News From Cook’s Corner 03.10.10

I mean, who hasn’t wanted to do that at one point or another?

We’ve got a pretty busy week of news here, but not much time to talk about it because I decided to go to a concert on Tuesday night. I know, I should have my priorities, but hopefully next time Flogging Molly will come to Cincinnati a little bit closer to St. Patrick’s Day. Since the Dropkick Murphys are nowhere to be seen, these cats will have to do for my Irish punk music fix. Depending on what time the show ends and what time I get home, I might add some really late news bites. If not, you’re stuck with a Randle-type column. Yup yup yup, what it do.

It’s been an interesting year for my Louisville Cardinal men‘s basketball team. I’ve not been eager to talk a lot of smack because right after they win a big game they tend to do something embarrassing like lose to St. John’s. After defeating the Syracuse Orange for the second time this season and furthering their ownership of the ‘Cuse, I think it’s safe to talk a little junk heading into the Big East Tournament. But it’s like I say about my Cards…they can beat any team in the country, or lose to any team in the country. You just never know with these kids. I still love them, though.

And I love cheerleaders. So there you have it. The Cards will be heading to the NCAA Tournament barring the selection committee getting drunk and selecting teams based on fierceness of mascots. If nothing else, they closed up Freedom Hall, the old horse barn passing itself off as a basketball arena, in dramatic fashion. Many of the greatest moments of my life happened in that place, but it’s time to move on.

It’s also time to move on to the wrestling news!

OK, so the Pajama Pillow Fight did result in something good. In news concerning our favorite WWE Diva, Maryse has her own official website now, which you can access at frenchkissmaryse.com as soon as you’re done reading this column. Somebody needs to fix the banner at the top of the site, but other than that it’s tremendous.

Fortunately, the speculation surrounding the end of Raw’s guest host experiment last week was unfounded, and WWE has announced some upcoming guest hosts that have me pretty curious. Specifically, Pete Rose (March 22) & David Hasselhoff (April 12). As a huge fan of the Cincinnati Reds and Baywatch, this is right up my alley. It also works out great for you readers, since there should be pictures of Divas in baseball uniforms and lifeguard swimsuits coming after the appearances of Rose & the ‘Hoff. Woot woot!

Oh, and some guy named Steve is hosting next week, but I’m too busy looking forward to Pete Rose & David Hasselhoff to care.

Mickie James recently had surgery to remove a staph infection from her foot. You know, if I had a staph infection in my foot I’d probably want to leave the wrestling business too.

In other Diva injury news, Melina expects to be back in four months from her recent knee surgery and Gail Kim says she wasn’t really injured during the pajama pillow fight. You know, rumors like that can fly around because people like me don’t really pay attention to the matches and will talk about whatever’s being reported on the Internet to fill column space. I should probably be better about things like that…but I likely won’t be.

Hey, at least I’m honest.

You know who really wants to see the Monday Night War re-ignite? The wrestlers! This should not come as a surprise to anybody…wrestling was at its most popular when there were two big promotions running shows on Monday night, and that was also when the wrestlers were making the most money. WWE wrestlers would love to see TNA do well and make some money, creating more interest in wrestling and more demand for their services. And TNA wrestlers would obviously like to see TNA become viable competition to WWE, so they can either make more money with TNA or become high-priced free agents that can command a high salary from the WWE one day.

I’m not sure if any of that really qualifies as news because it seems like common knowledge to me. But that’s what’s on the newswire, so that’s what I write about.

Morale was down in TNA heading into the Monday show because the rating for the last Thursday Impact was down from usual. I was not surprised by this, and I was also not surprised that viewership went down throughout the show. We all knew going in that last Thursday’s show was a lame duck show. Nothing of great importance was going to happen on it, as they were going to focus all of their attention on the big Monday debut. Now, one would have hoped that they might do something to make people want to tune in on Monday, but quite honestly they didn’t.

