News From Cook’s Corner 08.23.11

Good times. Speaking of good times, our friend Larry Csonka is back and so are the pod casts! I’ll be back on Friday night with Larry talking about Impact, SmackDown and whatever the heck else will happen between now & then. I’m looking forward to it, I’ve missed it the last couple weeks even though I managed to keep myself entertained on Friday nights with things like alcohol & chicks.

It’ll be nice to be back on the podcast thing though. Speaking of the podcast thing…

There was some interesting Bengal discussion last week, but I’m going to take a break from them until the season actually starts. Although, if you’re interested in hearing more about football, you should check out this awesome new podcast I’m doing with your favorite Penguin, Trent Howell! It’s the OffTheTeam.com Fantasy Football Podcast! Trent & I will be talking fantasy football every Thursday over at OffTheTeam.com, so if you’re a fantasy football player looking for advice on who to start & who to sit, or if you just want to hear some football talk because we’ll be doing plenty of that too, make sure you check it out. This week’s pilot episode is a Season Preview where we count down our top five in every fantasy football position and make NFL predictions! Give us a listen and let us know what you think.

And become an OTTer while you’re at it! They won’t hurt you, I swear.

Rumor has it Luke from Tough Enough was also on steroids and told someone in WWE that he tore one of his biceps right before the winner was to be announced on Raw in June. So yeah, both guys juiced. Big deal! – Guest#9625

This brings up an interesting question which I’m not sure we’ve ever really formed a consensus on here on the Internet…do we care if wrestlers use steroids or not? Obviously there’s some health concerns with them so for that reason I’m glad that WWE has cracked down on them, but steroid usage by wrestlers bothers me a lot less than when people in actual sports use them. We all know how steroid usage has made home run statistics meaningless over the past twenty years.

Unless, of course, the person in question is really, really nice to the media. Then obviously they never used steroids and should be allowed in the Hall of Fame on the first ballot instead of never getting in like other people that achieved similar numbers. Makes sense, right?

Granted, I’m not an expert on steroids, as I’ve never used them and I’ve never had a reason to since I’m a very un-athletic person. I guess there’s one main argument against steroids: They’re banned in the major companies. Of course, the catch-22 is the fact that these major companies like to push people with great bodies, and when you’re traveling all the time in order to make a living it’s tough to spend tons of time in the gym. And then you have fans that bash wrestlers that look like they’re on the juice, but will also bash wrestlers that are carrying a few extra pounds and look like they haven’t worked out in awhile.

At the end of the day these guys should know that WWE will punish them if they catch them, and they will be caught. Probably. We can speculate on if certain people with tenure are protected or not, but obviously they’re not going to protect somebody just because they were on Tough Enough. That’d just be silly.

I get why people hate Cena because of his Supercena like comebacks, but Crimson is having similar comebacks as a newcomer on Impact. I don’t want any Goldberg comparisons either because Goldberg looked and was built up as dominant. Crimson gets beat up the whole match, then hits 1 or 2 moves and wins. That seems like a SuperCena comeback, except Cena has been in the WWE for years so he is supposed to be great. I just want to know why people don’t act like Crimson doesn’t have superman like wins when he doesn’t deserve to have them. Cena’s gets beat up more than Crimson when he comes back, but Crimson hasn’t been around for even a year. I don’t like Crimson that much but it’s not why I hate this. If they want to build him up fine, but don’t have Supercena type comebacks. I will say Cena’s takes bigger beatings which makes them worse, but I don’t like a “rookie” getting those kind of wins. Goldberg at least crushed people. – Still Guest#8287

I’m not a fan of that aspect of the Crimson push. It’s nice that they’re getting behind somebody that isn’t a hundred years old or a WWE retread, but the way they’re doing it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. He has these matches with guys like Bully Ray & Matt Hardy where they spend five minutes beating him up, then he randomly hits his finisher and wins the match. That does nothing to put him over as a beast, which I assume they want people to see him as. Instead it puts him over as a dude that gets lucky, or as Kurt Angle called him on Impact, an uncoordinated, green-ass bitch.

