?

July 6th, 2010 had 15.52 as its closing price. As of July 1, 2011 the price is 9.80. A definite loss of money had anyone gone long on that stock. But it gets worse!

Currently six analysts are rating WWE stock. Five say to hold it, and one says to buy it. Hold isn’t necessarily a good thing, and in this case is likely suggested because of hopes it will eventually go up. Taking a look at annual financials, the story gets quite grim. In 2007, WWE had $135 million in cash. At the end of 2010, it had a little over $69 million. Total current assets as of the end of 2007 reached $347 million, but in 2010 it dropped to $259 million. Total liabilities in 2007 touched over $72 million, but in 2010 reached $98.9 million. This can be a bit confusing to people as assets and revenue are not the exact same thing. Revenue is the money generated, assets are the generators of revenue such as buildings and property, or they could be any resource that generates revenue. Revenue, by the way, is not the end result of how much a company makes. That would be the profit. So what was the WWE profit in 2010? Well, the net income before extra items and preferred dividends comes out to a little over $53.4 million. I mentioned that WWE has over $135 million in cash because they basically add their profits every quarter to the cash amount which can be used if the company needs to use it to purchase assets, pay off liabilities, and whatever else is needed. Right now a lot of companies are sitting on cash because they have no idea what is in the future for the business world due to the job-killing policies of the current administration. What does that mean? It means people don’t want to risk paying money because they don’t feel they’ll make enough of a return on it. WWE will likely be using quite a bit of that cash to launch their network, if they ever get around to it.

For WWE to be in severe financial straits, they would need to continue a losing trend in assets and a lower revenue stream overall, plus they would need to have less and less money on hand. For WWE to be severely hurt, they would need to have their liabilities outweigh their assets for at least two quarters straight. Obviously the company is only seeing a loss of some profits, although it is a disturbing trend if it continues the next few years. The bottom line is that the trend isn’t going to get much better after Vince slashed the dividend and WWE has been losing viewers for the last ten years straight, which is why revenue decreases. The less fans watch, the less fans buy.

Do yourselves a favor: The day before Q2 results come in, snatch a few shares. Once it goes up to around a dollar, sell. Other than using quarterly and annual earnings to either gain money by buying or shorting, the stock is much like the television product: Not worth a second glance.

————————————-

Thank you very much Wes for reminding me why I stay away from the stock market! Be sure to check out the Wrestling Sandwich every week to check out more of Mr. Kirk.

-The funny thing about Cena’s promo is you can relate it to Punk’s promo on Raw or his comments in Australia.

-Good God Cena’s so condescending when he talks about freedom of speech.

-Bellas! Eve! Kelly!

-Why wouldn’t Kelly & Eve be interested in Lawler? They wouldn’t be the first divas.

-OK, here’s something that came up in conversation with Manu last week…Better wrestler: Kelly or Miss Tessmacher? I’m convinced Manu thinks it’s Tessmacher because she wrestles like she’s a stripper, but maybe you guys can enlighten me. I’m not saying Kelly’s great, but she’s better than Tessie.

-This is the part where I’d say that somebody else is obviously better than both of them, but I’m already putting them over too much in this column and I don’t want to scare them away. Happens a lot.

-SILENT RAGE!

-Scott Stanford’s professionalism works well against R-Truth’s insanity.

-Senor Jimmy!

-The Big Show/Hornswoggle MITB commercial is a pretty funny piece of business.

-Speaking of funny pieces of business, here’s Koztino!

-Oh yeah, those guys are tag team champions. I was trying to block it out of my mind.

-Blocking stuff out of my mind never seems to take. Just makes me think about it more. Not that I spend a lot of time thinking about Otunga or McGillicutty, but I think you get my point. Maybe.

-Well, that could have been a lot worse…RANDOM ZACK RYDER APPEARANCE!

-I love how Zack Ryder & Scott Stanford are owning this show.

-What mistakes did Evan Bourne make?

-I wonder how many of the Vegas fans were alive when Slaughter sided with Iraq during the Gulf War.

-Woah, remember when Jack Swagger was World Champion? Crazy times, man.

-Hey, I like the guy! And I’m all about him taking on the Sarge.

-Swagger wins in convincing fashion, as he should when they’re not treating him like a joke.

-Slaughter pledges allegiance to the flag alongside Evan Bourne. In case you’re keeping track, “Under God” was included. I know some people get worked up about that.

-I hope Ricardo’s back soon, ADR getting the “already in the ring” treatment just doesn’t fly with me.

-Hey, what was with R-Truth repping Geico earlier? Does he have a deal with them? Suckas gots to know.

-ADR WINS! How I hope this goes better than his last attempt to win a championship.

