News From Cook’s Corner 07.31.05
Posted by Steve Cook on 07.31.2005
Hopefully Randle doesn’t get any ideas from WWE and make me put a chewed up pretzel on the side of my face.
Hi everybody! Welcome to another Sunday here at 411 Mania, I am your party host Steve Cook, and I’m just going to get through this as quickly as possible because having four wisdom teeth taken out of your mouth is never fun.
But doing a news column for the Sunday afterwards is hardcore, right? I would have taken this week off, but when you disappear for a week everybody forgets about you. Ask Nick Marsico…if you can find him. Besides, I’ll have to take a week off next month when I go to college, and I don’t want Randle to convince Ashish that I’m unreliable.
Before I start, I gotta toot my own horn because after seven long weeks the Classic Colt Cabanas have finally reached first place in the WWE Fantasy 411 Staff league. I used the Great American Bash to my advantage in Week 6 and scored some big time points with JBL, Batista, MNM, Benoit, Torrie, and the Angle Challenge on Raw. I lost the lead briefly after Raw when my Kerwin White pick didn’t pan out like I had hoped it would, but Edge & Kane kept me in the hunt and JBL had a big Smackdown to get me back in first place. Animal & Heidenreich were also big performers in Week 7, and at the halfway point in the season I’m 25 points ahead of David Campbell and 75 ahead of third place. I can’t ask for much better than that right now.
Time for some News from Cook’s Corner…
WWE news
In a refreshing change of pace, I get to talk about people WWE are hiring instead of people they are firing. Hooray! James Gibson and Spanky are both headed back to WWE’s Smackdown brand in order to liven up the cruiserweight division.
Wait a minute…Smackdown still has a cruiserweight division? Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.
As you might remember, Gibson (Jamie Noble for those of you who pay no attention to anything outside WWE) was released several months back due to a staph infection that was linked to steroid usage. Because as we all know, nobody in WWE ever uses steroids. Who would dare make such an outrageous allegation? Anyway, Gibson was told that he would be allowed back someday as long as he stayed clean and didn’t go to TNA. So instead he went to Ring of Honor and finally showed some of that potential he never got to show on WWE television. I’m glad he’ll get to make some of that WWE money, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed that he’ll probably never get to shine in WWE the way he did in ROH for the past several months.
Spanky is apparently getting married soon, and wants that WWE paycheck so he can support his family. Nothing wrong with that. I just hope that by now he realizes that WWE probably won’t push him at a high level, and doesn’t get upset over it.
The Brock Lesnar saga continues, as WWE.com reports that he’s been offered a contract. Wake me up when he’s at SummerSlam attacking Batista, ok?
Apparently Triple H is actually getting credit for something…with Batista’s recent matches on Smackdown people “backstage” are starting to realize that Batista’s really not that great of a wrestler and give Triple H credit for making him look good. Am I the only one who thought the Batista vs. Triple H series was painfully boring? Fact of the matter is that Batista has a great look and good charisma, but he’s nothing more than a solid power wrestler. And solid power wrestlers aren’t going to have good matches with guys like JBL and Orlando Jordan.
Of course, having a bad match with Orlando Jordan is nothing to be ashamed of.
Back to Triple H though, word has it he’s been spending his time off from wrestling learning how to do stuff at the WWE office. Which is a good idea because once Vince is gone it’ll be him, Stephanie and possibly Shane running things…with Steph horribly incompetent, somebody’s gotta be able to mind the store.
I don’t know if Stephanie’s incompetent at everything, but I think it’s been made perfectly obvious over the last couple years that she’s certainly incompetent when it comes to writing a wrestling show. She apparently thought that the horseshit that was last week’s Raw was one of the best shows they’ve done in a long time.
Ugh, maybe I shouldn’t expect actual wrestling and compelling characters out of WWE television and should be happy with midgets and moles. I’m getting to the “mole” thing later, don’t you worry. I got good and worked up over that little travesty.
Two debuts were scheduled for tonight’s Heat, but only Johnny Swinger’s debut as Johnny Parisi will make the air. CM Punk’s debut match taped for Heat will not be televised because WWE was unhappy with how the match came off. Punk was accompanied to the ring by Alexis Laree, who was given some lame name by WWE for no real reason…at least they’re finally bringing her up though. Laree has all the tools to be a star in WWE…well, except for the not being able to talk real good thing. That could hurt her.
April Hunter will be working TV tapings on Monday and Tuesday. I can’t really comment on her ability objectively because I’m biased against women with the last name Hunter. (There’s a joke maybe 5 of you at the Fan Forum might get.)
