News From Cook’s Corner 02.01.12

Hi, hello and welcome to a special Wednesday edition of News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, and I’m back in Northern Kentucky after a trip to Missouri this weekend for the 2012 Royal Rumble. It was a fantastic trip and that’s mostly what I’ll be talking about this week, so get ready for some Rumble perspective from somebody that was in attendance! We’ll briefly touch on the other things going on in wrestling and look at some feedback, but this will be a Rumble-centric column. It was kind of what I did this week, so it’s to be expected.

Not all that bad a read of an older column, especially one that predates my time on this site, i think. Still, pretty jazzed to know that TNA’s going to Nashville, TN for Lockdown. Definitely gonna order the show on PPV, knowing that there’s a pretty good chance to see Bobby Roode(c) vs. “Cowboy” James Storm, for the championship and in Storm’s backyard.

April’sa gonna be a good month for pro wrestling, for once. – scipio2009

I went to Lockdown last year in Cincinnati and it was a pretty good time. They always seem to kick things up an extra notch for that show and it won my award for TNA PPV of the Year more often than not over the years. The Nashville crowd should be excited for it, especially if the main event is Roode vs. Storm.

My first column was better than I expected. The stuff from 2005-06 was pretty decent from what I recall. 2007-08 was a bit of a dropoff, as I got burned out on the whole wrestling thing, but 2009-since has been enjoyable, at least from where I sit. And believe it or not, I’m my own worst critic.

It IS possible guys like Bourne get themselves suspended because WWE is much more of a corporate BUSINESS then they may have realized when they wanted to make it to the “big leagues” I’m sure plenty of people will jump on the “when you have a commitment to a company like WWE” blah blah blah but you know what? Maybe once he got inside he really just did not like how things operated. It actually does seem to be a bit of a trend. Some guys fit in with that corporate style and some guys do not. I love RoH as much as anyone, but there’s a reason a lot of these guys are independent wrestlers instead of corporate accountants…. – Guest#9252

I can buy Bourne being displeased with the corporate side of wrestling, but I side with Guest#9710, who pointed out that there are ways to express his displeasure that aren’t as ridiculous. He could ask for a release, or he could work the rest of his contract and then move on. Getting busted for drug usage does nothing to help his situation.

Points tries to make some points. Let’s see if he’s successful.

1. I gave up on your look back to 2005 about two paragraphs in. I have no idea what what was present, past or what you were trying to backtrack on this time Cook.

It was explained at the beginning of the section, but I’m sure if you didn’t read that part it didn’t make much sense.

2. Still sticking up for Wes, huh? Keep riding that train Cook…some people can’t admit they are wrong. That is fine. Guilty by association my friend, guilty by association…

There are two reasons that Wes remains part of 411 and will likely continue to do so for a long time. One is the comments, but the other, and the more important reason, is that’s he’s reliable. I know that if I send him questions for Fact or Fiction he’ll have them done as quickly as possible. I was able to turn the column in early last week because he and Ari Berenstein got right to it and didn’t mess around. Most weeks I have to wait for the writers to get things done at the very last minute, and some weeks they miss the deadline and I have to get somebody else to do it right before the column needs to be posted. I don’t have that problem with Wes Kirk, and he’ll continue to appear in Fact or Fiction from time to time because he makes my job easier.

Further complaints about Wes, myself or anybody else can be sent to [email protected], which is the e-mail address of the individual that runs this website. Yes, I know that AOL addresses are so 1995, but that’s Ashish’s thing.

3. Sorry to disagree, but your current work is nowhere near as good as a few years ago. For some reason, you got an ego, tried to make too many jokes in your columns and your attitude is on display every time on the 411 podcast.

A couple points:

-I think the biggest difference between 2005 Steve Cook and 2012 Steve Cook is that 2012 Steve Cook has some self-esteem going for him, realizes he kind of knows what he’s talking about occasionally and isn’t as self-loathing as 2005 Steve Cook was. I’ll take 2012 Steve Cook any day of the week, but I’m sure that some of you will relate to 2005 Steve Cook more, as he was depressed and took wrestling too seriously at times.

-Nowadays, I subscribe to the belief that pro wrestling shouldn’t be taken all that seriously. Actually, I don’t take much of anything seriously and you have the same complaint that some of my college professors had with my work. I don’t see this changing anytime soon, but if you’re into wrestling as SERIOUS BUSINESS I’m sure you can find plenty of wrestling columnists here and elsewhere that need to take a chill pill and put things in perspective. This is wrestling. It ain’t politics, and thank God it isn’t.