Crimson does not equal Goldberg. Goldberg came down to the ring, beat the snot out of people, hit the spear & jackhammer & was done in two minutes. That’s all he needed to do, and it drew. He was green as goose crap too, but nobody could tell from what they saw in the ring. I think TNA would love Crimson to be Goldberg, but they’re not really sure how to do it, and the veterans he’s working probably don’t want to put him over like that. How do you suppose Hardy would have reacted if they told him that Crimson was going over in two minutes and he wasn’t getting any offense? “Not well” would be my guess.

(Note to Matt Hardy fans: It only gets worse later in the column. You should probably click that back button right now if you want to keep your head in the sand and pretend that everything’s ok with your favorite lunatic wrestler guy.)

Cena’s comebacks are typically better worked, and by this point he’s established himself as a guy that gets his crap together in the clutch. Maybe if Crimson gets lucky he’ll get to the point where he can do something similar & people will buy into it, and I’m sure there are plenty of TNA fans that already do. And of course they complain about SuperCena all the time. Go figure.

The booking in the main event of Summer Slam was a total disaster. Punk NEEDED to walk out of Summer Slam with the title for his and the WWE’s momentum to continue. Because he didn’t he and the angle surrounding him are dead in the water with no hope whatsoever of being fixed. Sure Punk could get back to being a main event star but it’s unlikely he’ll ever get a chance to be a Cena level draw and there’s absolutely nothing to get excited about in another lane conspiracy storyline.

Worse still the WWE sacrificed the best thing they had going in years for the most overrated and over push man of 2011 who hasn’t even done anything to suggest he deserves a mid-card title as any half decent match he’s been involved in has been because of the people around him and he can’t cut a promo to save his life. – Guest#4399

I had no problem with Punk exiting SummerSlam without the WWE title. Sure, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he still held the strap and had to hold on to it against all odds, but getting screwed out of it like he did helped increase sympathy for him among the fans in the WWE Universe that weren’t quite sure if they should cheer for the guy that’d been a pain in everybody’s butt for the past couple of years and said a bunch of mean things about WWE & John Cena. Having people collude against him will help increase his popularity with those people, and it still works on another level with Internet fans that have heard stories about the likes of Triple H & Kevin Nash holding people down for years. Of course they’d want to hold CM Punk down, it‘s what they do! Or at least it’s what we think they do.

ADR’s really cooled off since the move to Raw, but I have absolutely no problem with him being WWE Champion and I’m a lot higher on him than you seem to be. Check out the matches he had last week, one on Raw with a practically one-legged Rey Mysterio, and then on SmackDown he had a really nice showing with Daniel Bryan. Yes, Rey & Bryan are both fantastic workers, but it’s not like they were carrying Alberto. Rey wasn’t in shape to carry much of anything, and ADR made that match work. His promos are fine too, so I don’t get that criticism. The most common ADR criticism I see now is that his character may be out of place now that we have people like Punk cutting more realistic promos, but I don’t see it. I still buy into the Alberto Del Rio character, and I think he’s got a lot of good years ahead of him.

Your column is just fine, you don’t need to pad this thing out. Who are you, Randle? – Guest#1240

I’ve never been so insulted in all my life! That was ten times more offensive than the TNA homer calling me a POS for not liking a horrible episode of Impact. Randle? God almighty…

Regarding Kevin Nash I have no doubt that he is there for a purpose, and that the IWC in general, and the commentors on this site specifically, will continue to panic about his presence.