Bret Hart is currently the subject of much speculation, as WWE wants to bring him back into the fold before they release his 3 disc DVD set in mid-November. They have apparently tried everything in their power to try to get him back in, but no deal has been reached yet. It will be interesting to see whether Bret stands by his word, but I don’t know if he really wants all that much out of WWE besides an apology. If they do that, I could see him coming back to do a little business, but nothing long-term.
I have mixed emotions about this, because as much as I would admire Bret for standing behind his word and not selling out to WWE, I would like to see Bret slap Vince around live on television. That would be pretty cool.
TNA news
I always love talking about the WWE Home Video releases because frankly I think that’s the best thing WWE has going for it today, but TNA is finally starting to get on the ball here and have their titles available in retail stores. One of the first titles available will be a new “Best of the X Division” DVD, which will hopefully be a Christmas gift for me. Also being talked about is a combo pack of three of their PPVs, Victory Road, Turning Point and Lockdown. Turning Point still rates as my favorite PPV from TNA so far, but if they put that at a good price I’ll be all over it.
TNA has announced that a portion of the sales of the Lockdown DVD will be going to the Chris Candido Memorial Fund. I didn’t even like the show all that much, but I might buy it just for that.
Team Canada’s website is up and running right here, for all of you Canucks who apparently don’t get whatever station they’re on up there. Warning in advance…a couple of the columns there are in French, so watch out for that. I took French for six years, but that was a long time ago.
Also in the works for TNA include a live Internet call-in show similar to WCW Live back in the day and a possible magazine. You know if they put Traci in the centerfold I’ll be their first subscriber. TNA action figures will be going on sale after TNA debuts on Spike…no word on if the Jeff Jarrett figure comes with a guitar and the power to hold down all the other action figures.
Scott D’Amore was on Between the Ropes this week and talked about a lot of things, including his current status of not being on TV. I have mixed emotions here because while it’s nice to see a booker who doesn’t want to put himself all over television, D’Amore is a great heel and has really helped the Team Canada guys get over. Hopefully they will use this opportunity to establish their personalities further and stand out from each other, but I will miss the Coach and his presence as a manager. You don’t see too many of those these days.
Other wrestling news
Big news out of the NWA this week…NWA President Ernie Todd has stepped down and has charged the NWA Board of Directors with racism. Aboriginal by birth, Todd has accused members of the board of referring to him with terms such as “drug store Indian” and “Hiawatha”, and has also accused them and members of the NWA of threatening him and his family. The rap on Todd was that he was poor at his job and the NWA has done very little to grow since he became President late last year. The NWA was set to elect a new President in October, so this isn’t going to cripple them or anything…at least, any more than they already were.
Hogan Knows Best has taken a nosedive in the ratings. I blame this on people realizing that they can always just read Larry’s recaps of it, and the fact that celebrity reality shows kinda suck in general. Am I the only one who really doesn’t give a crap about Jose Canseco and Flava Flav living in a house or a bunch of fat has-beens losing weight? Honestly, I’m pretty sure this kind of stuff was part of the fall of the Roman Empire too.
The biggest news to me last week was the announcement of the ROH Title match to be held on August 12th in Dayton…CM Punk defending against Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, and James Gibson. I honestly don’t know who I want to beat Punk because Daniels, Joe and Gibson are all awesome in their own ways. Unfortunately, with Gibson going back to WWE that probably means that he won’t be it…though now that it’s shaping up as a WWE vs. TNA match it’ll be very interesting to see how it shakes out.
And it’ll probably be better than anything WWE has had to offer since HBK vs. Angle. Not that I’m saying that the WWE product sucks and you should look elsewhere for wrestling entertainment…I would never say such a thing!
Joey Styles will be producing PPVs for a new wrestling group called Extremely Hardcore Wrestling. Their first show is scheduled for August 20th at the old Center Stage Theater in Atlanta and will be available on PPV at 11:30 PM on September 9th for 9.95. I’m all for more wrestling on TV, but if this isn’t a cheap rip-off of ECW I don’t know what is. It was bad enough when Styles sold out to WWE, now he’s stealing the whole concept? Damn Joey, don’t you have any pride left?
Who Owned Last Week?
I swear this section gets a little tougher every week.
Matt Bentley - Formerly known as Michael Shane, Bentley is now going by his real name thanks to legal action from one of the WWE contracted Shane Twins. But they can’t take away the fact that he can still put on damn good matches with AJ Styles except for that lame finish with James Storm. And you can’t take Traci away from him either…trust me on this one.
