News From Cook’s Corner 10.25.09

I won’t be doing the show review thing because it isn’t really my forte. I will say that I thought Raw was pretty good, I forgot to turn on ECW while writing my Wednesday news column, liked Superstars, really liked most of Impact, and don’t remember much of Smackdown because I was drunk. ROH on HDNet had the best TV match of the week, as that show continues to be the best show with a rating under 1.0 (depending on whether Smackdown’s pre-empted or not).

It’s nice to be back on the Sunday beat for this week…many of you might not remember this, but I did the Sunday news report from January-December 2005, which means one thing: I’ve been here a lot longer than I thought I’d be. I’m like the college professor with tenure. You know what they’re like…they do goofy stuff to amuse themselves and nobody can do anything about it because they’ve got tenure. I learned the most from those professors.

As far as off-topic stuff goes, I’ve got nothing because my Louisville Cardinal football team got blasted by the hated Cincinnati Bearcats by a score of 41-10 and I’m too disgusted to talk about it. OK, I have three words in response to it. Yay basketball season! Even though all of the hype is on our coach’s indiscretions outside of basketball and another school in the state bringing in a bunch of ballyhooed freshmen, we’ve still got a consensus top-20 team. But don’t tell anybody that…I’d prefer we remained under the radar.

Let’s get on with the news, shall we?

By now the Cook readership knows about my love for the Bella Twins, and since they actually are in the news this week I’m using two pictures of them in a hot tub. Best backstage segment ever!

So why are the lovable twins in the news? Well, the Wrestling Observer found out why some of the Divas were moved in the big ol’ trade two weeks ago and it turns out that Nikki & Brie were moved to Raw because Vince McMahon fell in love with them during their appearance on Raw several weeks ago. They will probably spend most of their time appearing alongside Raw’s various guest hosts, which is a better use of their skill set than whatever they were doing on Smackdown or ECW. I just have to say that it’s about time Vince McMahon and I agreed on something.

I’ve seen some opposition to the Bellas among the IWC readers, which I have to believe is due to their love for heel Diva workers like Katie Lea & Natalya, who have been used at various points to put the Bellas over in the ring. They say things like “OMG, I can’t believe my precious Katie Lea is putting over those (expletive deleted)s! She’s so much better than them it’s redonkulous!” See, people like to carry a torch for wrestlers that they feel are underutilized. Hell, I do that all the time. In other instances, I may be compelled to side with these folks and complain about how WWE doesn’t push their Divas based on wrestling ability.

But then I remember that actual wrestling is probably the most overrated aspect of wrestling. Really, only hardcore fans like you and me care about the content of a wrestling match. What most people care about when it comes to a pro wrestler is not their wrestling ability, but their character. When it comes to WWE Divas, the “WWE Universe” doesn’t really care whether the Divas can wrestle or not. (And it’s not just the “WWE Universe”, because I catch hell from 411’s readership whenever I criticize their workrate) What a typical WWE fan cares about when it comes to the female talent is this…

Are they hot?

It pains me to say that because I’ve been supporting women’s wrestling ever since I started writing for this website…but that’s what people care about. Trish Stratus & Lita were both very over with the WWE fanbase, but do you think they would have been as popular if they looked like Barbara Bush (not the former WWF Diva) & Oprah Winfrey? Of course not. People loved them because they were hot.

Of course, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Maybe this all just comes down to people having different tastes. Some people love bad girls, or the kind of girls that could beat them up. People are into that kind of thing. Me, I’ve always thought that the only thing better than one hot girl is two hot girls. That’s why I like the Bella Twins. Maybe they aren’t the greatest women wrestlers of all time yet (they’re young and haven’t been wrestling all that long, give them some time on that front), but they don’t need to be.

They’re hot. That’s all that matters.

In other Diva news, Melina got moved to Raw due to her great work on Smackdown…I’ll take their word for it. Vince is said to be pretty high on her & Jillian Hall, who I’m guessing he also fell in love with during the guest star segments. Beth Phoenix was moved to Smackdown because she needs a fresh start after losing some momentum on Raw. I wouldn’t disagree with that. She also may be paired with Dolph Ziggler, which I’m sure will at least please some loyal readers.