-I would never compare myself with people that are actually good at the radio thing (I’ve never taken any type of class in it and I’ve never actually been a very good talker in “real life”), but the most successful people in radio have gigantic egos and enough attitude for an entire staff. You’re not going to listen to somebody that isn’t sure of what they‘re saying…if they don’t believe it, why should you? Radio (or writing, for that matter) can be summed up with Jim Rome’s old catchphrase: Have a take & don’t suck. You better have something important to say or nobody’s going to listen to it. Believe me, if I came on Larry’s show as a meek dude that let people walk all over him and didn’t say anything that hadn’t been said by everybody else, he would have found somebody to take my place pretty quickly.

411 and attitude have always gone together like peanut butter and jelly. We don’t want milquetoast people that say the same Internet wrestling fan talking points every week, we want people with personality that bring something unique to the table. Wrestling is supposed to be entertainment, and 411 writers try to be entertaining too. If they are, they can stick around for seven years. Maybe more.

Hey now people, the only thing wrong with Cook is the sports teams he chooses to support and that’s not even necessarily his fault. Besides he suffers enough for that flaw already. – gpjunk

Yeah! Wait, WUT DA HELL?!?!?!?!?

I love you for putting Metallica and Jericho in the same article. no homo. – thank you

I spent the drives to and from Missouri listening to my Metallica collection…well, except for Kill ‘Em All, which seems to have disappeared. I found the case it came in, but had no luck finding the CD. I had a nasty habit of putting stuff in the wrong cases when I was younger, and now most of my collection is a mess. But yeah, I likes me some Metallica.

I was at the ROH Norfolk show….there wasnt room for the lights but there was enough room for aerial moves. I recall the Bricoes winning their match with a Doomsday Device – Guest#5811

Thanks for the update! If I had more stroke around these parts I’d encourage readers with good information to send it in so we wouldn’t have to rely on other websites for information. I managed to get Larry the info about Raw’s 1000th episode coming to St. Louis and the Rumble dark match, but I think it’d be cool if we could do that sort of thing more often. I know the news reporters hate combing the other websites for arena reports, so if we got them more often it’d be cool.

“-Punk shakes his head while Cena claims he will wrestle Kane tonight and at the Rumble. He knows it’s a bad idea.”

No, he knows it’s TERRIBLE WRITING. Even though it didn’t happen, the message was why pay to see Cena/Kane on PPV when you can get it for free on RAW?

Sadly that didn’t save him later though, when they gave away the “Johnny Ace GTS” spot for FREE, rather than having people pay to see it on Sunday. Quite generous of them I suppose, but hardly good business.

As for Bourne, if he is trying to get fired as suggested here, then I’m not sure destroying your reputation and becoming known as a wrestler with drug issues is the way to go about it. No organization with any intelligence would touch him. So he’ll just have to go to TNA. – SON OF HYATTE

I’d like to think that Punk’s character wouldn’t be that smarky. OK, he probably is.

Ricky Hazard! I used to really dig on reading his columns when I did my workstudy at the college library on Saturdays. I was kinda bummed when he went MIA but oh well. I’m holding out hope that Bayani Domingo returns to these parts someday – his stuff always managed to get me to legit laugh out loud. – JMAC

I miss Bayani too. I think we used to have some kind of feud over something, but as the years pass I forget who I’m supposed to hate and why. I don’t have any info on what he’s up to these days, but we can always hope. Me, I’m waiting for a Ron Gamble return. He called into a podcast a few months back and got our hopes up, but alas.

No Buggy pictures? It’s the biggest week of her career thus far… BOO!!! – BOO THIS MAN!

All of the picture slots were taken up before I found out about Buggy’s big news. I had to use Reby Sky to make Still Guest#8287 happy and Taeler Hendrix’s appearance on the Greg DeMarco Show needed to be plugged. So Buggy didn’t make it in visually, but we did talk about her a bit. She’ll appear at some point in the future if Greg’s ok with it. He’s very territorial when it comes to Buggy.

I don’t know whether it’s the jet black hair or because she’s in the best shape of her life.. But man oh man does does Rosa Mendes now make my Little Jimmy shimmy. With Maryse gone, more Mendes in this column, PLEASE.. Congrats on the anniversary by the way – Kent Jueggernott

Rosa’s been working hard and is getting it done, no doubt about it. One of the few problems I had with the Rumble event was that she didn’t come out with either Epico or Primo.

