News From Cook’s Corner 03.13.12: RAW Thoughts & More

Hi, hello and welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, and I hope you all are having a fantastic week. I need to be upfront with you guys and say that this week’s column is going to be a bit lacking in the usual Cook content due to things going on in areas other than pro wrestling. The NCAA Tournament starts on Thursday and between Louisville’s recent performance and my taking part in a podcast discussing tourney predictions on Tuesday night, that’s taking up a lot of my attention. Longtime readers know that I’m basically useless during March Madness, especially when Louisville’s playing well, so this won’t come as a surprise to many of you. It is what it is.

And now, some readers!

WWE may have a crop of talent in Florida, but it won’t matter if they aren’t booked well and pushed. In fact, since the Road to Wrestlemania begins about January and tends to feed mid card talent to main eventers, WWE needs to have a segment of the year for pushing guys below that level. There own Triple A level, if you will. This could even involve making serious use of the IC/UC/Tag belts to put a spotlight on guys. WWE roster isn’t thin because of lack of talent, it is thin because everybody has been devalued in the eyes of the audience. The roster would be just as thin with the best in the world on board. – Guest#7942

There isn’t anything here I disagree with. The time period after WrestleMania is usually the time when talent gets shifted, whether it’s guys from FCW getting called up or guys that haven’t done anything in a while being wished well in their future endeavors. That’d be the time to do it. It might be a bit silly on my part, but the reason I’m excited about some of the people in FCW is that they haven’t had the chance to be devalued yet. It must be the Cincinnati Bengal fan in me that’s always looking towards next year and hoping that things will be different.

Women’s wrestling will never become as popular or even respected as women’s MMA, certainly in the WWE and almost definitely everywhere else. The only real chance for women’s wrestling to be taken seriously would be in a female only organisation such as Shimmer, and I doubt the majority of people have heard of it, let alone watched a match. TNA seem somewhat interested in pushing a women’s division but there’s very little enthusiasm whatsoever in the WWE. Yes, the WWE “divas” are purely eye-candy, but there are a number of attractive women who are also decent in the ring, yet I simply cannot see them being hired.

The simple truth is the average wrestling fan has been allowed to believe that women’s wrestling is a joke. From bra and panty matches, to Playboy spreads, to diva searches, the women have become utterly irrelevant in terms of wrestling ability, which is why they are consistently the shortest and lowest rated matches on the cards. It is unlikely that there will be a women’s match at ‘Mania, and even if there was nobody would care. The last time that a female wrestler was truly relevant to the business was when Madusa dropped the WWF women’s belt into a trash can – not even a match. MMA is legitimate competition, and as such it could never be viewed simply as a joke.

Aside from that I agree with what you say about the Rock/Cena feud. People are taking sides, and the WWE is definitely trying to encourage this, and I think it is for one reason – to turn Cena heel. If people were to hate Cena anyway his inevitable heel turn would mean very little. I think WWE are getting behind Cena in this feud because they need him to have fans who will be shocked by his turn. The Rock is going over at ‘Mania and Cena is going to turn because despite most of what he said in his promos was true people still backed The Rock. – Tom

1. True, the average wrestling fan does see women’s wrestling as a bit of a joke. For it to work in WWE, they would have to re-educate the audience over a period of time. Now would be a great time to do it since they’ve been trying to cater their product towards kids that weren’t around during the bra & panties/Playboy era, but WWE really doesn’t seem interested in going that direction.

Honestly, I don’t think WWE has had any idea of what they really want to do with the Divas since they went the PG direction and stopped doing the calendars and bra & panty matches. I don’t expect this to change anytime soon, but I always stop short of saying that something will never happen. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

2. I do think Cena will turn heel someday, if for no other reason than everybody eventually turns heel. Is it time for him to do it? I think they need to have the next “face of the company” ready when he turns so there won’t be that big a drop off in merchandising sales & things like that. I’m not convinced they have that yet, but maybe they will by WrestleMania 29.