Batista & Rey Mysterio aren’t just friends on-screen…in fact, the Animal told El Universal, a major newspaper in Mexico, that WWE has been wasting the talents of Mysterio and he feels that Rey should be on the same level as the biggest stars in the company. Rey recently got a little heat for statements he made to a Mexican newspaper about his Wellness-related suspension, it remains to be seen if Batista could get in trouble for this. I’m going to guess that he won’t because he’s Batista.

New WWE Smackdown wrestler Eric Escobar’s ego has drawn some concern from the WWE brass, who feel that the youngster may be a bit too confident in his abilities. He’s had this reputation since he was in FCW teaming with Primo Colon. So one may wonder why they’d bother calling him up if they think he’s a headcase…I don’t have a good answer for that. I’ve always thought it’s fine to be confident as long as you can back it up. After all, there’s a difference between being over-confident and being supremely confident.

Jim Ross expects to be back soon after his Bells’ Palsy attack last week, though he will not be appearing on the Bragging Rights PPV tonight. Friends who have talked to him say his voice sounds the same, but JR commented on his blog that his face isn’t sagging as bad as it did after the first two bouts wit Bells’, but his “leading man” status is in jeopardy. That’s all right, we’ve got the Grish to carry the SD team ahead of Raw in the looks department anyway.

I wonder what the Village Voice makes of the importance of looks in the category of wrestling announcers. Yes, this will be my only mention of that article…the one thing that I don’t understand is their assertion that homosexuals don’t know about pro wrestling. Really? Do they live in caves too?

The name of John Cena’s upcoming movie where he tries to play a wrestler has been changed from “Oxley’s Road” to “Brother’s Keeper”. I guess WWE Films is hoping to get the documentary fans that think they’re releasing the 1992 documentary by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky to go out and see it.

I know about that documentary only because they also did a documentary about Metallica. What about it?

Kyle Busch & Joey Logano are not only hosting Raw this week, they’ll have wrestlers on their hoods at the Texas Motor Speedway in November. Busch’s car will have Randy Orton, John Cena & somebody else, while Logano’s car will have CM Punk, the Undertaker and somebody else. Expect Busch to finish near the top of the pack while everybody claims he doesn’t deserve it, while Logano will crash near the beginning of the race and everybody will say he was screwed.

WWE.com has added a “Where Are They Now” article with Lex Luger where it talks about how he found Jesus and is doing a lot better now. No mention of Miss Elizabeth in the article, which isn’t exactly surprising but fans of WWE always recognizing history should be appalled.

Shad Gaspard got ill this week and that’s why he wasn’t able to compete on Smackdown. Some people thought that he was trying to get out of jobbing, since he was scheduled to take the fall in the ten man tag team match on Smackdown, but Gaspard claims that’s purely speculation. I have no reason to question Shad being sick, especially since he was in Mexico the week before.

Lance Cade has reported to FCW after signing a contract with WWE. You may remember that Cade was released from WWE in 2008 after having a seizure on a flight due to what was speculated was drugs he shouldn’t have been taking. Hopefully Cade’s back on the right track and he can have a better stay with WWE this time.

Matt Hardy continues to defend his brother Jeff in various tweets, going so far as to claim that Jeff is “the victim of a corrupt scam” and the truth will come out. For Matt & Jeff’s sake, I hope he’s right. A healthy, happy and trouble-free Jeff Hardy can be a very useful component to the WWE machine.

Bad Headline of the Week!

Everyday when I visit various wrestling websites to read up on the latest news, I see headlines that are misleading, nonsensical and purely cheap attempts to get hits. As a 411wrestling.com employee it pains me to say it, but the news posters at this site do it all the time as well. However, this one I came across on Saturday takes the cake for the most misleading headline I’ve seen in quite some time…from our friends at PWInsider.com comes this gem:

“UNDERTAKER PULLED OVER AT GUNPOINT, CENA BOOKED FOR RAW AFTER BRAGGING RIGHTS, WENDY’S LIKES THE HARDYS, WWE-NASCAR AND MORE”

Indeed, the Undertaker was pulled over at gunpoint. This sounds like pretty big news, right? That would be something that would send the IWC into a tizzy, I’m sure. So I clicked on the article waiting to read about how Taker & Michelle McCool were pulled over with a stash of Mary Jane in the backseat or something along those lines…instead we find out that Taker & Dutch Mantel were pulled over by Kentucky state patrolmen many moons ago and it’s in Dutch’s book.

I’m sure it’s an interesting story, but PWInsider.com gets my award for Worst Headline of the Week, if not the month. And I’ll bet I got a bunch of bad spyware on my computer when I visited the website. Thanks a lot, guys!