I do think this is an interesting twist that has me wondering what will happen next, and wrestling hasn’t been about that for years. – Darth Mortis

I agree with all of this. Call me crazy, and I’m sure some of you will, but the whole Punk/Nash/HHH/Steph/Ace/whoever else storyline is very compelling to me. We don’t know how it’s going to work out yet, but it sure seems to me like it’s an attempt by the tip-top WWE brass to try & make CM Punk into a guy that can be a perennial top draw, just like how Steve Austin’s issues with Mr. McMahon helped make Austin into one of the biggest stars in wrestling history. Maybe it won’t work out, but it’s different enough from what we’ve been seeing lately to make me give it a shot.

Also, as somebody who discovered this whole Internet thing during the wrestling boom in the late 90s, I was struck by how negative most of the writers at that time were. It’s no wonder that a lot of them didn’t last once the product got as bad as they insisted it was all the time.

“Swagger had a hell of a time getting Riley up for the Doctor Bomb. He usually does that to people pretty easily. Was there too much baby oil, or did Riley completely sandbag him, or what?”

I am going to show this sentence to non-wrestling fans and see if it comes off as dirty as it sounds. – Clint baron

At least 75% of anything written about wrestling sounds a lot dirtier than it actually is. The other 25% doesn’t sound as dirty as it actually is.

So basically you were 100% wrong on various TNA things that you said would fail but have been overwhelming successes. However, you won’t admit you’re wrong.

So you’re a Republican I take it? – Guest#3336

Overwhelming successes? I think you and I have different definitions of what constitutes an overwhelming success. Let’s go back to the TNA points from last week’s Malebag to see how successful they’ve been.

Bully Ray Singles Push: I admitted I was wrong on Bully Ray, as he’s proven to be a solid addition to the Impact shows. Heck, I’d say that last week’s show might have been better if he appeared longer than 15 seconds to talk about beating Devon at a house show.

Devon Singles Push: Let’s see, Devon disappeared from Impact for a couple months, re-emerged in a feud with The Pope that nobody cares about, and last week he lost a BFG Series match to Scott Steiner in less than a minute. Then he got punked out by Samoa Joe. I fail to see how this qualifies as an “overwhelming success”. Good for him for losing a bunch of weight and he looks better than he did in Team 3D, but it’s not like he’s setting the world on fire.

The Bound For Glory Series: This qualifies as a success if you consider following through with it to be a success. But honestly, is there any rhyme or reason to this thing? It’s a series of random matches based on whatever they feel like doing that week. What’s it done for ratings? All indications are that it’s done nothing for ratings (largely the same as usual, a bit down but not enough to worry about) & nothing for business (house show attendance seems typical). It hasn’t hurt anything, but it hasn’t really helped either. Not exactly an overwhelming success.

As for my political beliefs, I’ve learned over the years that my readers want to read me discussing anything other than politics. So I do my best to appease them.

IF this Masterpiece thetre takes off and the WWE is serious about the tag team scent why not have Masters and Ryder team up? Both have good personalities and are adequate to good in the ring. Sure they should sign some established teams if possible (shelley/sabin , WGTT etc) but taking people already on the roster and making them focus on the art of tag team wrestling could really utilize and advance the roster wisely – lowe

I was at least hoping to get a Ryder vs. Masters match for the Internet Championship before they sent Masters away. Some of you are optimistic that the Masterpiece will be back in WWE relatively soon, and I hope you’re right because he’s a really good talent that they didn’t manage to take advantage of. Hopefully he gets a shot somewhere.

As for a Ryder tag team, I was hoping for a reunion with him & Curt Hawkins but that was not to be. If nothing else, they could have Ryder randomly booking Hawkins in big matches on ZackDown while Teddy Long’s busy wooing Aksana and not paying attention to what’s going on.