The Royal Rumble has always been one of my favorite events of the year. There’s nothing quite like the Rumble Match, where thirty wrestlers enter in intervals to determine who will challenge for the WWE or the World title at WrestleMania. I’ve always wanted to see it live, but never had the opportunity until this year. The Rumble was in St. Louis, Missouri, which is a couple of states over from where I live and a couple of hours from the home of my Offtheteam.com podcasting partner and best Internet friend, Trent “The Penguin” Howell. I hadn’t seen ol’ Trent in person since we went to a Raw house show back in 2004, so going to the Rumble with him seemed like a darn good idea.

I spent a lot of time before the trip worrying about the weather for the 6+ hour drive to Cape Girardeau. Weather is always an issue in this part of the country this time of year, but I was blessed with clear skies and decent temperatures for the trip. Saturday night in Cape was pretty fun, we hit a couple bars once Trent finally got the headlight on his motor vehicle working after two trips to an auto part store. Trent’s wife joined us later in the evening and she was even cooler than he said she was. If you think AJ’s attractive you’d like her, as they’re the same size. Better-looking face too. Trent did good there.

On Sunday we headed up to St. Louis and set up camp in Harrah’s. I haven’t been to too many casinos in my day, but I might have to make that happen more often because the vibe there was awesome. Even if they rob you blind they’re really nice about it. They’ll give you a bottle of water when they close the bar at 3 AM. (By the way, if you’ve listened to our OTT podcasts and think we’re ridiculous, you should hear us talking sports & politics at 3 AM after a long, long night.) The chicken fingers I had at 2 AM really hit the spot. Making things even better was the fact that they were having a Chinese New Year’s celebration and the place was full of fine Asian chicks. Chinese New Year’s is my new favorite holiday.

But you’re not here to read about my casino adventure with the Penguins, you want some Royal Rumble thoughts! We were joined for the show by Trent’s friend Shawn and Andy Critchell, Larry Csonka’s Monday night 411 on Wrestling co-host. Andy is a very jovial fella and went absolutely crazy for Mark Henry, so he was pretty much what I expected. Good dude. I thought the crowd was really good but apparently it didn’t come across that way on TV for whatever reason. It was a pretty smart crowd, one that started chanting about how Cena sucked before the show started. The people around us were pretty good…there was somebody in front of me that held up a sign early on, but I approved because it said “I Paid To See Daniel Bryan”. If you want to block my view for a couple of minutes during a three-hour show I won’t mind if you have something that’s worth saying. I thought the crowd was a lot better than the crowds I’ve been part of in places like Cincinnati & Lexington, where people actually don’t respond to much of anything. People were reacting to stuff here, and all of us were going crazy at various points in the show.

Dark Match: Yoshi Tatsu d. Heath Slater

This would have fit right in on Superstars for sure. It wasn’t spectacular or anything, but both guys worked hard and it definitely wasn‘t bad. Yoshi was quite popular with the crowd and Heath got a good heel reaction. For all I know this might actually be a feud on NXT. I like Yoshi a lot, and Heath’s going to be around for awhile because he’s good at making other people look good.

Triple Threat Cage Match: World Champion Daniel Bryan d. Big Show & Mark Henry

With Mark Henry hurt and Big Show reportedly hurt, it was on Daniel Bryan to put on a show and he did just that. D-Bry got a hell of a mixed reaction from the St. Louis crowd, as boos dominated his entrance but there were a few loud “DANIEL BRYAN CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP” chants during the match. Like I told Larry, people can’t say that he doesn’t get a reaction now. Well, they can say it, but they’re wrong. I question the reports of Big Show being hurt because he looked pretty good here and even got his 450-pound butt on top of the cage. Nice story here, with Bryan constantly trying to get out of the cage early, getting some offense in later, and a great ending sequence with Bryan hanging off the wrist of Big Show. Eventually he fell to the floor and retained the title, and I screamed about how that was my boy D-Bryan. Watching Critchell mark out for Mark Henry in person was quite the experience, and I don’t know what he would have done if Mizark had won.

Beth Phoenix, Natalya & the Bella Twins d. Kelly Kelly, Eve, Alicia Fox & Tamina

I wasn’t sure how they would get the Divas on the show, so we probably should have seen this match coming. This had Kelly Kelly doing a freaking cross-body off the top rope to the floor, so it was better than any Diva match I’d seen in quite awhile. Also, it was nice to see that Beth Phoenix is still alive and they actually had her win the match. Guess it’s time to build her up for her next challenger.