I’ll admit that I turned it off after the Angelina Love/Beautiful People segment. Why? Well, I wasn’t feeling very good, and I knew that the big 4-way main event for the title wasn’t going to result in the belt changing hands. They would have been insane to take the belt off of AJ Styles before their big Monday debut. Now, that might be good evidence that AJ would lose, but I didn’t feel like I’d miss anything. It wasn’t like the next week’s main event where Hogan & Flair re-created an Abdullah the Butcher match and Jeff Hardy ran in and didn’t hit his Swanton before the show ended. It would have come off a lot better if Mike Tenay yelled “WE’RE OUTTA TIME!” like Jim Ross always used to do when things were breaking down at the end of a Mid-South episode. But I’m digressing…

Apparently all of this stuff that I knew going in, as a podunk Internet rasslin’ “journalist” that knows nothing about the business because I’ve never been in the ring, came as a huge surprise to the higher-ups in TNA. Lord knows I’ve given TNA every single chance to make something of themselves and become true competition, but it seems like no matter who is in charge of this ship they don’t know their butt from a hole in the ground. Doesn’t matter if its Dixie Carter or Jeff Jarrett or Vince Russo or Eric Bischoff or Hulk Hogan or Bubba the Love Sponge…they just don’t have a freaking clue about 90% of the time. But somehow I keep hoping that they’ll pull their heads out of their rear ends and do something good. And there are a good number of diehard TNA fans who refuse to admit that they ever do anything bad, so they must be doing something right.

Sometimes I just don’t know what it is.

But hey, there was a show on Monday and I actually liked a lot of it. Your mileage may vary of course…you might be Chris Jericho, who was puzzled by RVD’s debut being spoiled by a beat down. He said he “didn’t understand how so many talented people can be so clueless”. Didn’t he work for WCW? This should be pretty old hat for him.

There is some positive news for TNA…house show attendance was said to be way up in January and merchandise sales at the shows also greatly increased. This is being credited to Jeff Jarrett going to the towns before the shows and doing lots of publicity, and Don West going to the shows and doing crazy merchandise deals. One thing I don’t think any wrestling promotion does nearly as well as they should is promote their upcoming live events. WWE & TNA have both been lax on this in the past, ROH almost never mentions their live shows on HDNet, and most indy promoters seem to subscribe to the philosophy “build it and they will come”. It might have worked in Field of Dreams, but I don’t see it working so well in real life. If nobody knows you have a show, nobody’s going to go to it. Simple as that.

Bubba the Love Sponge wants TNA to have a “Bubba Night”. Well, I’d like Louisville to have a “Steve Cook Night”, but that’s probably not happening anytime soon either. Come to think of it, maybe I’ll ask my good friend Kenny Bolin to pull some strings on that. The man has more connections in Louisville than World Wide Wes has connections in the basketball world.

There’s a reference maybe ten of you will understand. Another ten will cover their eyes and ears and claim they know nothing.

Traci Brooks was released by TNA shortly after last week’s column’s deadline. This proves that TNA brass may in fact be smarter than they look, because if they had done it last Tuesday I would have torn them a new one. With a week to think about it, I realize it’s for the best. Time gives one perspective. This reminds me I need to talk to my friends at the Northern Wrestling Federation about bringing Traci in. Heck, I saw So Cal Val at an NWF show once, surely they’d be open to Traci.

There’s a one-liner there somewhere.

Roxxi also got released from TNA, meaning that as long as your name isn’t Awesome Kong it’s pretty easy to get released if you’re a TNA Knockout.

In even more Knockout news, all three Beautiful People are being recognized as Knockout Tag Team Champions. Is Hamada going to be allowed to take them all on since she was unfairly stripped of the title?

TNA wanted to get Harley Race to appear at a Fan Fest thing in St. Louis, but he told them that he’d only do it with Vince McMahon’s permission. Smart man. What, you think I’m going to say anything bad about Harley Race? If he wanted to wear a tutu and go to TNA’s Fan Fest thing with bells on, I’d support it.

In other TNA/legend news, Al Snow got a tryout as an agent at this Monday’s Impact taping. OK, that was probably the worst segue of all time.

Hey, I like Al Snow! But let’s face it…the Al Snow autobiography was the worst-selling pamphlet of all time. Which is ironic because many people called Al the worst seller in WWE history. But hey, at least he got some head during his time there! And there’s no way he can piss on his legacy as much as Mick Foley has during his time in TNA…mostly because Mick actually had a legacy before going to TNA.

OK, let’s get off of Al for a minute. I’ve been watching some 2008 WWE PPVs lately, and I figured out why Mick Foley was always being yelled at on his headset. He was a horrible announcer! I no longer blame Vince McMahon for yelling at Foley after listening to some of his calls and obscure references on PPV. I mean, the man called Adrian Street a “hooker”, and I know that’s an old term for a “shooter”, but most of WWE’s audience probably thought he was talking about a prostitute. Of course, if they Googled Adrian Street that probably backed up the “prostitute” theory, but that’s beside the point.