So I take it your no fan of womens wrestling because you called the divas match at SS to long. It had a different divas match feel to it, and its could be a good start of things to come in the divas division. They have to start somewhere to get people to care about the division again. Squashes are fun but you need to put the thought that anything in a divas match can happen. I was a fan of the match, and I hope they actually can follow through and continue to maintain and we can show patience with the division as it grows. – Guest#1917

“No fan of women’s wrestling.” Sure. Even though I spent a good part of last week antagonizing Greg DeMarco because we have different favorite independent lady wrestlers & hyping a match with them competing against each other, which I’ll have the result of later in the column. Even though I’ve written more times than I care to remember how WWE & TNA don’t use their women as well as they could. Obviously I am not a fan of women’s wrestling because I thought one PPV Divas match went a little bit long and Beth Phoenix’s attire confused me. Right.

If I’m guilty of anything here, it’s probably that my expectations for the Divas have become too high because of other quality women’s wrestling matches that I’ve been watching lately. I shouldn’t expect so much of Kelly Kelly, who’s obviously become an outstanding wrestler since she learned how to use her rear end as her main offensive weapon.

If Kirk gets 200 hits and 175 are from those who like to sling shit at him and the 175 simply boycott, of course Larry would not be happy…but if NOBODY steps forward to take Kirk’s spot, then why would Larry not say 25 hits are better than no hits at all?

I think Aaron Frame understands that when you see bullshit, you have to call bullshit, or it will become acceptable and if you (Cook) don’t think it’s bullshit, convince us. – Guest#2893

I’ll address this. Aaron Frame’s a good guy and I hope he doesn’t take this the wrong way, but the fact of the matter is this: Before he started with the Wes Kirk hate in his columns, his comment section was non-existent. He was doing some decent work, but nobody noticed. He needed to do something to get over with the 411 Universe, and what better way to do that than pick on the guy that everybody hates? It’s one way to get attention.

Say what you will about Wes, and it’s well-known that I don’t agree with a lot of his takes & he doesn’t agree with a lot of mine, but the dude is very reliable & knows how to get a reaction from the Internet fan. I wish he’d spend less time blabbering on about the politics, I know I personally couldn‘t care less and I just scroll right past it, but it seems to get a reaction. As long as Wes has an audience he will have a spot here, and frankly I’m happy to see him have the success he’s having. Between the Sandwich and the 5 & 1 we’ve got a couple of popular high-traffic weekend columns, which is pretty cool because I remember when 411 rarely had anything going on during the weekend.

Yeah, that was back when my columns ran on the weekend. And now, the fake news!

Rey Mysterio will be undergoing surgery on his injured knee this Friday, and is expected to be out of action for several months. The injury is reportedly a torn ACL. He was originally planning on avoiding surgery & rehabbing it for an extended period of time, but the injury was aggravated during his match with Alberto Del Rio last Monday night and now he has to get surgery. While I got the logic behind having Rey featured in the main event in San Diego, it didn’t seem like the best idea in the world considering Rey was reportedly already injured, and obviously it didn’t work out well for him. It did give Alberto Del Rio the rub, so at least there’s that.

Obviously we wish Rey a speedy recovery, as he’s one of WWE’s top performers and it’s always fun to see him in the ring doing what he does. WWE’s upcoming tour of Mexico loses a bit of steam with the loss of Mysterio, but at least the real Sin Cara will be back in action. The man known as Mistico south of the Rio Grande made his return to WWE at the SmackDown house show in Tacoma over the weekend. WWE brass was reportedly pleased with Hunico’s performance during Mistico’s absence, and plan on bringing him back under a different persona in the near future. I’m all for that, as Hunico probably has a better idea of how to work Mistico than anybody else on WWE’s roster right now.

“Super SmackDown” will air live on SyFy on Tuesday, August 30th. This is reportedly to avoid airing the show on Labor Day Weekend when it would get a lower rating. OK, I detect the smell of BS there. I know people like to get their party on during the holiday, but I honestly don’t think SD ratings would dip that much just because Labor Day is on Monday. If it was Christmas or New Years’ I’d buy it, but Labor Day? I dunno.

