wrestling / Columns

News From Cook’s Corner 11.11.13

November 11, 2013 | Posted by Steve Cook

Hi, hello & welcome back to News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, glad to be filling in for Stephen Randle this week and finally accomplishing my goal of having a wrestling news report published by 411Mania on every day of the week. I started on Sundays back in 2005, moved to Thursdays, left for awhile, filled in on Friday & Saturday a few times, returned full-time to Wednesdays in 2009 & eventually moved to Tuesdays before stepping aside to do outside stuff that I’m not doing any more. No, I didn’t plan that one out very well.

Monday was always going to be a tough nut to crack because of the guy that’s been here in this slot longer than I’ve been with this website. I’ve said a lot of vile things about Stephen Randle over the years, and most of them are true, but if there’s one good thing you can say about the guy it’s that he’s consistent. Some of us bounce around from gig to gig, others of us leave & come back more often than Terry Funk, most of us flame out after a couple of months, but Randle’s been doing his Monday news column forever & ever. Randle had a tough act to follow, and he’ll be an even tougher act to follow. I mean, it ain’t easy being Canadian or taking pictures of cats. I’m not Canadian and I don’t have a cat, so I’m about as different from Randle as it gets.

Not to mention I’m a Steven & he’s a Stephen. I remember one time when I was a kid I saw my name on a list spelled as “Stephen”. I had never been so irate in all my life. I was a happy child, up until about 6th grade when I had to go to middle school and deal with different kids that weren’t as nice. I imagine Stephens feel the same way when somebody calls them Steven. Whether they have the same issues still lingering from childhood that I do or not. But enough about me already.

And now the fake news!

Those of you that have followed my writing for some time know that I’m a big fan of the ladies of professional wrestling. Heck, I even have a annual feature where I rank them from one to one hundred. It’s a good time for me, and I don’t think the women always get the respect they deserve from people inside & outside the business, so it’s a fun way to give them some love. So of course it should come as no surprise that I’m a huge fan of Total Divas. Love the show. Yeah, it’s total trash television and the storylines are questionable most of the time, but it’s wonderful trash. And unlike other wrestling shows, it’s only an hour of trash to deal with. I’ve also convinced myself that the show might eventually convince some of the WWE Universe to give a crap about the Divas, or at least give a crap about some of the talented ones, which will help in the future since it seems like they’re training some good ones down in Florida.

I go back and forth on which characters I like each week. Some weeks Nikki’s a total biatch & Brie seems cool, but then Brie’s all like “you need to lose weight Nikki” and I’m conflicted. Nattie seems nice, but her whole veteran act can be pretty grating. The Funkadactyls are both kinda crazy. Boyfriends like Daniel Bryan, John Cena & one of the Usos usually bring some much-needed reason to the proceedings. The seamstress is awesome. But the main discovery of this show is the person in the picture above, Eva Marie.

Eva & fellow newbie Diva JoJo debuted when the show did. It’s important to keep their characters different otherwise they won’t stand out, and Eva & JoJo are definitely different. JoJo is the perky young kid excited to be there, and generally doesn’t try to ruffle feathers. Eva…well, Eva’s all about ruffling feathers. She wants to get to the top and if she has to lie about being a trained dancer or if she has to dye her hair fire engine red, that’s exactly what she’ll do. She’ll randomly get engaged to her boyfriend while trying to seduce a wrestler to ensure herself a spot on Raw.

And that’s what makes her a great character. Unfortunately, it seems that she’s too much of a character for some people. Every other week it seems like we’re reading some newsbite about how Eva’s got heat with somebody. This week, it was some NXT wrestler who said she had a great body but there was nothing else nice to be said about her. Doesn’t that sound like somebody that wanted to be with her and didn’t get what he wanted? That’s what it sounds like to me!

The story that really ground my gears, and got me even more onto the Eva Marie bandwagon, was the backstage scuttlebutt surrounding her first match on Raw. Apparently some people thought Eva had an ego problem, and the way to cure that was to send her out onto television to fail. She’s training to be a wrestler, but obviously she has no experience. She hadn’t even wrestled on NXT yet, but she was sent out onto live television with the hope that she would have a crappy match and get humbled. Typical wrestling BS, and the worst part about it was that the fans had to sit through a bad match because somebody had to prove a point. So, any moral high ground that the Eva detractors had was seceded right then and there.

Anyway, you guys are lucky I don’t have a regular column right now because it’d be All Eva All Red Everything All The Time around here every week. Love her!