John Cena vs. Kane – Double Countout

I wasn’t feeling this at all going in, and the match & aftermath only made things less interesting. The Cena crowd response was interesting, as they got the LET’S GO CENA/CENA SUCKS chant going a couple of times (For the record, Critchell chanted the former while Penguin and I chanted the latter), but when that wasn’t going on nobody really knew what to do. Match was pretty much what you’d expect, then they went to the back so Kane could drag Zack Ryder out of his locker room and Tombstone him. I had a feeling something would happen to Zack when I saw that he had his own locker room. I guess it was nice that all the people that bought Broski headbands got to see their guy, even if he got Tombstoned.

The stretcher job seemed like a good time to get a t-shirt, but the Royal Rumble XXL shirts sold out. I probably should have seen that one coming. Fortunately I got back in time for the next match…

Funkasaurus d. Drew McIntyre

I was happy when Drew came out, then Funkasaurus came out and I lost my shit. You can’t help it, that song will get stuck in your head for days and how many chances will you have to dance along with a Funkasaurus? Hell yes I did the Dactyl arms. I got my Funkasaurus entrance so I didn’t have to start a riot or anything. Good times. I love the Funkasaurus and I’m so happy I got to see him do his thing live.

There were quite a few people wearing their James Laurinaitis St. Louis Rams jerseys at the show, but that didn’t stop John Laurinaitis from getting booed out of the building when he came out. He had to wear the sleeveless ref shirt so he could show off the guns!

CM Punk d. Dolph Ziggler

This got off to a really great start and most of it was enjoyable, but the overbooking at the end drug it down a bit. Of course that was to be expected with Big Johnny out there as the ringside enforcer, but it seemed kind of blah to me. Some darn good wrestling led up to it, but it didn’t quite live up to the MOTYC potential that most of us thought it had. Punk was rather popular. Ziggler had a solid performance, but as good as he is I don’t think he’s quite ready to carry Raw’s main title yet. He could be very soon, but he doesn’t quite have that connection with the audience.

As somebody who has watched CM Punk & Daniel Bryan compete on ROH shows with about 500 people at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds and at an IWA-MS show in a national guard armory with somewhere around 50 people, it was incredible to see both of them retaining their world championships with 18,120 other people in a huge arena. People often ask me why I bother with that indy wrestling stuff that isn‘t as slickly produced as WWE or Impact Wrestling, and that’s the reason. To see guys like Punk & Bryan go from performing at county fairgrounds & national guard armories to huge arenas…it’s a beautiful thing.

Royal Rumble Match

It was 55 minutes, so it’s best if I cover it in the Raw Thoughts format…

-Miz had a long run in the match and was the Iron Man by a couple of minutes over Cody Rhodes, but he didn’t do a whole lot for most of it. He laid on the floor for awhile after R-Truth took him out, then he got back in the ring and laid around most of the time. It’s like most of Miz’s career…he accomplishes stuff like winning the WWE title and headlining WrestleMania, but it doesn’t quite connect the way it should.

-I called Alex Riley being number two, and he lasted about as long as I expected.

-Cody had a much more impressive showing at number four, as he was active most of the time and threw out a pretty good collection of legends. Something tells me he’ll be feuding with a veteran at WrestleMania. It might be his brother Goldust, or perhaps his elimination of Mick Foley will lead to something. Either could work pretty well.

-Ricardo Rodriguez was fantastic. I thought it was actually ADR at first because I didn’t see just how wrecked the car was. I wonder if WWE expected a “RICARDO” chant.

-Socko vs. the Cobra got a tremendous reaction. I guess Santino started wearing the cobra sock just for that spot. Why not?

-Kofi Kingston needs to be doing something since his tag partner‘s having issues, and if Sunday’s Rumble performance & Monday’s victory over The Miz are any indication WWE gets that too. The walking handstand to remain in the Rumble was insane.

Eat your heart out, John Morrison.

-I don’t need to see another Khali/Jinder feud, but at least Khali eliminated Jinder from the match. Speaking of which, WWE has some interesting wrestlers on the sides of their semis:

Khali
Drew McIntyre
Beth Phoenix
Kelly Kelly
Sin Cara
Ezekiel Jackson
Kane (without mask)

There are some more I’m forgetting, but there were some interesting choices. They also have a couple of Rock/Cena WrestleMania semis.