A popular rumor going around is that this Tuesday airing is a bit of a test to see how the show would do on that night, and if it does a lot better than it typically does on Friday, SyFy might agree to air the show live on Tuesdays. Frankly, I think this is a good idea. Despite studies done saying that spoilers are a good thing, it’s tough to disagree with the fact that wrestling is a lot more fun when you don’t know what’s going to happen. I have no idea what the cost difference is between a live & a taped show, but certainly if any wrestling promotion can afford it, it’s WWE.

Also, Tuesday is a far superior TV night to Friday. Friday is usually the night where networks send shows that they want to die…it’s how SmackDown ended up on Friday in the first place. For some reason MyNetwork kept it on Friday, and they’re doing really well with all of their original programming. Do they have any? I’m not sure they even exist anymore, honestly. I think the show should be on Tuesday, even though it’d probably result in us having to move the Friday 411 on Wrestling show back to Thursdays. I guess MothershipChip would be happy with that news.

There are some happenings in upper-management featuring people that nobody reading this column knows. Brian Kalinowski, who was the Executive Vice President of Digital Media, has left the company. Stuart U. Goldfarb has been named to the Board of Directors. Mark Keys, Vice President of Digital & Interactive Content Production & Social Media, has resigned. I have no idea who any of these people are, and don’t know if this is good news, bad news or no news. Apparently a major restructuring of matters concerning the website is going on now, which seems to happen every few months anyway.

Brett DiBiase asked for and received a release from WWE last week. The son of Ted DiBiase Sr. has been plagued with knee problems as of late, and hasn’t wrestled for well over a year after tearing his ACL. He had recently begun training to be a referee, and maybe he’s just decided that the wrestling thing isn’t for him. That happens sometimes.

The Young Bucks tried out with WWE last week, and a topic of conversation that was brought up by Rob Van Dam a few weeks ago resurfaced again when Booker T tweeted about how the Bucks were disrespectful and didn’t introduce themselves & shake his hand. Goldust backed Booker up on this. Now, the Bucks have received some online support in the form of Velvet Sky, who says they’re just shy but mean well, and their younger brother, who says they’re better than RVD, Booker & Goldust ever were. He may be a wee bit biased. I don’t really have a problem with the whole handshaking thing…it may seem a bit silly to us outsiders, but it’s a tradition that goes back a long time and some people take it very seriously. It’s not worth getting people mad at you over, and right now it doesn’t look like Nick & Matt Jackson have a great shot of getting into WWE.

You can’t really play dumb either, because wrestlers talk about it all the time. Even outsiders like me have known about this for years. There’s no excuse for the Bucks not knowing, and even if they are shy and it’s tough for them to open up, you gotta do what you gotta do. It’s very tough for shy people to be successful in pro wrestling, and if they’re going to be successful they have to overcome that & not be so shy anymore.

But maybe this whole handshake thing should be a thing of the past. Speaking of relics & things of the past, John Cena went on a Twitter rant last week when a fan asked him when he was finally going to turn heel. Here’s his response:

Yawn..stop looking at this bizz in black and white. I am not a “heel” or a “face”, I am me. I find it comical that u truly believe that archaic ideology still exists. Today, wwe fans cheer for who they please, which is why I love this company. I should mail u a pair of my shorts, because your stuck in 1993.

I thought I made it pretty clear at contract signing where I stood. I guess there’s a lot of folks out there whose capacity is as limited as “my offense”. 🙂 I back those who back me. And those who back me, get ready for one Helluva few months! Rise Above Hate

Speaking as somebody who loves the face/heel dynamic, I don’t get why Cena thinks it’s so passé. It’s an easy story to tell: one character is good and stands for what’s right (which by the way John Cena has done for the past several years), and the other is evil and stands for what’s wrong (which is what most of Cena’s opponents do). He’s kidding himself if he thinks most of his feuds don’t fit into that old-timer face/heel alignment.