I see it’s the time of year featuring rumors about people that may or may not be appearing at WrestleMania. WWE is reportedly in talks with current TNA wrestler Sting & current WWE DVD subject Goldberg to have high-profile matches at the event. I really don’t see Goldberg agreeing to wrestle unless they agree to have him spear & jackhammer somebody in thirty seconds. Which would make sense because that’s what people want to see from Goldberg anyway. We didn’t like him in long matches in 1998, why would we want one in 2014?

As for Sting…they want him to wrestle Undertaker. I’m still not sure when this became the dream match to end all dream matches, and with the physical condition of both men I wouldn’t expect a five snowflake classic. A good crowd could probably get it up to a good match. I guess I’d be ok with this since it would mean the end of the annual “Will Sting go to WWE or re-sign with TNA” debate. I was tired of it four years ago.

Is Daniel Bryan done as a main-eventer? The pro wrestling insiders seem to think so, mostly due to D-Bry getting the blame for recent low buyrates & WWE executives feeling that he isn’t the larger than life personality that the WWE Universe wants to see. People want to see big guys, which is why guys like Great Khali & Luke Harper are getting more TV time & Stone Cold Big Show is getting the big time feud with Randy Orton. It also probably explains why they continue trotting Ryback out onto television and even have semi-big plans for him at WrestleMania…though it’s going to take a heck of a rebuilding effort to make Ryback credible enough to make those plans work.

Serious question: Is anybody surprised by any of this?

I thought it was pretty obvious that Bryan was going to be done main eventing PPV events once John Cena came back before people started talking about the SummerSlam buyrate. That show could have gotten 5 million buys and Daniel Bryan still would have been out of the main event when John Cena returned. John Cena’s the guy, brother!

And let’s not act surprised by WWE’s renewed push for bigger guys and the news bites about WWE wanting to recruit bigger athletes for their developmental center & them feeling that they have enough small guys on the roster. WWE’s big man fetish goes back to the days when Vince McMahon Sr. was promoting main events with Bruno Sammartino defending the WWWF title against Gorilla Monsoon & Nikolai Volkoff. Sure, Bruno was under 6 feet tall, but he was a powerhouse at 265 pounds and was stronger than many of the gigantic dudes he wrestled. Some of us may roll our eyes at the idea that fans wanna see the big dudes…but the McMahons have stayed in business for decades and they’ve mostly featured big dudes. So maybe they’re on to something.

It’s all about the look with WWE. It always has been, and if people think that’s really going to change when Triple H is the top guy in charge, they got another thing coming. The writing on the wall was there for Kassius Ohno when reports came out a couple of months ago about how WWE wasn’t happy with his physique and his amount of time spent working to improve it, and sure enough he was released this past Friday. Ohno had been stepping his game up in the gym and his match with Luke Harper that aired on last week’s NXT episode got rave reviews, but that was not enough to keep him under WWE contract.

Which is a shame. Say what you will about Ohno’s physique, I won’t go there because a man who lives in a glass house never throws stones, but the guy was a talented in-ring competitor that would have been good for the WWE product in the right role. You can’t convince me that the guy wouldn’t add more to WWE television than the Curtis Axels or R-Truths of the world. I still say they should have had him in the Wyatt Family or the Shield so he wouldn’t have to wear tights and could have hid his body that some people found so offensive.

Back to Bryan for a minute…he might be just a B+ guy, but try telling that to the people in Birmingham, England & Cardiff, Wales. Fans in both towns were very upset when they found out that Bryan would not be appearing on WWE events there in spite of him being advertised to appear. Apparently Bryan was moved to the other touring group, and there were multiple people that ended up being falsely advertised due to last-minute decision-making by the office. One might say that taking Bryan off the events wasn’t best for business.

Wrestling observers are saying that Roman Reigns might be on a fast track for a face push. I know people who are very, very high on Roman Reigns. A little too high, to be honest. It’s kind of creepy. Apparently Reigns’ push will be coming ASAP, but if it results in breaking up the Shield I don’t think it’s the best of ideas. I’m a guy who doesn’t believe in fixing what ain’t broke, and the Shield having six-man matches doesn’t seem to be broken quite yet. Now, if they wanted to slowly build a face push for Reigns and it isn’t the “fast track” reported, I’m cool with that.

The Miz turned heel on Twitter Monday night and has been working the European tour as a bad guy. This is reportedly because the touring roster was short on heels.

Really?

Really.

Really?

Really.

Really?

Really.

I think if they turned him heel on television too nobody would mind. Nobody would notice either, but at least there wouldn’t be any complaints.

