News From Cook’s Corner 06.16.10

Every time my friend and I have made the trek up to the Montgomery County Fairgrounds to watch a Ring of Honor show, we always noticed good ol’ Touchdown Jesus. Turns out Jesus was made of Styrofoam & fiberglass instead of traditional statue-type stuff, so it’s no wonder that when lightning stuck it on Monday night, Jesus burned to the ground.

What will I look at when I drive to Dayton now? There are flea markets right next to the big church and a Hustler Superstore right across the interstate, but my future pro wrestling experiences just won’t be the same without TDJ. The church says that they will rebuild the statue, but since lightning strikes are considered “an act of God”, I’m not sure that’s the best of ideas.

I do think that actually talking about wrestling news would be a good idea. That is what you’re all here for, right? Let’s do it.

It’s been an interesting week for baby face TNA Knockouts. Roxxi was dismissed from the company on Sunday, which was a surprise to everybody…especially her. She got to put over Madison Rayne on the way out and get busted open, so there’s a nice parting gift from Total Nonstop Action Wrestling for a girl who’s had a couple of stints with the organization and has done solid work for them each time. ODB quit the company on Monday, which doesn’t come as that much of a surprise because it’d been reported for awhile that her contract was going to expire soon and she hadn’t appeared on TNA television since early April. ODB had been pretty critical of management lately, which most of us didn’t blame her for. I’ve never been a huge fan, but she does have a unique (by women’s wrestling standards, usually the drunks are male) gimmick and she was always pretty popular with the fans.

So since 2010 started, Awesome Kong, Alissa Flash, ODB, Roxxi, Tara & Traci Brooks have all left the company for one reason or another, while TNA has gained Rosie Lottalove, Miss Tessmacher & Chelsea. Two of those women do not wrestle, so they’ve lost six women capable of wrestling and gained one. When you consider that at least four more women are figured to be gone when their contract expire, that will mean that ten women who have wrestled for TNA this year will be gone by the end of the year. But hey, they did re-sign Christy Hemme, who retired from in-ring competition in December 2009, so at least they’ve got that going for them.

What’s left? Well, there’s the Beautiful People. Angelina Love will probably be around for awhile since they went to the trouble of bringing her back after releasing her once. Sara Del Rey might be on her way in. Daffney will be back, but for how long no one knows. Sarita, Taylor Wilde & Hamada were last seen on the side of a milk carton. Team 3D may train some more women. Ladies & Gentlemen, your TNA Knockout Division! As much as I love Death Rey, it’s going to take a lot more than her to save this ship.

A 411 comment section person said it and I have to agree with them…at least Gail Kim got out while her stock was high and landed herself a nice WWE gig. People doubted her at the time because TNA would push her better (to be fair, they were probably right on that point because she hasn‘t had much of a push in WWE), but with the way the Knockout Division has gone since she left, that was the best thing she could have done on a financial level.

Rant over. Now for the fake news!

Is everybody up to date on the Bryan “Daniel Bryan” Danielson situation? Sometimes I assume that once a story has been out there for a few days and has taken enough twists and turns, everybody knows about it and I don’t need to re-hash the details. Stephen Randle & Jeff Small have already reported everything that we know about the matter.

I have to admit…when I woke up early Saturday morning, clicked on my computer, accessed 411 and found the headline “UPDATE: WWE Releases Daniel Bryan”, my reaction was a little something like Michael Scott’s reaction to the return of Toby Flenderson to Dunder Mifflin Scranton…

At 6:00 in the morning, my mind isn’t automatically in “OMGZ IT’S A WORK” mode. You could tell me that Martians beheaded the entire U.S. government and I’d probably believe you until I turned on Morning Express with Robin Meade. Then I’d look at Robin for a few minutes and fall into a trance…once the commercials came on I’d go “You lie!”. After reading more and more news on this, I just grew more confused. Who should I believe? Is it a work, or is it a shoot?

When I wrote Ask 411 Wrestling a couple of years ago I frequently came across people who refused to believe anything that I told them. One particular source of annoyance was the whole Edge/Lita/Matt Hardy thing. No matter how many times people asked me about it, and no matter how many times I answered the question to the best of my knowledge from everything that’s ever been said about the matter, there were always a couple of people out there that would say “IT’S ALL A WORK!”. They ignored every piece of evidence otherwise and insisted that since it happened in pro wrestling and was discussed on television, it had to be a work.