And guess what, the face/heel dynamic still works. It works in WWE, it’d work in TNA if they could ever decide on who their faces & heels are, and it works at your local indy shows. People like to know who to cheer & who to boo. It’s like the 411 meme that I have no idea how it started: Cheer the faces, boo the heels. I don’t see the problem with this.

Maybe if I was a face that had a hard time getting cheers in certain markets, I’d understand where Cena’s coming from.

But yeah, I don’t buy this at all. It sounds way too much like Russo talk to me. We don’t need shades of grey. If there’s nobody on the show that comes off as sympathetic, or like a nice guy, you’ve got nobody to root for. Who wants to watch a show full of assholes? We want nice people, like the people in the picture below!

-Some of you probably think this is filler content and I don’t really need it, but I think it’s fun to do and there are some weeks that I really, really need the filler.

-Canada seems to be offended by Ricardo Rodriguez’s presence. I thought Bret Hart told me that Canadians weren’t racists.

-Alberto doesn’t even get to tell us his name before John Cena makes his way out.

-After ranting against ADR, Cena puts CM Punk over as the one person in the company that deserves to go toe to toe with him. So the Punker comes out!

-The Cult of Personality is out in full force in Edmonton as CM Punk talks some sense.

-I enjoy any and all Jack Tunney references. Best President since Noriega.

-I think Punk just spoiled Santa Claus for all of Cena’s fans.

-Triple H comes out and books CM Punk vs. John Cena for tonight! Why do I get the feeling that Punk’s going to get screwed again?

-I just find it amazing that Punk gets screwed in WWE even more than he did in the indies. Yes, I meant that in the filthy, perverted way.

-Del Rio gets to take on John Morrison. He better hope that Del Rio’s not going to make a habit out of putting people out of action. How’s his neck this week?

-“Let’s go Morrison” has too many syllables to be an effective chant.

-Very nice match here. I really think ADR’s going to be a good WWE Champion, as he’s making his opponents look like a million bucks while not looking like a complete schmuck.

-And Morrison taps like a drunk man to the cross arm-breaker! Nice showing for the kid, but El Patron reigns supreme.

-They’ve changed Eve’s music back to her last song, which is nice.

-Beth & Natalya aren’t going to tell us what they want. I’m not sure what that means, but my mind’s gone straight to the gutter.

-Ah, a “We want puppies” chant. God bless Canada for being behind the times, I’ve missed those chants.

-How about Nikki wearing a different outfit than Brie? This might be a first.

-Eve wins, and Kelly comes in to congratulate her. No, wait, she comes in to attack Brie for no reason, and then they play Kelly’s music. No wonder Kelly’s friends usually end up turning against her.

-Man, if I was Eve I’d be pissed because they cut off my music to play Kelly’s. Also, if I was Eve I’d look up that Steve Cook guy that writes for that 411 website. Seems like a nice fella.

-Vickie introduces Jack Swagger as her “next potential new client”. That’s a lot of qualifiers.

-Alex Riley doesn’t even get an entrance. So much for that push.

-Well he does get the win. So maybe he still has a push? I don’t know, I’m getting mixed signals here.

-Tim Horton’s gets one of the biggest pops of the night. Dunno what that means.

-Punk with a few verbal cheap shots on HHH, so Nash cheap shots Punk from behind!

-I dunno, I get the feeling that H & Nash are both full of crap here. Why wouldn’t H hire his best friend? What did Nash & Mr. Future Endeavor talk about last week? They’re setting Punk up for the fall here.

-Of course Punk’s not dumb enough to fall for this, so we’ll see what happens.

-Lawler shoots on McGillitunga for not showing any personality. Can’t disagree with that, but I don’t know if they’ve really gotten a chance to show it.

-It sure does seem like they’re getting more “shooty” lately. You had Lawler’s rant on the tag champs there, and in the Nash/H segment Nash said that he didn’t have to put CM Punk over. IT’S A SHOOT BROTHER.