Eugene - It’s great to see Nick Dinsmore back on WWE television, and his survival against Kurt Angle was a nice moment. I’m not sure about this whole “Eugene Invitational” though…hopefully he has fun with it and it’s somewhat entertaining.
Chris Jericho - The best thing about the Battle of the Bands on Monday was that we didn’t have to hear Chris Jericho sing. Instead he cut a nice little heel promo and then in the main event he caused John Cena to lose to Carlito by doing some crappy officiating. He’s becoming a viable contender for the WWE title, and he’s going to be around for a while. He’s still not winning at SummerSlam, but he and Cena both have great charisma and can cut good promos, so this should be a heck of a feud.
L.O.D. 2005 - I can’t think of a better name for Animal & Heidenreich. While I was a bit surprised that they got the belts, at least they had a really good week and got me a bunch of WWE Fantasy points. What?
This Week in Wrestling History
August 3, 1997 – SummerSlam 1997 was held in Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The main event for the evening was a WWF Title match featuring The Undertaker defending against Bret “Hitman” Hart with Shawn Michaels as guest referee, but another match many people were looking forward to pitted Intercontinental Champion Owen Hart against “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Austin was really catching on with the crowd as a fan favorite through the summer of 1997, and the Intercontinental title was expected to be the next step up for Austin on his road to dominance.
Unfortunately there was an unforeseen bump in the road for Austin that would occur at this show…towards the end of the match Owen hit Austin with a Tombstone Piledriver, but landed on his ass instead of his knees and drove Austin head first into the mat without the proper protection. Austin was paralyzed for almost a minute, but managed to roll up Owen for the victory.
Austin would not see in-ring action again until the Survivor Series, where he defeated Owen once again for that very Intercontinental title. The injury didn’t keep Austin down for long at first, but it would contribute to his physical problems in later years that kept him out for long periods of time and his retirement from active competition in 2003, many years before we would have expected him to call it quits. After all, most legends of Austin’s status seem to wrestle forever.
Owen Hart’s career pretty much stagnated after his brother Bret left the WWF after the Survivor Series. He spent the next year and a half in the mid-card until dying at the Over the Edge PPV in Kansas City in May 1999.
As for that Bret vs. Undertaker match, Bret won after HBK accidentally hit the Undertaker with a superkick. UT and Shawn would feud for the next couple of months before Survivor Series and that would main event WWF shows while Bret’s WWF title matches were ignored for the most part. This is all quite depressing when you think about it…but also at SummerSlam 1997 was a nice cage match with Mankind and Triple H. Those two kids would have a few more matches somewhere down the road.
My Top 25 Favorite Wrestlers of All Time
As a few of you might know, Larry Csonka is doing this deal in his Tuesday news column where he lists the Top 25 Favorite Wrestlers as voted by his readers. Since my column is not established enough yet to do contests or to have regular readers, I thought it would be fun if I went over the ballot I cast for Csonka’s contest one by one each week, to compare my votes to the votes of his public.
Was it fun? Well, some weeks were better than others, as occasionally I went all out to talk about some of the people I had on my list…for those of you scoring at home (or even if you’re alone), here’s my list that I did for Larry’s poll.
1. Ric Flair
2. Steve Austin
3. Chris Benoit
4. Shawn Michaels
5. Ricky Steamboat
6. Bret Hart
7. Terry Funk
8. Harley Race
9. Mick Foley
10. Eddie Guerrero
11. Hulk Hogan
12. Andre the Giant
13. Bruno Sammartino
14. Bob Backlund
15. Kurt Angle
16. Undertaker
17. Roddy Piper
18. Sgt. Slaughter
19. Superstar Billy Graham
20. Arn Anderson
21. Curt Hennig
22. Ted Dibase
23. Jake Roberts
24. Jushin Liger
25. Sabu
I also had Flair at number one, and there’s really nothing I can say about the man that Larry didn’t already. Simply put, he is the man.
To be honest though, my preferences change almost daily when it comes to wrestling. I did this list off the top of my head, and there were a few mistakes that I made that I regret a little bit…
The Rock - How I left him off my list I’m still not sure. I’m a pretty big Rock fan and definitely wish he could be in WWE on a more regular basis even though I understand that movies are where the money is. If I did this list again, he’d definitely make the cut, probably close to the top 10 too.
Hulk Hogan - I put him way too high on my list. If I was really honest to my own personal preferences, Hogan probably wouldn’t even be on this list. I should have gone more with my heart than my head, which would have generated more hate mail for this section of the column. Hate mail is fun, especially when people call me names.