God, I hate MMA shit creeping into wrestling columns. People click on wrestling articles to read about wrestling. – neverAcquiesce

I’m not one of the MMA = Wrestling folks, but I thought that it was an interesting topic to discuss that plays into how wrestling promotions are missing out on something by doing a poor job with women’s wrestling. Sure, it’s a novelty, but you can make plenty of money off of novelties if you promote them right. StrikeForce has done a good job promoting their women’s division and its something that gets them attention because nobody else is doing it. Hell, maybe TNA will finally realize that and go full-bore behind the Knockouts one of these days instead of making Eric Young one-half of the Knockouts Tag Team Champions because they think its funny.

I do agree with you on your main point though, as I’m under the impression that most of you are here to read about wrestling. Back in the old days I used to dedicate lots of column time to things like college basketball & my fantasy football teams, mostly because I didn’t have another place to talk about them. Now that I have podcasts at offtheteam.com, a Facebook account & a Twitter account, I don’t have to waste the time of people that don’t care about my opinions on non-wrestling topics. I think things work a lot better this way.

Of course, there are some readers that don’t click on this column to read about wrestling and would rather talk about old writers & the sex life of current writers. Those people are the 1%, and it makes more sense to write about what the 99% are here for. Besides, if this column was about my sex life it’d be a quicker read than Randle’s Monday news column.

Cena hate is overrated and just plain blind, i was one of the few who booed the shit out of him in chicago back in 06, and i can say 6 years later he’s done more to earn a degree of respect than the rock ever has.

Is he generic and goofy, yes he really is, but it’s that element that stops me from becoming a full on cena fan, when he goes into kickass boston mode like he has been in the past 3 weeks, he really justifies the past 6 years for me. I really really think he should consider doing that kind of promo more often. – Guest#9134

I think you hit on the main problem that people have with John Cena…he’s just too goofy sometimes. WWE’s other top faces never hit the goofy scale as high as Cena generally does. Sure, Hogan & the Rock said a bunch of goofy crap, but was delivered in a way that you knew that they were there to kick some ass. Cena sometimes seems like he’s there to be a stand-up comedian. When he gets away from that is when people seem to like him more. I fully expect him to be back to being a comedian the week after WrestleMania when Rock leaves, but until then it should be nice to see him do his thing.

So I just finished up season 5 of Weeds. Nancy, the main character is married to a Mexican Politician, who also happens to be a drug lord named Esteban. Every time I see him, all I can think of is Alberto Del Rio.

I’m not one of those begging for the Attitude Era to return, but how awesome would it be if Del Rio was portrayed as a drug kingpin (implied, obviously…such as having bodyguards, granting “favors” APA style, etc). I like Del Rio, but near the end of last year, he was a bit dull, and his character had very little depth. Mexican Drug Lord Alberto Del Rio would be a lot more interesting than just Mexican Aristocrat. – Rick

Wrestling Society X was going to have an entire storyline based around drug lords & people fighting over the drug trade if they got a second season. Perhaps that’s why we should be happy they didn’t get a second season, but I do think there’s potential for that type of a character. ADR does need to be more forceful, for sure. Right now he’s just a Mexican Aristocrat that drives around in fancy cars. He doesn’t really use his money to hurt anybody, he just kind of lives in his own universe where he’s the center of everything.

And if you wanted to bring ADR into the “Reality Era” that people keep talking about, you could have him selling HGH to people.

Just a random thought here, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a heel Cena and a heel Orton re-doing the old Two Man Power Trip storyline. Cena turns heel at Mania and Orton gets pissed because he’s locked out of the title picture at WM. Why not pair them together? – The Big Fat F*g

If you combine the brands it might work, but the main problem I see with it is I’m not sure who you have to feud with them. CM Punk? Other than him I’m not sure there’s a healthy option on the WWE roster that people would support over Cena & Orton. They would end up being cool heels that people cheer anyway.

the “other wrestling news” girl is hot – Guest#1716

That was our girl Taeler Hendrix, who appeared on The 411 on Wrestling a couple of months ago. I think it was the best podcast interview I’ve done…we’ve had great guests but I usually mess up the interview by not shutting up when Larry wants to talk. I only did that once or twice on this one, so it went pretty well.

Is it ironic that the ad coming up on the Tate-Rousey armbar picture says “The Liberating Power of Pain”? Or is it just coincidental? – G-Walla

Just for kicks I decided to go back to last week’s column and see what kind of ads I got on the pictures.