-It is kind of weird how Lawler talks about the tag champs not being successful when they are the tag team champions. I don’t disagree with Lawler, but it seems like a weird thing for the announcer to point out.

-But it doesn’t matter now, as Evan Bourne & Kofi Kingston are your new Tag Team Champions! I like it! I hope they get some good teams to face these guys, as they’ve got the stuff to be a fun & exciting tag team like we haven’t seen in WWE for awhile.

-How bout my boy Evan Bourne winning some WWE gold? I never would have predicted it when we were eating wings together in Florence, Kentucky.

-ZACK RYDER SIGHTING! Nice of them to cut the promo off before Evan had to talk.

-Hmmm, do we buy Kevin Nash having a car accident? I guess we’ll have to stay tuned, but my Spidey Sense is going off something fierce.

-Santino plays the trumpet! Well, he plays it for a second before R-Truth & Miz start beating him up. That was funny.

-I guess R-Truth & Miz are aligning against the C-O-N…SPIRACY!

-They sit around the conspiracy table and they conspire! Indeed.

-A very what-happy crowd tonight.

-Damn right, they have no home-training up in Canadia.

-Oh come on Miz, Santino’s won a Raw match sometime in the past five years! I think.

-They gonna get got! I’m digging this alliance.

-I actually kinda dig the new “What’s Up”. Wow.

-Cena’s shirt gets thrown back! Awesome!

-What the hell’s Lawler’s problem with Punk? Punk put the King over a bunch back when he was doing the commentary thing. I guess if you have one match with Lawler in Memphis he never forgives you for it.

-I’m not a huge fan of Go 2 Sleep no longer working on the first attempt.

-Cena busts out the Crossface in Edmonton? I have no idea what to make of that.

-Punk with the Danielson-style elbows! Tiger knee!

-I’m waiting for Cena to bust out the Emerald Frosion.

-Yeah, these guys have some good chemistry.

-Hey, Nash looks pretty good for a guy that was just in a car accident. Much better than Matt Hardy.

-Cena wins but gets the snot beat out of him by Del Rio. Not much of a winner if you ask me.

-Well, that was definitely a more interesting show than last week’s place-holder.

Matt Hardy was released by TNA on Saturday after getting arrested for driving under the influence. A North Carolina state trooper found Hardy after he ran his car off the road and struck a tree. Hardy was not injured and fortunately it was a single-car accident & he was alone at the time. He’s been charged with driving under the influence & exceeding a safe speed while driving and should be appearing in court on September 28…unless he gets his brother’s lawyer, in which case he’ll be appearing in court in approximately three years.

I agree with TNA’s decision to fire Matt 100%. I said that he never should have been hired in the first place, and I’ve been proven right on that. He brought nothing to the table in the ring or on the microphone, and his outside-the-ring adventures speak for themselves. However, it strikes me as a bit odd that they still insist on keeping his brother on the roster. Not only that, but they’re releasing a DVD about Jeff in a couple of months and are also using his imagery for merchandising purposes, including a children’s Halloween costume. Because Jeff Hardy’s really somebody that you want your child emulating. Even when TNA does something right, they manage to counteract it by doing something stupid. This has been part of my frustration with this company for the past nine years, and Lord knows that I’m not alone here. I know people will say “Well Steve, Jeff Hardy’s a draw.” Really? I’ve seen nothing to indicate this since he went to TNA. Did all of Jeff’s WWE fans follow him to TNA? Nope. Did he have any effect on ratings? Nope. He did ok in WWE, but that was with the WWE machine behind him.

TNA fans wonder why people like me are so hard on their favorite company. All I can really do in response is present news items like this and let them speak for themselves. There is no positive way to spin this for TNA, Impact Wrestling or whatever they’re calling themselves this week. I’m sure they’ll try, but you readers that have intelligence will be able to see right through it. It is what it is.

Tuesday Morning Edit: And they’re bringing back the drug addicted goof at the Huntsville TV tapings! Does their stupidity know any bounds?