AJ Styles is defending the TNA Championship in Mexico and doesn‘t seem to be headed back to TNA television, but he says that he isn’t talking to WWE. This was in response to rumors that WWE made Styles an offer that was worth about twenty percent of what he was making with TNA. I don’t know if that report’s true or not, but if AJ Styles hasn’t even talked to WWE as he claims he hasn’t, he’s not an intelligent man. If you’re the TNA Champion and you’re on a short-term contract that’s up at the end of the year, aren’t you checking out other opportunities? Either AJ’s an idiot, he’s already re-signed with TNA, or he’s decided he’s going to retire from pro wrestling.

Or he’s lying because he doesn’t want TNA to know that WWE isn’t interested in a bidding war, which would kill any negotiating power he has. This seems most likely.

My guess…we’ll be seeing AJ Styles in TNA in 2014 & beyond. Where else is he gonna go?

TNA has scheduled two Hardcore Justice shows at the end of December, with one in Lowell, Massachusetts on December 29 & the other on December 30 in Poughkeepsie, New York. (You know you’ve been writing about wrestling too long when you know how to spell “Poughkeepsie” off the top of your head.) The latter show is being billed as “Old School”, as Bully Ray attacked Tommy Dreamer & Terry Funk at a House of Hardcore show this weekend and challenged Dreamer to a falls count anywhere match at that event. They obviously see the Hardcore Justice brand as a draw since they keep holding shows using that name, and with WWE not doing a lot of hardcore wrestling these days it makes sense for TNA to try and use it to their advantage.

Bengals cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones returned to TNA at Thursday night’s Impact taping in Cincinnati. He & DeQuin Evans, a defensive end that’s currently on the Bengals practice squad after being suspended eight games for PED usage, climbed over the barricade to beat up Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian.

It should be noted that Evans showed much better form on his body slam. Back when Pacman was with the Titans, he was unable to actually do anything in a TNA ring due to a clause in his contract. I’m not sure if the Bengals have a similar clause, but it’s kind of funny that Pacman did more in this one appearance than he did when he was promoted as a TNA contracted wrestler. A lot of people were bashing TNA for having Pacman be the “former World Champion” hyped on Twitter, but I was ok with it. Mostly cause I’m a Bengals fan, but the show was in Cincinnati so it made sense. It might have made more sense to hype Pacman being there earlier so they could try to sell a few extra tickets, but then again, it’s not like the Bengals sell all their tickets either.

TNA’s relationship with Ohio Valley Wrestling is coming to an end, as a press release announcing TNA’s return to Universal Studios for Impact tapings also mentioned that TNA developmental talent will be training at the facility. This is probably the right move for TNA, as training their own talent at their own facilities should be less expensive than paying other people to do it. I also get the feeling that wrestlers prefer living in Florida over living in Kentucky. The losers here are OVW, who will be back to doing their own thing without assistance from a major wrestling promotion. Hopefully they’ll survive this like they‘ve survived other crises in the past, as they’ve done an excellent job of developing talent over the years and there isn’t exactly a large amount of wrestling schools that conduct operations at their level.

I guess I can’t go through a section on TNA news without talking about the potential sale, right? Man that thing’s been crazy. First the deal with Billy Corgan was basically done, then he’d never talked with anybody at TNA about purchasing the company. Wild stuff. For the record, I don’t know a damn thing about who’s purchasing TNA or even if the company’s for sale…which puts me on equal footing with pretty much everybody else reporting on this thing.

Here’s the way I see it:

-Bob Carter’s a businessman. His wife Janice is about business too. That’s why she was assigned to cut TNA costs a couple of years ago, because they were losing too much money on the thing. Its ok to have a loss-leader, but when that loss-leader starts losing a certain amount of money it becomes an issue.

-Then somebody got the bright idea to bring in a couple of drunken sailors to spend some of the Carters’ money and some of Viacom’s money. So TNA got back in a hole and it was time to cut costs again.

-I can see the Carters wanting to sell out. Well, some of the Carters anyway. I don’t see Dixie wanting to sell. Ever. I think this has been tremendously overlooked in coverage of this story. This wrestling thing is way too much fun for her. Especially now that she gets to be a TV star and have dinner with football players & chat with ESPN personalities. She even has her own t-shirt, by gum! Not to mention the fact that she gets to run the show backstage. She can critique wrestling matches. She can tell people what to say in their interviews. She can tell people younger & prettier than her that they’re too heavy to be on television. It’s her company, she can do anything she wants.

Why would she want to give that up?

Why would anybody want to give that up? I know I’d get off on being able to tell Sting that he should put a t-shirt on to cover up that old-man fat, or telling AJ Styles how he needs to work a match, or telling James Storm to lose a few pounds and by the way, he’s just not the guy, brother! That’d be a good time!