TNA & AAA’s working relationship is apparently due to Moody Jack Melendez, who previously did some announcing for TNA and now has booking duties with AAA. I wonder if he booked the tremendous segment with Konnan & Cibernetico that I discussed last week. As long as he wasn’t behind Dr. Wagner Jr. losing the AAA title to Mesias, I support him and his cause. In addition to Mr. Anderson appearing at the Rey de Reyes show, Hernandez will be appearing on several AAA shows.

Scott Steiner was backstage at Monday’s Impact taping. I’ve seen no word on whether or not his visit had something to do with a possible return, or if he was saying goodbye to some friends or what. I’m hoping for a comeback mostly because of the promos and the fact that Scott’s been pretty good the past couple of years. There was a rumor going around about a Steiner Brothers reunion on the indy circuit, but that proved to be false or at the very least a pre-emptive announcement not based on anything official.

Of course none of this news matters because TNA will be dead in 12 months. The Honky Tonk Man told me so, and if you can’t believe him, who can you believe?

Were you looking forward to seeing footage of the Hulkamania tour that swept Australia? Well, odds are that footage will never see the light of day. The promotion behind the tour ended up going bankrupt, and Hulk Hogan won’t let them market DVDs unless he’s paid money that he’s owed. I guess our only hope is that WWE purchases their film library.

Raw, Impact & ROH on HDNet weren’t the only television programs related to wrestling on Monday night…Jesse Ventura appeared on Larry King Live. Why they’d put the ex-wrestler on against all of the wrestling shows, I have no earthly idea. I like Jesse and if I hear about him appearing on a talk show in advance I’ll try and watch it…but against Raw & Impact? Child please.

Former ECW wrestler Danny Doring got married this weekend. Perhaps the bigger story here is that the ceremony was performed by none other than Sal E. Graziano. Big Sal? Good God, back in 2000 I’d have bet the house that Big Sal wouldn’t be alive in 2010 because he weighed 600 pounds. Good for him! That’s the best news about an ex-wrestler I’ve heard in months.

I forgot to talk about this last week, but wanted to because it sounded like such a horrible idea…a promotion called Micro Championship Wrestling ran a show at the Impact Zone as a pilot for Tru TV. Eric Bischoff was listed as the producer for this thing, but from what I can tell Brian Knobs had something to do with it, and from all accounts the taping sounded absolutely horrendous.

The thing I couldn’t get was why in the world would somebody want to do a wrestling promotion based around midgets. And apparently this isn’t the only one, because Spike TV also has some midget wrestling show they’re planning that has nothing to do with these guys. Why?

If this has anything to do with the success of Hornswoggle, everybody dies!

AAA might not be the only lucha libre promotion I need to follow…Cincinnati Bengal linebacker Dhani Jones was at a recent IWRG show and will be wrestling on an upcoming show of theirs for his television show on the Travel Channel where he tries to do different sports. This sounds all sorts of awesome to me, and IWRG has been getting some positive press lately so this might be worth checking out.

The Rs features my laziest recap of Superstars yet. Fortunately the masses are too busy bitching about ROH & TNA to notice.

Ford has all the latest CHIKARA news. Any promotion with DEATH REY~! mercilessly piledriving fools gets my support.

Wrestler of the Week is 411’s most beloved column.

Speaking of beloved, Hubbard ranks the top ten WrestleMania Moments. Pete Rose should have been higher…as a Reds fan I lost my mind when he did his hilarious heel routine and got Tombstoned at WrestleMania XIV. I’m still waiting for the Hit King to get his revenge on the Big Red Machine…

Eubanks talks about WrestleMania. Because it’s 411 policy that there must be at least one article mentioning WrestleMania every day in the three months before the show and the three months after the show. Apparently the words “Wrestle” and “Mania” equal hits, which I guess makes sense because the words also equal buyrates.

AJ Grey had a lot of material with the Oscars taking place this week. I knew The Office (U.S.) was going downhill when they spent an episode debating whether Hilary Swank was hot or not. OK, I knew it was going downhill before that, but it’s still one of the more cringe-worthy storylines I’ve seen on the show. Too bad it couldn’t end after two seasons like the original Office.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week. The distinguished JP Prag will be in tomorrow, and I’ll be back next week with more News From Cook’s Corner. Until then…