There have been additional details to the Desmond Wolfe story since I reported about Nigel McGuinness signing with TNA in the last edition of this column. Sources within WWE say that the Brit failed a pre-contract screening and WWE pulled his contract offer then. This would apparently be due to prior injuries McGuinness had suffered in the indy circuit, including concussions. I find it hard to believe that WWE would have been surprised by Nigel having injury issues, since his injuries were well-documented during his time in Ring of Honor, and were a major part of the storylines his character had been involved in. Recently the Nigel McGuinness character had spoken out against high-impact wrestling in ROH and stated that he was going to work a safer style to preserve his health and not put his body on the line for the enjoyment of the fans. He turned heel in 2007 specifically because of issues with his health and the lack of understanding by the ROH fans, and was on the shelf for several months after the end of his ROH title reign in April 2008 to recover from two torn biceps.

So WWE all of a sudden finding out about all this sounds very fishy to me. I don’t believe that the people making recommendations about whom WWE should sign wouldn’t have known about Nigel’s injury history before bringing him in. I find it more believable that they only wanted to sign him (and Bryan Danielson) in order to stick it to Ring of Honor.

Wolfe, for his part, is saying that his doctors gave him a “clean bill of health” and have cleared him for in-ring activity. He says WWE’s decision was a business-based decision, not one based on his health status. TNA has wanted to sign Wolfe for a long time now, apparently Dixie Carter has been a fan of his work for years and wanted to bring him in back when they were forming the British Invasion. McGuinness was under ROH contract at the time, so Doug Williams was tapped for the slot.

So this may not be as much a case of TNA getting one over on WWE as WWE not valuing a talent as much as TNA does. Desmond Wolfe’s Impact debut was one of the most impressive debuts for a new talent on a wrestling show that I’ve seen in a very long time. He came off well in the backstage segment with Kurt Angle, looked good fighting against Angle, and was put over as a new talent that everybody better take notice of. As a longtime fan of McGuinness/Wolfe, I enjoyed the Tower of London being put over as a killer move, as the move had been seriously devalued in his ROH matches over the past couple of years.

The name has grown on me a lot quicker than I thought it would. Desmond Wolfe didn’t look too good on paper the first time I read it, but the way Wolfe says it sold me on it. Apparently Vince Russo came up with it when he was Googling common British names. Sounds a bit peculiar, but it’s gotta be better than the system WWE uses for some of their names.

I’ll close the Wolfe section of the column with this…I don’t get the sentiment from some corners of the IWC that Desmond has to be devastated that he didn’t get into WWE. The successful people in this world don’t spend all of their time moping around about the opportunity that got away…instead they make the most of what they have. I don’t know what WWE offered him, but he took the TNA contract and seems happy about it from the interviews I’ve read from him in the past couple of days. Given his injury history, the TNA work schedule will be a lot easier on his body than the WWE schedule would have been, and TNA’s paired him with the top guy in the company right out of the box. You wouldn’t have seen Nigel McBritish attacking John Cena on Raw upon his debut, that’s for damn sure.

I understand the concern from some people I’ve talked to that TNA won’t be able to consistently push Wolfe at a good level. To be honest, TNA doesn’t have the best record of doing things consistently. It seems like they go on a few week tear of doing really good stuff, and then they’ll do sucky stuff the next few weeks. Vince Russo’s booking style has been pretty inconsistent ever since I can remember, so there’s reason to worry that Desmond might find himself with nothing to do after he’s done with Kurt Angle. I don’t think it’s very healthy to worry about what might happen. Instead, I am happy that Desmond Wolfe is a major player in TNA after one episode of Impact, and hopefully he’ll help TNA get better and become a viable alternative to WWE, or, ideally in my world, help TNA become an addition to WWE fans’ wrestling viewing schedule. I’ve never understood people who only support one wrestling company, no matter what the company is. Why limit yourself to one promotion when there’s all sorts of wrestling out there to enjoy? Hopefully Desmond Wolfe continues to increase my enjoyment of Impact…I’m not saying he’s a draw like the Angles, Foleys & Stings of the world, but he can add a lot to the show and get people wondering “who the heck is this guy and when is he appearing again?”

I am a huge Desmond Wolfe mark. Guilty.