It’s tough for me to argue with most of the placement on this poll though. Some might think that I have Bret Hart too low, but I have a tough time placing him ahead of Austin, Benoit, Michaels, or Steamboat. Some might think I have Chris Benoit too high, but I’ve always loved his style of wrestling and he entertains me every time he goes out there…except when he has to put over people lacking talent.
So there you have it kids…all this poll nonsense is finally over. Since I got some positive feedback on my top 10 idea last week, I think I’m going to run with that until I run out of ideas for it. From the home office in Edgewood, Kentucky…
Top 10 Arguments Against Ric Flair being the Greatest of All Time
10. “He screwed Bret!”
9. “He wasn’t half the Nature Boy Buddy Landell was.”
8. “He started wrestling before I was born.”
7. “His initials are RF, so he’s evil!”
6. “He applies the figure 4 on the wrong leg!”
5. “He’s not Hulk Hogan, brother!”
4. “Every time he goes to the top rope he gets thrown off!”
3. “Because even he will tell you that Triple H is better than him.”
2. “Anybody who jobs for Rico can’t possibly be the greatest of all time.”
1. “He slept with my girlfriend!”
Plugs
Fact or Fiction featured Ari Berenstein and Ronny Sarnecky this week. They got a perfect score, so it’s kinda tough to pick a winner. I’ll go with Sarnecky, mostly because he actually bought the Bash on PPV and I pity him for that. But Friday was Ari’s birthday, so he gets a plug too. Everybody’s a winner!
Byers is no longer kicking it with me on Sunday, but I guess that means I can plug him now. I can already hear J.P. Prag begging Csonka to move to another day so I can plug his column too.
Dusty was still guilty. The readers are a much kinder jury than I would be…but Prag still does a good job and you should read him after you’re done here.
You all know I never resist an opportunity to plug myself. That really doesn’t sound right. But read my review of NWF Hell Frozen Over anyway. You’ll like it, I promise. And if not, e-mail me and I’ll send you a full refund.
Larry is back with the 3 Rs! Hey Geoff, at least you get to see Melina on a regular basis…I don’t even remember the last time I saw Victoria on Raw. :(
The 411 Essentials series has invaded Movies, led by the one and only Evocator. Expect me to pop in with some thoughts on that sometime in September, which will be interesting because I rarely ever watch movies. Don’t forget about the original series in Music though, which happens to have Schilling chiming in this week.
Finally we have JT and his Byte This recap. I watched The Rundown the day after surgery when I really had nothing better to do than lie around like a bum. Good stuff. And don’t feel too bad about being “negative”, cause I’m going to make you look like the biggest WWE Kool-Aid drinker in the world here in a minute.
Final Thought
Sometimes people tell me that I’m way too negative when it comes to the WWE product. I think they have that misconception because I broke onto this website as a TNA Impact recapper, and in this column I often talk about TNA and other indy promotions, which is something that not every news reporter here does. The fact is that I try to treat WWE like any other promotion, and in fact have supported them for well over fifteen years now.
But sometimes they do stuff that pisses me off, and I’m going to complain about it when they do. I hate the argument people make that the fans should just shut up and enjoy the show…if people really care about something they should make their voices heard and maybe things will change. With the WWE that’s not always the case because lately it seems like they really don’t give a damn what their fans think…but there’s no problem with airing grievances.
My grievance?
Don’t get me wrong…I’m not going to say this is the worst thing WWE’s ever done like some people have. After all, I remember the Katie Vick and Al Wilson fiascos.
But let’s talk for a little bit about Jillian Hall. Jillian has been in wrestling since 2000 and has worked her way up the indies just like any other aspiring wrestler. She then went to OVW and became one of Jim Cornette’s pet projects, as he saw the talent in her and got her to improve in the ring and on the microphone.
Obviously, WWE was interested. But Jillian didn’t quite live up to some of the expectations WWE has for its female employees. Basically, everything about Jillian’s physical appearance needed to change. So she got the boob job and everything else they wanted…and finally she got called up.
So how does WWE reward a girl who completely changed herself to fit the physical image they demand out of their women? They give her a stupid looking “facial growth” that looks more like a pretzel than anything that would actually grow on somebody’s face so people can laugh at her and call her ugly.
Tell me how that makes any sense.
I love the wrestling business, and the people I’ve met through it are great, but sometimes it can be downright seedy, and nowhere is that more evident than in this story.
The worst part is that ultimately this isn’t going to draw any money. Nobody’s going to tune in WWE to see “the chick with the thing on her face”. WWE Creative seems to think that just because something got a laugh in an Austin Powers movie people will think it’s funny in wrestling. God forbid they come up with something remotely original, or something that people might actually want to see.
Instead they would rather take a girl who has given everything to get into WWE and make her a freak.