These people annoyed the heck out of me, but eventually I came to the realization that they actually had a point. I didn’t have any evidence of Edge & Lita doing the wild monkey dance (unless you count their Live Sex Celebration on Raw, which I wouldn’t)…what I had was the word of professional wrestlers. And we all know that one of their main purposes in life is to work people. So would I put it past Bryan Danielson to tell everybody that he was fired (this is what he has told his friends and indy wrestling promoters) just to work people? Nah. He’s a wrestler. It’s what they do.

Vince McMahon is the ultimate “worker”. Sure, going to all of this trouble to pull one over on a small segment of your fan base seems a bit pointless. But really, isn’t that the genius of it? Raw went on regularly without much trouble on Monday. The NXT guys did their thing. Bryan was cast off as “showing remorse”. Nobody really noticed that much except for the hardest of the hardcore fans. One of the NXT guys was gone. So? There’s still seven more of them.

And just who was driving that limo anyway?

WWE could be pulling this huge work on us Internet wrestling peeps, and the beauty of it is that most of the WWE Universe won’t know the difference. If Daniel Bryan comes back in 90 days or in six months, or even a year, they’ll just go along with whatever WWE tells them. No biggie. I, for one, support this. Crazy rumors lead to more traffic for sites like 411. If WWE wants to fire more people for ridiculous reasons, I will be here to write about it. It’s what I do.

If I wanted to say that Daniel Bryan was really fired, I’d have to try and justify why there’s a “No doing Chris Benoit stuff” policy when Shawn Michaels & Triple H both started using the Crossface in their big matches just months after the murders. Does that make sense? Of course not.

What about John Cena referring to the NXTers as “Radicals”? Doesn’t that kind of remind you of somebody?

I’d also have to try and justify them doing a car crash angle the week after somebody complained because somebody got choked with a tie. Does that make sense? Of course not.

How about WWE.com having a Father’s Day sale on ties? Or CM Punk acting like he was going to choke Tony Chimel at a Smackdown house show? Are you going to tell me these are merely coincidences?

Surely John Cena’s Twitter rant meant something…do you really think he’d stick up for Bryan without the express written consent of World Wrestling Entertainment? I sure don’t.

So, it makes more sense to me to declare that all of this is a work and Daniel Bryan or Bryan Danielson will be back with WWE someday. I will declare this to be true until Vince McMahon sends a representative to my office that assures me that Bryan won‘t be coming back. I’d prefer Maryse, but the Bellas would do if she’s busy.

The great thing about this is that Bryan could come back years from now and I could still say that I was right. That’s how you beat the system, my friends.

OK, on to other news…

If you want more Big Show on your television, Thursday night is the night for you. After his episode of The Royal Pains airs on USA, he’ll be appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Is it just me, or has Fallon actually grown into the role? Maybe I’m giving him too much credit because The Roots are totally awesome, but I didn’t completely hate the show the last couple of times I watched part of it. Anywho, if he has half the chemistry with Show that Conan O’Brien did that should be good television.

We don’t know if Edge is actually retiring or not, but we do know that he’ll be starring in the next WWE Studios production. Chasing the Hawk will star Edge as a New Orleans lawyer who loses a classic car and then sets out to find it. That just has “box-office” written all over it, doesn’t it? See what you’re missing, Batista?

Zack Ryder suffered a concussion during the Fatal Four-Way match when John Morrison sunset flip power bombed him onto Miz. He wrestled for five minutes after that, but won’t be wrestling again until he passes the proper testing.

WWE Superstars will be airing at 9:00 PM EST this week due to a Chicago Cubs baseball game. The Cubs still play baseball? Well, maybe that depends on how you define “baseball”.

Florence Henderson, the mother on the Brady Bunch show, will be hosting Raw next week in the horse crap capital of the world. Hey, I got that nickname for Lexington, Kentucky from a UK alumnus. So don’t blame me that the city has a lot of horse crap in it.

Madison Square Garden is getting quite the house show on Saturday night. Here’s the lineup…

WWE champion John Cena vs Sheamus.
WWE World champ Jack Swagger vs. Big Show – No DQ.
Randy Orton vs Edge
MVP & Kane & Christian vs. CM Punk & Luke Gallows & The Mystery Man
WWE United States champ R-Truth vs The Miz
WWE Intercontinental champ Kofi Kingston vs Drew McIntyre
Eve & The Bellas vs Maryse & Team LayCool with Special referee Santino Marella
Also appearing are Evan Bourne and Kelly Kelly

That might actually be more interesting than the Fatal 4-Way show. Now, they haven’t announced the whole Fatal 4-Way show yet, so that could change.

