News From Cook’s Corner 09.28.10

Malebag…hmmm, that gives me an idea. Since I’m rushing through this column so I can do the Instant Analysis for Raw, I need something to fill space. What fills space better than…

SNOOKI!

Many of you told me that Sara Del Rey was fine with Daniel Bryan using her music, and it was actually his idea for her to use “Ride of the Valkyries” back in the day. That doesn’t surprise me one bit.

The Orlando Fans did not like my calling them Assholes in last week’s column: “We have a few names for you too, Steve Cook. Hopefully we, the impact zone crowd, see you Mr. Steve Cook inside the Impact Zone one day because we would like to give you a little piece of our mind!”

Come on now, you guys have chanted “We Are Assholes” in the past. I’m just going by what I’m told. I don’t think I’ll be able to go down to Florida anytime soon, but I’ll definitely let you guys know if I do. I’d love to meet all of my great Floridian wrestling fans.

Still Guest#8287 has good taste in women and has a question: “Can I please know one thing: Is Booker T coming back to the WWE or not?! I just want to know.

I would say he isn’t coming back anytime soon by the looks of things. I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’ve heard nothing suggesting that he’ll be back in WWE or TNA imminently. He did work a Perros del Mal show recently in Mexico, and will reportedly be on AAA’s Heroes Inmortales show that takes place this Friday. It’ll air on Galavision sometime in the next few weeks.

Hector Stern claims that I want TNA to fail: “You placed your eggs in the mystery florida promotion and Luch Libre USA simply becuase you hate TNA and want it to fail due to other competition. C’mon Steve.”

If that’s true, why in the heck am I wearing a TNA t-shirt that I got at the Louisville Gardens in 2008 as I type this column?

“So the shirt becomes more valuable, duh!”

Good point, I didn’t think about that one. Seriously though, the reason I want more competition in wrestling and why I support the ROHs, the LLUSAs and other smaller promotions is because I like watching wrestling and would like to see more of it on television. It‘s not because I want TNA to go out of business…I need something to watch on Thursday nights, and if TNA goes away I‘ll have to find something else. G-Walla understands the concept of being a fan of wrestling and not one individual company. I’m sure the great majority of you also understand this, but there are the few that get paid to post comments supporting a certain company that don’t.

Crap, did I just say that out loud?

Matt throws a theory out there that actually might make some sense: “I think Hardy is working the net. He is the Raw GM. Think about it. The GM speaks through a computer and he is making Edge’s life a living hell. Matt is the Raw GM!”

I wouldn’t rule it out. Maybe this is the final chapter in the Edge/Matt feud that we were promised some time ago. Both Matt & WWE really get off on working the Internet. Maybe it’s all a grand scheme. Stranger things have happened.

Black Scorpion wonders: “So if Daniel Bryan winning the US title takes us out of a recession, will winning the WWE title mean our economy will actually be good again? If so, BRYAN FOR CHAMPION!”

That is 100% correct. When Daniel Bryan becomes WWE Champion, the economy will boom, the war in Afghanistan will end, Osama bin Laden will come out of hiding & voluntarily disband Al Qaeda, the Cincinnati Reds will win the World Series, the Cincinnati Bengals will win the Super Bowl, Reby Sky will go out on a date with me, Matt Hardy will retire from wrestling and never post another YouTube video, the Kentucky basketball program will get the sanctions they‘ve got coming to them, homosexuals will be allowed to marry and nobody will care, The Office will be good again, Democrats & Republicans will come together as one, and all sorts of other great things will happen.

This is why Daniel Bryan must be WWE Champion. Sooner rather than later.

My girl AJ Lee had herself a pretty good performance on NXT last week. She won both of the Rookie Challenges & defeated Maxine in singles competition. I told you all back in the NXT Diva Preview that AJ was the Diva to beat in this thing, and she’s proving me right. You go girl!

AJ finished in fifth place in this week’s WOTW…I had her in second place because she dominated NXT, but the other writers were overcome by Morrison love. It is what it is. She is now tied with last year’s winner CM Punk in the year-end standings, so I’m pretty excited about that.

By the way, AJ used to be involved with TNA’s Jay Lethal, but according to Lethal they are not dating now. Poor Jay. On the bright side, he gets to have non-televised title switches to make the live event fans happy.

And now, the fake news!

Vince McMahon was apparently shocked by the lack of success of Nexus merchandise sales over the past couple of months. I am a known Nexus mark, but this doesn’t surprise me at all. Let’s go over some reasons why Nexus merchandise might not sell so well…

They’re new: Wrestling fans take a notoriously long time to catch on to new acts. Yes, the Nexus folks made their debuts on NXT and had some time to expose themselves to the audience through that show, but the ratings for NXT are generally about a third of what Raw does. We can safely assume that two-thirds of the Raw audience never saw Wade Barrett & company before they appeared on Raw and started beating people up. These people aren’t going to run out to the merchandise stands and buy t-shirts featuring people they’ve never heard of.