Cody Rhodes: A book called “God’s Undertaker”
Kelly Kelly bridging: Bellevue: Mom makes $72 an hour online
Eve: Car insurance

The rest didn’t have any. I do wish that if we have to have ads on the pictures they’d at least go together, but I probably wouldn’t want to be associated with the companies that would go together with most of my pictures.

And now, the fake news!

People that purchased Dolph Ziggler’s t-shirt were able to get them signed by the Show-Off during the intermission of WWE’s house show in Toronto over the weekend. This is a practice used by TNA at their house shows to pump up merchandise sales, and it works pretty well for them. I’m not sure that having Ziggler do it is the best of ideas…after all, doesn’t the man pride himself on being a heel? What kind of a heel signs autographs for his fans? Not much of one, I’d say.

Regardless, it’s been a pretty good week for Ziggler. He’s doing a bunch of media stuff & WWE brass is impressed with his YouTube show WWE Download. The show’s not the most original concept in the world, as there are several shows out there featuring people making fun of YouTube videos, but Ziggler has a certain style that adds a little something to the presentation. WWE also announced a WrestleMania match that he’s expected to be a part of, a six on six tag team match with teams picked by Big Johnny & Teddy Long.

WWE.com relaunched their website on Sunday, and it looks pretty spiffy. One of the most notable changes is the WWEGreatestMatches.com service, which had been a subscription service, is now free in the United States. It isn’t in Canada, you folks overseas can let us know if it’s free there or not. Dave Meltzer says that WWE hopes that they can get their .com readers more interested in old wrestling matches so they’ll call their cable & satellite companies to pick up the WWE Network, which will feature quite a bit of old wrestling programming. Well, they’ve tried everything else, so why not try selling the network based on its wrestling content? Can’t say I expected this one from WWE.

Mick Foley spoke out on Twitter about his uneasiness towards the Zack Ryder/Eve Torres storyline. He held a Broski Summit where he talked about how Ryder & John Cena should apologize to Eve & the storyline doesn’t fit in with WWE’s “BA Star” campaign. I continue to not understand the objections that people have towards Eve’s treatment as of late. The girl’s actually getting a push as something other than “Random WWE Diva” or “Kelly Kelly’s Friend”. I think that’s a good thing.

Foley taking this way too seriously doesn’t really surprise me. He’s always been very close with the various Divas that have come through WWE, and Eve is doing some charity work with him. Perhaps he feels that this will negatively affect Eve’s capability to do this work, but I think he under-sells the outside world’s capability to see beyond TV characters. Just because Eve plays a manipulative biatch on television doesn’t mean that she is one in real life. People can separate Eve Torres the TV character from Eve Torres the person. At least I think they can.

As for Cena & Ryder calling Eve a “hoeski”…she admitted that she was using them to further her career! It’s not like she was sitting around minding her own business and then John Cena & Zack Ryder started calling her names for no good reason. I know times have changed and everybody has to be politically correct at all times or face the consequences, but Eve had it coming to her. Bullying is when people are emotionally & physically harassed for no good reason. Eve’s not getting bullied here, she’s the heel in a wrestling storyline. If she’s getting bullied, so is everybody on a wrestling TV show.

Besides, she’s being called a “hoeski”. I’m sorry, I can’t get offended over such a ridiculous word. Maybe if they were calling Eve a ho I’d understand, but when you add the ski at the end it’s silly. Is anybody out there offended by the word “hoeski”? I mean, if they were dropping s-bombs & c-bombs like they were Rush Limbaugh or Bill Maher I could see people getting upset.

(People still talking about that boggles my mind, by the way. Don’t we have bigger problems in America than some blowhards yapping on radio & TV? Either listen to them or don’t. Problem solved.)

I haven’t ruled out the idea that Foley’s trying to position himself as Eve’s defender for a return to television. How about a Foley vs. Ryder feud leading to Foley putting over a fellow Long Islander? That might not be so bad if Foley’s in shape…or at least close enough to in shape.