I guess some people are in the business of caring about these things, so I’ll point out that Tommy Dreamer has been removed from the WWE Alumni section of their website, while Victoria has been added. You know, people used to claim that WWE didn’t know that TNA existed…at least now they know who’s appearing on TNA television these days.

If you happen to be in the Deland, Florida area tonight, you can meet the Hart Dynasty at the FCW show at the Volusia County Fairgrounds and watch them wrestle the Uso Brothers in what will be a preview of the WWE Tag Team title match that will certainly be happening on WWE television at some point. Hopefully somebody who goes to the show will let us know if we should be looking forward to that or not.

Finlay will be appearing in a documentary called The Fit Finlays, which discusses the history of Irish wrestling while focusing on the Finlay family. In addition to the Finlay we all know and love, his father & both of his grandfathers were wrestlers, and his sister was a referee. It looks like an interesting production, but I’ve seen no information on when or where it’ll be airing or on sale.

TNA has a huge surprise that will change the course of wrestling. Dixie Carter & company haven’t seen fit to tell us what it is just yet (It wasn‘t Tommy Dreamer), so there’s been lots and lots of speculation. The latest rumor on this front is that TNA will be dramatically cutting back the amount of PPV events they do a year, instead presenting their 3 hour wrestling specials on Spike TV. It has to be emphasized that this is just a rumor, but if it’s true I’d say it’s a good decision. The monthly PPV thing just isn’t working for TNA…they have little time to build up their big shows, which leads to very few people ordering them because most of us don’t know or care what’s on the PPV. If they present less PPVs while giving people more reason to order them, they could actually make more money off of PPV by doing less shows.

Like most things in wrestling, this doesn’t sound like it makes sense on the surface, but it actually does.

Rumor has it that General Nutrition Centers may be looking to invest in TNA. Kurt Angle’s been talking with them about distribution of his Angle Foods nutrition products, and apparently their CEO was backstage at the Impact tapings on Monday. Some have said that GNC might be looking to purchase the company outright, but it’s all purely speculation at this point. If nothing else, TNA’s needed a replacement for Morphoplex for a long time now.

Am I the only one who remembers when it was rumored that Morphoplex was going to buy TNA? I think the company fell off the map a week after those rumors. It just goes to show that there’s more money in energy than in energy bars.

Scott Hall was fired from TNA due to the whole thing where he got arrested for public drunkenness and didn’t tell anybody about it. Frankly, I’m surprised he lasted this long. I look forward to his return a couple years from now, where everybody will swear that he’s all better now and of course he won’t be. It’s like the old saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me, you can’t get fooled again.

Tommy Dreamer made his long-expected debut with TNA at Slammiversary. He claims that he is on a mission…which so far involves getting paid to sit in the crowd and watch matches. It’s not bad work if you can get it.

Suicide will be returning to TNA television very soon. He’s part of the new TNA action figure line (which is ridiculous in and of itself because they don’t even have his name on the packaging because kids don’t need to see the word “Suicide”), so they figure it’d be a good idea to have him running around on TV again. Kazarian donned the costume for a press conference on the action figures, but he will not be playing the character at this time. Kiyoshi is the top candidate to play the role…Spoiler Alert kinda: I don’t know if Kiyoshi plays Suicide on his next TV appearance, but one assumes that he would if he’s the “top candidate”.

People backstage at the TNA pay-per-view were rolling their eyes over Eric Bischoff’s political commentary on his Twitter account. If you haven’t seen it, Bischoff is basically stealing Joey Styles’ gimmick of hating on Obama. As soon as people realize that BP purposely spilled their oil in an attempt to distract the U.S. from their World Cup match with England, we’ll be a lot better off.

How’d that work out for you, England? Bwhahahahahahahahahaha.

Hulk Hogan has pitched a reality show to TruTv, Fox & A&E about “the resurrection of Hulk Hogan”. He also says he wants to be a judge on American Idol. That’d be almost as funny as the time he wanted to join Metallica when they were looking for a bassist. Nothing would be as funny as Hulk Hogan in Metallica, but that would be pretty close.

Rumors of an ECW faction and Paul Heyman coming to TNA continue to swirl, but nothing has happened on that front. For what it’s worth, people say that the roster is “heavily in favor” of Heyman entering the creative scene. I’m not sold on the whole roster having the same opinion on the color of the sky, let alone who should be writing television.