They’re heels: With a few exceptions like New World Order & DX back when they were evil, wrestling fans generally don’t buy t-shirts featuring bad guys. The wrestling fan base is a lot different now than it was when everybody was rocking the Wolfpac shirt…back then, the t-shirt buying/receiving audience was mostly teenagers that thought rebelling against authority was cool. Now, they’re little kids that like John Cena. It’s a different audience. Maybe a group like the Nexus gets that cool heel heat and sells merchandise back in 1998, but that’s not how it works in 2010.

Their push hasn’t lived up to the hope: Don’t get me wrong, the Nexus has had their moments of dominance. But whenever a PPV rolls around, you get John Cena making them tap out, or Randy Orton giving them RKOs. Whenever everything’s on the line, they come up short.

Loss of important members: The Daniel Bryan departure at the very beginning of the Nexus really hurt the group in the eyes of the more hardcore wrestling fans that thought Bryan was the only guy in the group that mattered because he worked the indies forever. I know plenty of people that never gave the group a chance based on that. They were still rolling along pretty good with the Seven, but then they decided to kick out Darren Young & lost Skip Sheffield to an ankle injury. Young’s loss wasn’t a huge deal based on his talent, but an extra body in the group wasn’t a bad thing, and his loss was compounded by Sheffield’s injury. Skip was starting to get over as a jacked up badass dude that clotheslined peoples’ heads off, and his loss pretty much left Barrett & Justin Gabriel as the only two relevant members of the group.

Heath Slater & Michael Tarver have potential, but they don’t really have the gravitas to work as upper-card heels right now. David Otunga…well, the dude can talk. So the Nexus is left with two guys that come off as relevant, and three guys that are there to do jobs. That’s not a good percentage for a successful faction.

The Design: I like it, but I think I am the only person in the WWE Universe that does. I’ve had plenty of people tell me how crappy the design is, and it seems to be the prevalent opinion among the masses. People aren’t going to buy t-shirts they think are ugly. Triple H & Evolution had some success selling shirts as heels, because their shirts looked cool and had slogans that people could get into. “Paid, Laid & Made” is a personal favorite of mine. “You’re Either Nexus Or You’re Against Us” doesn’t seem to have the same kind of emotional connection with the fan base. Again, I like it, but other people don’t.

So, it doesn’t surprise me at all that Nexus t-shirts aren’t selling well. It’s interesting that the shirt is consistently making the “Top Sellers” list, which either means that nothing is selling well, or JP Prag is going to have to get on them for making fake lists.

The latest take on Matt Hardy is that most people seem to think that he’s doing all of this online stuff as a work in an attempt to get fired by WWE. He has begun doing videos as “Matt Hardy” & “Matthew Hardy”. I don’t really know where he’s going with all of this, and to be perfectly honest with you, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. I think I’ll be laying off the Hardy news until he either gets fired or pops back up on WWE television.

Chris Jericho had issues with the Internet. The Rock said he would have done UFC if it was big back in the day. Lots of people had opinions on these things, and I thought neither was a big deal. I did find it funny when Jericho went on this rant about how Internet peoples’ opinions don’t matter, and then he got all excited about being inducted into the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame. What a hypocritical troglodyte.

As for the Rock, what he said was only common sense. If UFC was bigger than WWE back in 1996, and he was looking for something to do, why wouldn’t he have tried it? It’s a good thing he didn’t, because he probably would have been knocked stupid and that wouldn’t have been good for his movie career.

In case you were wondering about Tiffany, it seems that all charges against her regarding her domestic dispute with Drew McIntyre were dropped. This is a good thing, but there’s no word on when or if she’ll be returning to WWE.

WWE released Joe Doering from his developmental contract this week. Doering, a trainee of Scott D’Amore, worked in TNA briefly in 2005-06 with little acclaim, then headed to All Japan Pro Wrestling and managed to win the AJPW tag team titles with Great Muta in 2008. He wound up in FCW in February 2010, and competed there as Drake Brewer to generally good reviews. Some had speculated that he would be part of NXT Season 3, but obviously he wasn’t.

Congratulations to Kofi Kingston, who recently got married. I don’t think his bride is involved in the wrestling business, so it might actually last.

All Raw thoughts from your humble correspondent are in the Instant Analysis column. Instant Analysis & a news column in the same night? That’s no problem for a man who’s absolutely killing it these days. My fantasy football teams are 4-0 this week, work is going well, I’m losing weight, my Bengals whooped the Panthers, my Reds are about to clinch the NL Central, Bengals cheerleaders give me looks as I exit bars…it’s good to be the king.

Mick Foley announced on Monday that there will be a motion picture produced about his life. Congratulations to Mick…I remember him talking in Foley Is Good about pitching a script based on Have A Nice Day, so this is something he’s been working towards for a long time. It’s probably too early to speculate on what the movie would cover, but I would think that the early portions of his career would be a much more interesting story on film than some of his later exploits.

I mean, would you rather see Foley getting his ear ripped off by Vader, or Foley quitting WWE because Vince McMahon yelled in his microphone? Seems like an easy choice to me.

Mick got his upcoming book plugged in a bit of an odd place…WWE Raw! Michael Cole & Jerry Lawler talked about Foley’s book coming out this week and even mentioned the Countdown to Lockdown name, saying that the book talked about Foley’s decision to leave WWE. That’s a pretty nice gesture from WWE towards a guy working for a company that sees itself as competition to WWE.