No Way Out has returned to the WWE pay-per-view schedule. WWE.com indicates that the show will take place in July, with Money in the Bank taking the previously unnamed June PPV slot & SummerSlam taking place in August. I would expect this to change several times before June, as it seems like they’re changing the PPV schedule every few weeks.

WWE pay-per-views will be available on iPads & iPhones beginning with WrestleMania XXIX. They will not be available on my flip phone. Yes, I have a flip phone. What about it?

Madusa says that she was recently contacted by WWE, but won’t divulge any further information. Word on the street is that they’ll be interviewing her for a WWE Network show where they talk to wrestlers from the days of the Monday Night Wars. Madusa had a rather large role in the war, defecting from the WWF to WCW in 1995 and tossing the WWF Women’s Title in the garbage on a live episode of Nitro. In defense of Madusa, the WWF would later do worse things with the title than throwing it in the garbage.

What do you consider worse: Throwing the Women’s Title in the garbage or giving it to Harvey Wippleman dressed in drag? I think Harvina was a bit worse.

Seth Rollins worked some SmackDown house shows in Michigan over the weekend, defeating Drew McIntyre on Saturday night in East Lansing & losing to Cody Rhodes in Kalamazoo. He will be at the Raw & SmackDown shows this week, though it’s not certain whether or not he will be involved. I would assume not, but I’d be surprised if he wasn’t on the main roster soon after WrestleMania. Or on NXT, which apparently is still around and operates in its own universe. It looks interesting, but I’m afraid that if I watch it I’ll get sucked into a black hole or something. Acero’s been speaking in tongues the last couple of weeks.

Former TNA wrestler Chase Stevens got a look from WWE on Monday night in Cleveland. Stevens was one-half of the Naturals along with Andy Douglas, who retired from wrestling in March 2010. Stevens has been impressing people lately with his work in Showtime All-Star Wrestling in Tennessee, which is where the Naturals went after they left TNA.

David Hart Smith & Angela “Savannah” Fong are working with THQ doing motion captures for the WWE ‘13 video game. So they’re good enough to be in a video game but weren’t considered good enough to be featured on television. Makes sense.

Dick Woehrle, a former WWF referee, passed away Monday at the age of 81. Woehrle worked for the WWF during the 1980s, and was the object of many a Gorilla Monsoon tirade just like all the other officials were. I remember him mostly because of his name, which is pretty perfect for that of a referee. It doesn’t quite rank as high as Slick Johnson, but it’s close.

-It’ll be interesting to see if the Cleveland fans remember the last time Rock did some singing in town…

-Good times. Speaking of good times, I’m taking part in a fantasy baseball draft while watching Raw this week. So this part of the column could really go either way.

-Cena kicking it old school! The Doctor of Thuganomics is back!

-WORD LIFE!

-A Cleveland Steamer reference!

-The kid’s still got it!

-How did Cole not say VINTAGE JOHN CENA there? He finally has a reason to use the phrase and he doesn’t.

-Sheamus vs. Ziggler could be a World title-level feud one of these days.

-I’m not sure Ziggler needs to look even more like Billy Gunn than he usually does.

-Not a fan of them cutting away from the match, but Bryan & AJ in a skybox is awesome.

-Sheamus kicks Dolph’s head off, as he should.

-BIG JOHNNY!

-Otunga looks well.

-Uh oh, Santino is about to get his ass kicked & wig split.

-Santino gets squashed, Kofi gets squashed, R-Truth gets squashed.

-Hey, Miz is on a USA show.

-Beth is back to feuding with Maria Menounos. I guess there are worse things to do.

-That’s also my theory for Zack Ryder hanging out with Eve. Worse things to do.

-YES THE FUNKASAURUS IS BACK YES YES YES YES YES YES

-LOL Jinder Mahal.

-SOMEBODY CALL MY MOMMA!

-Funkasaurus finishes with a regular splash instead of the cross body. Maybe people were complaining about that?

-Shawn looks like somebody just woke him up and he did not want to be awakened.

-HBK calls out Undertaker! Business is picking up!

-Why does HBK complain about Undertaker talking about him behind his back? He talked about him on television!

-Serious stuff gets said, HBK leaves, and HHH wanders out.

-CM Punk vs. Miz. Your special guest ring announcer is some dude from Psych. Judging from the fan reaction, I’m not the only one in the crowd with no idea who he is.