-Man, when was the last time we heard Coach’s voice on this show?

-Dolph is one stylish man. White suit, black shirt & blue bowtie (untied). I need an outfit like that.

-Too bad Kofi’s the only person that wants to feud with him.

-And now Kofi’s abusing women! Ridiculous!

-I’m not sure if I should comment on whether or not I would eat that cake. You probably know the answer. I do love me some cake.

-Nice Alex Riley promo video further explaining his character as of late.

-So Jerry Lawler’s never abused any rookies? Interesting.

-Nice match, and another big win for Riley! Miz can not beat that man, and it really seems to be getting to him.

-I wish the Reds had attacked the Cardinals like this after their game earlier tonight.

-Woah, Vince called Punk a punk! Crazy!

-Didn’t somebody tell Cena Vince isn’t a billionaire anymore?

-Vince threatens to fire Cena if he doesn’t beat Punk. Not a bad idea, but do we actually believe that Cena will go away if he gets fired? The Nexus tried that and it didn’t work so well.

-I think this show would have been a lot better if it was live and there weren’t fireworks going on outside.

——————–

And now, a little something for the Jim Rome fans…and the haters too!

I’m still waiting for the “IWC” equivalent of this to go down. Surely we’ll see an enraged wrestler attack some poor Internet wrestling columnist one of these days. It’ll probably be me the way things are going.

——————–

Not a whole lot of TNA news this week. The main story is Ric Flair having a disagreement with TNA management and not appearing in front of the crowd for their house show in Brooklyn (which drew pretty well from all accounts). Honestly…I have a hard time getting interested in a story about Ric Flair having a disagreement with management. I’d be more interested in a story where he doesn’t. Flair did appear in front of fans at the next show, so it seems that all is well. Or at least as well as it’s going to be.

In absence of anything else interesting to talk about with TNA Impact Wrestling, I present the following video.

WARNING: Those of you offended by the language CM Punk uses to describe Australian wrestling fans sure as heck won’t want to click on this video. This guy uses every profanity in the book, and a few that I didn’t know were in it.

Not the most eloquent argument against TNA of all time, but I thought it was pretty funny. It turns out this Angry Grandpa guy doesn’t like much of anything and even appeared on a Honky Tonk Man pod cast. Now that’s a pairing that makes sense to me.

Is there a better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than hotass indy chick Leva Bates in a Captain America outfit? As a wrestling fan and somebody who owns several comic books, I think not.

So it appears that AAA no longer airs on Galavision. Apparently this is because CMLL’s show airs in HD & AAA does not. This greatly confused my friend that gets DirecTV and noted that Galvision does not have an HD channel there, or anywhere else apparently. I am personally bummed about this because AAA TV was progressing to the point where Jeff Jarrett came in and became the Super Duper Mega Champion and it was going to be really awesome to see. And now I can’t because Galavision would rather run shows of a company where the top guys are leaving for WWE. Brilliant strategy there, fellas.

We wrap up this week’s edition of the Corner with some fantastic news concerning a lady we introduced you to last week. Terra Calaway won her very first singles championship on Sunday, defeating Amanda to become the first LuchaPro Womens’ Champion. Terra did not emerge unscarred, as you’ll see a little bit later on, but it was easily the biggest victory of her career and we couldn’t be more proud of her winning the first of what will be many championships.

Bazar talks about guilty pleasures. I would argue that JBL as WWE Champion & Don West were both awesome so there’s nothing guilty about liking either of those things.

Ari presented another Column of Honor. If we beg him enough he’ll do another one. Maybe.

I’d like to wish James Cooke the best in his future endeavors. Hopefully we can find somebody else to be positive about Raw!

The Rs featured JT II forgetting there was an X-Division three-way match!

Buy or Sell features the 411 writing debut of Patrick O’Dowd, a wrestling realist type of fella. Good times.

Furious + WEW = Hilarity.

The Greg DeMarco Show returns tonight with the usual cast of characters! Greg keeps hyping this surprise for your humble correspondent, so make sure you tune in tonight at 10:30 PM EST to see if he delivers!

And of course there’s the 411 on Wrestling, which returns this Friday night at 10:00 PM EST! Larry Csonka & I will talk about Impact Wrestling, WWE SmackDown & anything else that’s in the wrestling news. New night & time for the show, so make sure you don’t miss it!

Well, that’s all we have time for this week! Michael “Little Jimmy” Ornelas & Nick “The Stick” Bazar will be in tomorrow with the BFF’in News Talk, and I’ll be back next week with more News From Cook’s Corner! Until then…


You guys thought DeMarco was joking when he was talking about all those west coast indy girls getting their hands all over each other? Nope.

NULL

article topics

Steve Cook

Comments are closed.