-I know some of you guys didn’t like having all the announcers in, but the crowd went crazy for Lawler & Booker and booed the hell out of Cole. We were glad not to have to listen to them all night, but it would have been interesting to hear how they handled things when they all got back to the announce table.

-Hacksaw & Road Dogg got huge pops (and apparently Road Dogg still has it), but to me the biggest surprise in the Rumble by far was Kharma. We were actually talking about her earlier in the day while explaining the current storylines to Mrs. Penguin, and weren’t sure when she’d be coming back. Good job by her keeping that a secret, and the Implant Buster on Dolph Ziggler was tremendous.

-Not a fan of the new Wade Barrett music. He finally had a decent re-mix of his old theme so I guess it was time to change it.

-People in the crowd were getting way too excited over who #30 would be. I told them not to get their hopes up, but no, they were sure that it’d be Batista or Rey Mysterio or somebody else making a big comeback. So they were pretty disappointed when it was Big Show.

-They saved a whole lot of the heavy-hitters for the end of the match, but it made sense to keep Orton’s return appearance a bit brief and it was Jericho’s first real in-ring action since September 2010. Not that you could tell, because the ending sequence with Jericho vs. Sheamus was the best part of the match. I had no idea who was going to win out of those two, and they showed some damn good chemistry. I’m sure we’ll be seeing it again sometime down the road.

-No Hornswoggle. I’m not really complaining, I’m just saying he wasn’t in the match.

-Sheamus won! He was one of the favorites to win and the person I went with on the podcast, and he’s a fine choice to have in one of the title matches at WrestleMania. I’m hoping it ends up being Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan, as it’d be pretty cool to have a match that got bumped off of WrestleMania XXVII be one of the main events for WrestleMania XXVIII. I was one of the people that thought Sheamus was getting pushed too soon a couple of years back, but he’s proven to be a solid wrestler, a good/unique promo, and he always comes off well as a spokesperson for the company whenever he’s doing radio shows & TV appearances. I, for one, will not be hopping off the Sheamus bandwagon anytime soon. Dude does a good job.

-Of course, if he goes against my boy D-Bry I’ll have to root against him at WrestleMania. But I won’t be too broken-hearted if he gets the win.

-I thought the Rumble match was pretty good overall. The comedy went over pretty well, the stretch with Jericho & Sheamus at the end was awesome, and there was a lot of Cody Rhodes. There were a lot of people in the match that didn’t have a chance of winning, I wouldn’t rate it as one of the greatest Rumble fields of all time or anything like that. It was still put together really well and had some good spots. You would think that yelling the countdown numbers over and over again gets old, but it really doesn’t.

After the show we met up with a gentleman from England that goes by “Snowman” on the OTT Forums and headed to the Sheraton for drinks. Yeah, he flew in from England so he could see the Rumble & Raw. That doesn’t suck. The Penguins and I went back to the casino, and that is pretty much the end of our story. There are more stories, but I think I’ll save them for another time…Trent and I are doing a Super Bowl podcast on Thursday night so I’m sure we’ll be talking about some of the crazy things that happened then.

If I had to rate the weekend on a scale from 1-10, it would come in at about an 11 because I had so much fun. I can officially cross the Royal Rumble off of my wrestling bucket list. And hey, as Trent said, maybe St. Louis will host a WrestleMania after they build another football stadium for the team they get after the Rams leave. So there’s hope I can see one of those too.

And now, the fake news!

The Rock is expected to return to Raw on Fabruary 27. He’ll also be on the March 5, March 12 & March 26 editions of the show to build up his match with John Cena at WrestleMania, and will also be doing the media thing. He doesn’t have any film commitments that will be in the way, and WWE sources say he’s “all in” for promoting the show. Well, I’d hope so.

Zack Ryder commented in an interview with the Topeka Capital-Journal that he hopes to be in a match at this year’s WrestleMania. Could it happen? Ryder currently has all sorts of storyline injuries, but I wouldn’t rule out them throwing Ryder vs. Kane on the card for some reason, or him being included in the Money in the Bank match.

Which is a nice segue into our next story, actually. The WWE PPV schedule has been changing like crazy over the past few days, and one of the versions moves the TLC event to July and eliminates the Money in the Bank show. I’d be conflicted by this, as MITB was the best PPV of 2011 and both ladder matches were good times. However, WrestleMania seemed like it was missing something by not having the match, and I can’t really say I’m a fan of two people having briefcases and doing the same gimmick at the same time. It might be best to keep it to one, and keep the match as a WrestleMania tradition that helps people that don’t have a major feud going on get on the biggest show of the year.