-Punk makes the Miz tap! Apparently this made the Miz’s WM dream go up in smoke. I dunno, I’m pretty tipsy at this point so who the hell knows.

-Jericho plays the “Your dad was an alcoholic” card. Nice!

-It’ll be interesting to see where they go with that. Punk did a very emotional promo in ROH about his alcoholic father and how Raven reminded him of him that’s considered one of Punk’s best promos ever.

-Orton vs. Swagger. With the way Swagger’s career has been going, it’s tough to believe he has a chance here.

-Orton wins, then we get Kane’s pyro & red lighting. And nothing else.

-So next week there will be a prediction for the HHH vs. UT WM match. Oh, and Cena vs. Henry too, but we care more about predictions.

-ROCK CONCERT TIME! The two previous Rock Concerts were fantastic, so Rock’s got some tough shows to fill here.

-OK, why is Rock not singing yet? And why are we ripping off Conan O’Brien’s “If They Mated”?

-Here we go! Acoustic guitar > rapping

-Rock calls Cena out on his Eve love while having a wife. Glad somebody else pointed that out.

-Mess with those guys, Rock!

-Rock with a momma joke!

-Not sure if they should have put the words to Rock’s finishing song on the TitanTron. That’ll just encourage people to say he can’t remember anything.

-Yeah, I dug Rock’s concert up until he needed to re-write a Queen song. That didn’t go too well for him. Cena probably won the night. Cena 2, Rock 1.

-Interesting show, but I have a feeling I missed a lot of good or bad stuff due to this whole baseball thing. Surely the Internet will tell me if I should have hated it.

The biggest TNA news last week involved Hulk Hogan being in a sex tape. Yeah. Hogan is telling people that this happened during a four-month alcohol-feueled lady-screwing bender” that happened between the time he divorced his first wife and met his second wife. Hogan states “During that time, I don’t even remember people’s names, much less girls.” Apparently Hulk doesn’t think that girls are people, though I would have to admit that women that would hook up with the Hulkster may in fact not be people.

Hogan’s ex-wife Linda wants to watch the tape. No, not because she misses the little Hulkster, she wants to see if she can figure out when it was shot so she can prove that Hogan cheated on her. Hogan sued Linda for defamation last year, saying that her claims in her book that he cheated & was abusive towards her were false.

Bobby Roode & Sting’s match at Victory Road will be a No Holds Barred match, as reported in the company’s Before The Bell show on their website. I don’t remember the last time Sting had a good match, but I don’t mind him putting Roode over in a PPV main event. He’s still got some juice, and him losing to Roode should help Roode. Now, if Sting wins, that would be the definition of counterproductive.

Speaking of Sting, I read somewhere that Road Warrior Animal said that Sting won’t be an icon until he works for WWE. This is ridiculous to me for a couple of reasons, most importantly being the following: Everybody’s an icon! Hell, Lance Storm’s being billed as an icon by Ring of Honor. He worked for WWE, but who’s going to argue that Lance Storm was a bigger star than Sting? Maybe Animal would.

It’s not like Animal was billed as an icon. I know people get cranky when their nickname gets used by other people.

Austin Aries is officially the longest-reigning X Division Champion of all time. As of Tuesday he’s held it for 183 days, breaking the record of 182 set by Christopher Daniels in 2005. The X Division is not exactly known for long-lasting title reigns, but A Double is setting a new standard for the division. Now they just need more challengers.

Chris Sabin could theoretically become a challenger when he returns from his knee injury, and he should be back in a couple of months. He’s been scheduled to return several times, but his knee still isn’t ready. Sabin’s a heck of a talent and TNA sure could use him & Alex Shelley back in the tag team ranks, or as singles wrestlers going against Austin Aries.

Speaking of championships, TNA announced on Monday that Robbie E will be defending the TV title at Victory Road in an “open challenge”. I wonder just how badly Matt Hardy burned his bridges with TNA, because people are saying he’s been sober lately bringing back Jeff’s brother would help continue their story about how Jeff’s been rehabilitated.

See, I’m preparing myself for the inevitable. Matt Hardy will end up back on TV someday, and I don’t want to have a brain hemorrhage when it happens.