As I speculated in last week’s edition of the Corner, WWE is already finding ways to get back at TNA. One way that’s already been revealed is that they’re getting footage of Christian Cage in TNA deleted off of YouTube. Boy, that’ll show them. I’m not sure what right WWE has to go after TNA footage…one would think it’d fall under TNA’s jurisdiction to get footage deleted if somebody’s posting it illegally. Maybe WWE’s just saving them the trouble. That’s awfully nice of them.

To answer a question from a commenter on the last column, I really haven’t heard anything about Kurt Angle’s contract status. If it’s been reported on it must have been somewhere I didn’t find in Internet searches and whatnot. Angle is keeping quiet on the issue, so we’ll probably have to wait and see what happens on that front.

Jim Cornette posted a commentary on his website explaining his departure from TNA which you can read here. It basically states that he and Vince Russo didn’t get along, had wildly different viewpoints on how pro wrestling should be presented, and that’s why he’s gone. Nothing really surprising in the article, but Cornette does somewhat justify how his earlier commentaries on the website seemed at odds with the product he was helping produce. OK, there was one thing that surprised me in the article…he apparently did a 1700 mile round-trip drive twice a month while he was working with TNA. That may be the most compelling evidence for Jim Cornette being insane that I’ve read.

Awesome Kong was involved in two amusing stories this week. At the Bound For Glory post-show party, she knocked out some poor schmuck who was giving her crap. Yeah…Awesome Kong would be one of the last people I talk trash to so I don’t know what the hell that guy was thinking.

In other Kong news, Lacey Von Erich got herself in trouble when she sent a worker to get her an ice pack after suffering a hamstring injury while training and the worker accidentally walked in on a half-naked Kong. The Awesome one was not happy about this, and allegedly confronted Lacey in front of Kurt Angle, cutting a promo on her for generally being a waste of oxygen. One can only imagine what Angle had to make of all this. When Lacey complained to TNA management, they took Kong’s side because…well, you’ve seen Awesome Kong, right? I repeat, that is not a woman you want to piss off.

Come to think of it, I don’t know many women that I’d want to piss off. So I don’t think that common saying makes any sense.

Lacey doesn’t seem very popular with her peers, as people have compared her to her father Kerry in the brains department. That’s not a compliment by any stretch of the imagination. She’s also been nicknamed “Rhaka Blonde” by some people, which may explain why Angle was apparently there when Kong was yelling at her.

“Nasty” Nich Hogan/Bollea is currently training to be a professional wrestler. Oh joy. Even better, he’s training at Rikishi Fatu’s wrestling school in Burbank, California. On my list of pro wrestlers I would consider fine candidates to be trainers…I can’t say Rikishi would be high on the list. Sure, he’s had a nice long career and has been very successful for a man of his abilities, but I’m not sure that what he does in the ring is something that can be trained. How do you teach another man how to rub their ass in another man’s face and get cheered for it? It seems like a very specific skill that can’t be easily duplicated. Besides, I’d be surprised if Nick weighs half as much as Rikishi does.

Another question that has to be asked is how come CCW trainers Brian Knobs & Brutus Beefcake weren’t tapped for this duty.

Speaking of the Hulkster, he’ll be having a press conference at Madison Square Garden to promote his new book, which comes out Tuesday. I don’t know who outside of TMZ will be covering this thing, but I’m sure the 411 Newswire will be all over that exciting story. Hogan recently revealed that he was on the verge of killing himself and had the gun in his hand when he received a phone call from Laila Ali. Thanks to Laila, Hulkamania will indeed live forever.

Too soon?

Tony Anthony recently discussed how the infamous TL Hopper gimmick came about…Anthony said that he actually was a plumber’s son and that’s why they went with that. Jeez, I’d hate to think what they would have come up with if he told them his father was a hermaphrodite.

I’m not the only one kinda creeped out by the placement of the Captain’s tool belt, am I? Anywho…

Buy or Sell this week featured Chris Lansdell trying to keep up with your humble correspondent. I only had one typo in BOS this time, which is a step up from my usual efforts.

Ari talks about the latest issues in the gay community.

The rest of the 411 staff previews Bragging Rights. OK, not the whole staff, but probably a good portion of it.

High Road/Low Road says goodbye to Uncletrunx, who will be devoting more time to his nieces and nephews.

And in our AJ Grey post of the week, one of the former Spice Girls has some “scary good” cleavage. I’d think that if cleavage looked scary, it wouldn’t be good. Mae Young cleavage would be scary, right? But what do I know?