Spike TV is advertising that Ric Flair has a huge announcement on Thursday. I read the spoilers…and he does have an announcement. Whether it’s huge or not depends on your perspective.

TNA Xpolosion, a show that airs in several different countries not including the United States, is undergoing some changes. Jeremy Borash has replaced Mike Tenay in the broadcast booth alongside Tazz, So Cal Val is your ring announcer, and the matches might not just be random stuff. That’s what one report said, anyway.

A two year old girl remains in the hospital after suffering a spiral fracture to her right leg and had several bruises on her face, torso and buttocks. Two Charleston, West Virginia men claim that they must have injured the girl while chokeslamming her. They are friends of the child’s mother, who had previously been convicted of child neglect and is still somehow allowed to have a kid to her house and let her friends beat her up. Oh, and she lied about it when police asked her about it the first time. She also has a three year old who is in the custody of the father. I’m guessing he’s not the father of the two year old.

They’re already trying to make this into a “Wrestling hurts people” story, but these two men are in their twenties and there’s no way they shouldn’t know that…other than the fact that they’re complete idiots. The men said they were hoping to go to a Raw house show on Friday night and before they started playing with the girl they were watching an Undertaker video. Basically, this is a group of blithering idiots that shouldn’t be allowed to leave their homes. Just the kind of people that us wrestling fans need representing us, right?

Katie Lea had to pull out of the WWC Anniversario show because she has been unable to obtain a US work visa since leaving WWE. You know, Katie can get around this if she really wants to…I happen to be single at the moment and I’m not opposed to love for the wrong reasons. You know where to reach me, Katie. Holla.

Carlito also won’t be appearing on the big WWC show…Carlos Colon says that his son is feeling better since his dismissal from WWE and is training at home. He is living with his mother, though I guess it’s more acceptable since it’s Carlito’s house. Carlos seems optimistic that his son is on the right path, so hopefully he isn’t just blowing smoke up our posteriors.

Aurelian “Grizzly” Smith passed away over the weekend due to complications from Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 77 years old. Grizzly is best known to modern wrestling fans as the father of three wrestlers: Sam Houston, Rockin’ Robin & Jake Roberts. The story of Jake’s childhood is pretty well-known, and most versions of it don’t paint Grizzly in the best of lights, especially Jake’s. In his professional life, he was one-half of the Kentuckians, who won many regional tag team championships. After his active career ended, he worked backstage for Bill Watts’ Mid-South promotion and ended up working for World Championship Wrestling for quite some time, mentoring young wrestlers.

Congratulations to Nick “Kizarny” Cvjetkovich & Stacy “The Kat” Carter, who announced their engagement over the weekend. I gotta say, Stacy’s taste in men has changed a lot over the past decade. Some people have a type of mate that they look for, but Stacy seems to be all over the map. Unless there’s a similarity between Kizarny & Jerry Lawler that I’m missing. Dark hair? White skin? That and a wrestling background is about all they’ve got in common.

Now that I think about it, maybe that actually is a “type”.

I do the Rs of Superstars and recap Smackdown when not doing this. You can also catch me on Buy or Sell this week!

The 411 Wrestling Hall of Fame’s Class of 2010 is being inducted as I type this. I’ll be presenting two of the inductees in the coming days…so far we’ve inducted Curt Hennig & Tommy Young. Did I vote for these people? Doesn’t matter, they got enough votes to get in!

Hubbard ranks the top ten matches featuring the late, great Mitsuharu Misawa. It’s tough to go wrong with one of the best wrestlers ever to lace a pair of boots.

Weyer talks about jobbers. Barry Horowitz was my favorite, but I didn’t like it when they gave him a push. Some people were just born to be jobbers, know what I mean?

Ari talks about CHIKARA in an ROH column. Next thing you know, cats will be sleeping with dogs.

The Triple Threat talk about all the important issues.

Byers looks at Ice Ribbon, a promotion that I claimed didn’t exist. Either he’s used an elaborate plan to make me look foolish, or I was actually wrong about something.

Eubanks likes to update me on the group of homosexual wrestling doppelgangers that show up at his local pub. His most frequent reports involve Gay Arn Anderson & Gay Tully Blanchard (they’re usually together), Gay Shelton Benjamin & Gay Christian. I’m sure there are more, but since these reports typically come at 2 in the morning I forget them sometimes.

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…