-That’s going to be the interesting part of this sale, if it ever happens. Bob & Janice will have to convince Dixie that it’s best for business. Maybe they can convince the new owner to let Dixie be a TV character, though I can’t imagine any prospective buyers thinking that’s a good idea.

-Oh, wait a minute. I can think of one.

Longtime indy wrestling promoter Roland Alexander died last week at the age of 59. Alexander was the owner of All Pro Wrestling, a wrestling promotion & school that’s been in operation since 1991 and trained countless pro wrestlers ranging from Sara Del Rey to the Great Khali. Bryan Danielson was the head trainer at the school in the early 2000s. APW’s King of the Indies tournaments were the first time many fans became aware of folks like Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, Frankie Kazarian, Donovan Morgan, Michael Modest & others. Alexander is most known for his appearance in Beyond The Mat, where he takes a couple of aspiring wrestlers to Raw to have a dark match and looks on as Jim Ross, Jim Cornette & even Vince McMahon critique them. APW held a memorial show on Friday, and current word is that it will be APW’s last show.

The Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame announced its 2013 class last week: Atlantis, Dr. Wagner Sr., Takashi Matsunaga, Kensuke Sasaki & Hiroshi Tanahashi. Tanahashi’s induction was a big debate among people in the WON circle, as Tanahashi is only thirty-six years old and should have plenty of years in front of him. It’s kind of like the Baseball Hall of Fame announcing that Albert Pujols will be included in the class of 2014. Tanahashi has dominated the WON awards lately and will continue to do so while the 411 Academy will continue to shun him in favor of guys that our readers & writers have heard of.

Rob Conway won the NWA World Tag Team Championship last week at a New Japan show, which is notable because he is the first person to hold the NWA singles & tag team championships at the same time. Most people would probably use this as an opportunity to mock the National Wrestling Alliance and how far they’ve fallen. I will not. Why? Because Rob Conway is the freaking truth. An OVW Original, Rob Conway was part of the legendary La Resistance trio with Rene Dupree & Sylvan Grenier and then debuted a gimmick where he called himself the “Con Man” and had this awesome entrance music:

So yes, the NWA should be pushing Rob Conway to the moon. Give him the North American & National Titles too. Hell, dig up the Western States Heritage Title and give it to him too. Why not? If there is one thing that would get me to pay attention to the NWA it would be Rob Conway holding all of their titles.

Antonio Inoki took a trip to North Korea to meet with the county’s officials, attend some sporting events & open an office in the country. Since his trip wasn’t approved by the Japanese Diet, as Japan & North Korea are not on good diplomatic terms, Inoki will face some form of sanctions. Inoki has always been supportive of North Korea, and has always been supportive of oppressive regimes and maniacal dictators in general. He’s still Inoki though, and I think he’ll just slap the other members of the Diet and this thing will go away.

Have you guys noticed all the great new wrestling news reports debuting lately? You probably have, but if not here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing!

Chris Pilkington authors The Side Russian News Sweep! He will learn to shake hands with his fellow writers. Not me, though. I wouldn’t touch any of the people here with a ten foot pole, much less my bare hand.

Jarrod Atkinson presents The Thursday Sports Entertainment Report! He’s from Norman, Oklahoma and may or may not be related to the famous Atkinson roller derby family. I don’t care what certain people that used to be affiliated with a certain dead wrestling company say, RollerJam was damn good television.

Aaron Frame has returned to 411 with the World Wrestling News Report! He’s covering everything around the world, including Madagascar & Honduras.

Speaking of returns, Greg DeMarco is back with the World’s Most Dangerous News Column on Sunday! Greg also hosts The Greg DeMarco Show every Sunday night on vocnation.com along with Patrick O’Dowd, Su Yung, Heather Lynn and a cast of thousands, including your humble correspondent around PPV time. Greg’s good people and it’s great to have him back here at the 411.

The 411 Promotional Department wants me to remind you that Mathew Sforcina will be returning to Ask 411 Wrestling while Justin Watry will be debuting a new opinion-oriented column this week. Justin had a tough act to follow, and now Mathew’s got a tough act to follow!

So what am I doing these days? When I’m not on Twitter I’m either on offtheteam.com or appearing on podcasts hosted by the Csonka Podcasting Network. Will I return to writing here on a regular basis? Never say never.

Here it is, your moment of Buddy.


“You don’t expect anybody to get this reference, do you?”

Happy Veteran’s Day!

article topics

Steve Cook

Comments are closed.