Kurt Angle tweeted that he would love to fight in Bellator, an MMA promotion that will start airing shows on Spike TV in 2013. I think this is pretty much like me tweeting that I’d love to play for the Cincinnati Reds. I’m not going to be in the Opening Day lineup, and Angle’s not going to be on the next Bellator show. This is the definition of “non-issue”, and I for one don’t have a problem with people having dreams.

Jeff Jarrett will be in a movie called “Spring Breakers” that stars James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens & Selena Gomez. I haven’t seen anything with Hudgens or Gomez in it, and as much as I like ol’ Double J I don’t see that changing here. I was going to add Franco in that group, but then I remembered he was in the Spiderman movies. OK, I didn’t remember that. I looked him up on IMDB. Same difference, right?

The movie is about four college girls who end in jail after robbing a restaurant to fund their spring break vacation that get bailed out by a drug & arms dealer who wants them to do some dirty work. I’m guessing this dirty work isn’t as scandalous as you’re thinking.

Nigel McGuinness is producing a documentary of his last few professional wrestling matches. The project entitled “The Last of McGuinness” is being funded via Kickstarter, and he’s already over his goal of raising $32,000. It should an interesting documentary and hopefully one that will answer a lot of questions. It’s a shame that Nigel’s career ended like it did, as he definitely had the potential to be one of the biggest stars in pro wrestling.

Sid Vicious no-showed his scheduled match with Matt Hardy on Friday night in Rahway, New Jersey. The promoter, Eric Tapout (I doubt that’s his real name), sent an e-mail to another wrestling website explaining why Pat Buck gave Sid’s personal phone number to the crowd in attendance. Basically, they had problems dealing with Sid in the past, and Friday night was the third strike. One would wonder why they would keep trying to book Sid if he’s such a hassle, but apparently the fans really want to see him.

Sid was replaced by Jay Lethal, who did a Sid impression. Are there any old-time wrestlers that Jay Lethal can’t impersonate?

Jerry Lynn announced that he will be retiring at the end of this year. Lynn started wrestling in 1988 and is the only man to hold both the ECW & ROH World Championship. He was known as Mr. JL in WCW & pioneered TNA’s X Division, but he’ll probably be most remembered for being the inspiration for the critically acclaimed movie The Wrestler.

Yup, I’m the millionth person to make that observation, but they are pretty much the same guy. Hopefully Lynn won’t have to return in a few years like The Ram did.

Booker T is relaunching his wrestling promotion that he runs out of his wrestling school in Texas. The promotion will have a series on YouTube entitled Reality of Wrestling. And here I thought there was no reality in wrestling.

411 is counting down to WrestleMania by reviewing all the previous WrestleManias! WrestleMania VII was posted yesterday, and WrestleMania VIII will be up today. I’ll be appearing in the WrestleMania XX, 21, 22, XXIII & XXVII editions. I don’t have any of the old ones except III, and that one was filled up by the time I found out about the project.

The 411 on Wrestling featured Larry Csonka & your humble correspondent talking about Hulk Hogan having a sex tape, Miz vs. Funkasaurus & much more! We may be doing our shows on Wednesday for a little bit due to 411 scheduling conflicts.

Speaking of scheduling conflicts, I won’t be on the Greg DeMarco Show this week because I’ll be taping an NCAA Tournament Podcast for Offtheteam.com, but it’ll still be a loaded show. Chris Masters will join Greg & whoever his co-host is this week to talk about his campaign to get to Impact Wrestling!

Rutherford presents a sandwich.

The Truth shall set you free.

Byers talks about weird stuff at WrestleMania I. I’d never heard of the fortune teller stuff in my life, honestly. There’s probably a reason that didn’t make Coliseum Video.

Weyer bids adieu to the ECW Arena.

TJ Hawke reviews some AIW. AIW’s a fun little Northeast Ohio indy that booked Taeler Hendrix vs. Annie Social for an upcoming show. They know how to get my attention.

Dorlis has some Hidden Highlights!

Well, that’s all we have time for this week! I’ll be in on Thursday with more Fact or Fiction, then join me next week for more News From Cook’s Corner! Until then…