WWE Raw drew a 3.55 cable rating on Monday night, with hours of 3.6 & 3.5 to make it the fifth straight week that the show has lost viewers as it went on. Which is a shame for Triple H because he was probably ready to take credit for the biggest rating the show had since last year’s post-WrestleMania show. Obviously the lack of football and the fact that its officially WrestleMania season should lead to higher ratings for the next couple of months. The question is if WWE can make the viewers stick around after WrestleMania, which hasn’t really happened the past few years.

WWE has hired Eric Pankowski, former executive from Reveille & Warner Brothers, as their Senior Vice President of Creative & Development. He’s considered to be a big name in the TV world and will be overseeing the creative teams, helping with the distribution of the product and helping develop new shows in the reality and kids genres.

Kharma gave birth to a baby boy on December 31 and plans on getting married in June. I guess technically you could call her son a bastard, but you won’t catch me doing that. That woman scares me, and I am a fearless man.

John Cena is currently scheduled to take on Kane at the Elimination Chamber PPV in a Last Man Standing match. That would take out the countout option and I don’t think they’ve done an LMS match in a few months, so it sounds like a good idea to me. Of course this will probably result in something silly like Kane getting buried in a pit of live lobsters.

As for WrestleMania, Monday night’s Raw hinted at a couple of matches expected to take place at the event. Chris Jericho attacked CM Punk after his match with Daniel Bryan, setting up a feud that many of us expected to happen upon Jericho’s return. I would expect that to end up being the WWE Title match, possibly with Jericho defending against Punk after winning the title in the Elimination Chamber like he did back in 2010. I think Punk would work better as the challenger heading into the show, and since people are already worried that Jericho’s return isn’t working because he didn’t cause the end of the world as we know it at the Royal Rumble, putting the title on him might be a good idea and could keep people happy for a few minutes.

Undertaker returned to confront Triple H and set up yet another Undertaker vs. Triple H WrestleMania match. I have mixed feelings about this. I’ve learned not to doubt Undertaker WrestleMania matches because they always end up being a spectacle of some sort, but Triple H is the last guy that should be ending the WrestleMania Streak. I would assume that H knows that there’s more money in keeping the streak alive because that works as a draw for the show every year, and the boost his ego would get from being the man to end it wouldn’t be worth it. Hopefully.

Beth Phoenix has re-emerged on television over the last couple of days. She pinned Kelly Kelly in the 8-Diva tag match at the Royal Rumble, and she beat Eve on Raw in rather impressive fashion. A match between Beth & Kharma has been rumored for quite some time, and with Kharma making her return at the Rumble, it seems like WrestleMania would be a fine time for her to get a Divas title shot. I wouldn’t expect Kharma to wrestle too much before then, but she’ll probably be around enough to make the evil Divas suffer hard times. Another possibility for Beth at WrestleMania might be Trish Stratus, who tweeted some dissatisfaction over Beth claiming she was the most dominant champion. Trish never held the Divas title, so I don’t know what she’s all upset about.

Mike Tyson will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame this year. Tyson was a key part of making WrestleMania XIV such a huge deal mainstream wise, so he’s as good a pick for a celebrity inductee as anybody else. It helps that he seems somewhat sane these days.

The 411 on Wrestling returned with Larry & I previewing the Royal Rumble preview! Also, Larry & Greg did a Royal Rumble post-game show, in which you can listen to a slightly drunk and hoarse-voiced Steve Cook in the first few minutes. Good times. Larry & I will be back on Friday night at 10 PM EST unless Mrs. Csonka gives birth sometime in the next couple of days.

The Greg DeMarco Show airs every Tuesday night and this week it featured Tough Enough’s Martin Casaus.

Ari talks ROH vs. CHIKARA.

Fact or Fiction & Wrestling Sandwich both featured Wes Kirk, and obviously none of you read either. Obviously.

Frame looks back at the 1998 Royal Rumble.

The Triple Threat had its Farewell Edition this week, and we’d like to wish the writers involved the best in their future endeavors.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week! Sorry about the lack of Impact and other wrestling news this week, but time constraints are what they are and I hope to have plenty of stuff to talk about in those areas of the wrestling world next week. Join me tomorrow for some 411 Fact or Fiction, and I’ll be back next Tuesday with more News From Cook’s Corner! Until then…

YES! YES! YES!