Mickie James has signed with TNA and will reportedly be debuting on the October 7 edition of Impact. Mickie was previously in TNA back in 2003, as part of Raven’s Gathering faction. I would not expect that history to be referenced unless Raven pays off one of the bookers. It’s been awhile since Raven got to have a hot chick in his corner.

Tara suffered an elbow injury during the TNA house show on Saturday night and had to go to the hospital. It was a tough week for Tara, as she was also successfully treated for skin cancer. Luckily they caught it early on, but that’s the sort of thing that all you folks that love to lay out in the sun and in tanning beds need to watch out for. As somebody who doesn’t spend much time doing either but still has a good skin tone, I don’t need to worry about such things.

When I get skin cancer in fifty years I’ll look back at this column and chuckle.

Get well soon! 🙂

Jorge “Giant” Gonzalez passed away over the weekend at the age of 44 due to diabetes. Gonzalez was most known in the world of wrestling for being one of the first people to give the Undertaker a beat down, and for his wrestling attire while with the WWF in 1993:

Gonzalez is on the left, in case you’re not sure.

Most of you have probably heard the story of how Gonzalez got into wrestling, but I’ll talk about it anyway because I find it interesting…the Atlanta Hawks drafted Gonzalez in the third round of the 1988 NBA Draft (they don’t have three rounds anymore, maybe this is why), having seen him in action at the Tournament of the Americas as part of the Argentinean National Team. Gonzalez was impressive in that tournament, but when he came to Atlanta the Hawks quickly found out that he was not an NBA-caliber center. Considering 7’6″ guys usually stay in the NBA for years despite people making fun of them for having no ability other than their height, Gonzalez couldn’t have been very good.

The Hawks were owned by Ted Turner at this point in time, and in 1988 Turner purchased World Championship Wrestling. Gonzalez had no future in the NBA, but Turner figured that he could get some use out of him as a professional wrestler. After a year of training, El Gigante hit the WCW rings in May 1990. The rest…was history.

Gonzalez was never a workrate wonder, but he had a presence about him that few wrestlers can hope to compete with. I’m not sure that WCW or the WWF ever utilized him to his full potential, but from what I’ve heard he was never really too bothered by that. He was content to go back to Argentina and live on a ranch once his career was over. Unfortunately he had the same physical problems that most giants have to deal with in their lives, which probably made the last few years of his life quite an ordeal. He’s in a better place now.

Did you hear about the Dragon Gate USA show on Sunday? The show, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was delayed for a couple hours because the ring did not arrive & they had to find a new one. The rumor going around the crowd there was that the ring didn’t arrive because the person in charge of taking the ring to the show was attacked at a night club the night before and had his teeth knocked out. That person?

Larry Sweeney.

OK, a couple of things come to mind if this is true. First off, how far has Sweeney’s career fallen that now he’s the head of the DGUSA ring crew? It wasn’t all that long ago that Dave Meltzer was telling people that Sweeney was the next Bobby Heenan due to his work as a manager in Ring of Honor. Sweeney seemed on the fast track to success, but personal demons began to get in the way. Larry is bipolar, and as people who have friends with this disorder know, sometimes there are good days and sometimes there are bad days. He got to a point where he didn’t want to take his medication and had more bad days than good, which led to his departure from ROH.

Which leads me to my second point…why in the world would DGUSA entrust their ring to the likes of Larry Sweeney? Was Jake Roberts busy? Mind you, Sweeney’s problems are not of the drug/alcohol variety, but he’s still not somebody I’d trust to organize my sock drawer. This leads me to believe that the rumor is complete nonsense…but then again, Sweeney trained under Mike Quackenbush in the CHIKARA school and was a favorite of Gabe Sapolsky’s in 2008 when Gabe was booking ROH. Maybe they wanted to give him a second chance.

Sweeney sent an e-mail to folks telling then that he was attacked by 8-10 people outside a night club in the bustling metropolis of Michigan City, Indiana. I can’t imagine there being many good night clubs in Michigan City, but maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe he went to Jim’s Strip Club, where every night is the day shift.

Apparently the DGUSA show was all sorts of awesome even with the ring delay, so there’s that.

Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura will be coming back to TruTV for a second season. I remember seeing the show once and it was the biggest bunch of bullcrap I’d ever seen. I’m glad it’s coming back.

Ford & Ari Berenstein review the recent CHIKARA shows.

The Triple Threat has two people this week. Martell may be having a good fantasy football season, but math is not his strong suit.

Nedeff reviews UWF Beach Brawl, which has one of the great commentary exchanges of all time:

Craig calls it a DDT; Bruno responds, “Well, he put him into a front facelock and then drove him into the mat like a piledriver.” Craig tells him, “Yes, that’s a DDT.” Bruno answers, “Well, they’re about the same.”

God Bless Bruno Sammartino.

Hubbard ranks the top ten ROH Champions. No Xavier? Blasphemy!

The Rs feature Thomas waving his gun around. I hope he didn’t mean what I think he meant by that.

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