So how has Matt been addressing these events on his various social media outlets? This was his response to a comment on his YouTube channel from a fan hoping this served as a wakeup call:

“When the side windows glass smashed into my face, arms, & neck, some of the blood that did felt almost angelic. I went from being afraid to? die to feeling like I was almost being reborn with some sort of an ABSOLUTE PURE LIFE-FORCE. It was the most amazing thing I’ve every experience, I felt like I’d just received the blood of an angel flowing inside me-I know this sounds crazy! Due to these, I only have urges to help people. And miraculously, all my vices are gone.

MATTHEW”

And from his Twitter (this post seems to have been removed, but it was up on Sunday):

I took a? breathalyzer immediately on the spot and it read clean, zero, nothing. Think about peeps! There’s more to this story than meets the eye. MATTHEW

Big ups to my friends at Offtheteam.com for finding this nonsense so I don’t have to. The reason Matt wouldn’t have failed a breathalyzer test is because he wasn’t drinking. The trooper came out on Monday and said that Hardy was not suspect of driving while drunk, but driving while under the influence of some type of impairing substance. So basically this excuse from Matt is like the time he insisted that WWE didn’t send him home from the European tour because he was actually still in Europe. Never mind the fact that he wasn’t working the shows, he still wasn’t home! Damn dirt sheets!

Well, if Matt really needs some excuses for his behavior, I’m more than happy to help him out. From the Home Office in Edgewood, Kentucky…the Top Ten Matt Hardy Excuses For Driving While Impaired!

10. “Who plants a tree in the middle of the road?”

9. “Who can afford a taxi these days?”

8. “My car was hacked!”

7. “It wasn’t me, it was my evil alter-ego Matthew!”

6. “Hey, it got Kurt a push!”

5. “A ghost was in the car with me!”

4. “Did you see the sympathy Shane got when he had his accident?”

3. “I swear there‘s no blood in my drugstream.”

2. “Seriously, have you seen the crap my brother gets away with?”

1. “I gotta get in the news somehow!”

Indeed. This news reporter has seen more than enough of Matt’s act, and hopes that he won’t have to waste more time in his columns talking about the latest antics of a washed up has been that never really was. Matt Hardy craves attention, and even if he might be in a little legal trouble he’s still ecstatic that people are talking about him. Since Matt won’t be showing up in the big two anytime soon and won’t be doing anything of note in the wrestling business, I’m looking forward to not writing the name “Matt Hardy” in this columns for a long, long time.

So let’s move on to other things, shall we?

Jimmy Yang got paid by TNA & tweeted “Better late than never.” I said the same thing when my ex-girlfriend finally had her period. HI-OOOOOOOOOOOO!

Kurt Angle has a role in the movie Warrior that comes out next month, and will be doing publicity for it to help reach the “wrestling demographic”. If you ask me, a better way to reach the “wrestling demographic” would be to falsely advertise the film as the life story of the Ultimate Warrior. My friend and I were watching Bellator the other night and saw the advertising for the movie & he thought that Warrior Man had bought some advertising space. I figured if he had he would have gone with something like “Hulk Hogan Is Gay” instead of his name.

Jerry Jarrett did an interview with Mike Mooneyham where he ran down TNA. He says a lot of mean things about Vince Russo, which is always good for a laugh, but I thought this quote was the most telling:

“Until they make radical surgical changes in creative, and unless they get some people who comprehend the wrestling business, they are doomed to be the financial drain on Panda (majority owner Panda Energy) that they are now and have been since inception. The core of their problems is the creative development of their product. They have to cut the cancer out.”

The comment section on the newsbite was pretty amazing…I didn’t know Vince Russo had enough time on his hands to write so many different comments defending himself. I guess he doesn’t spend a lot of time coming up with good ideas for Impact Wrestling, so he’s gotta do something now that the kids are heading back to school.

I don’t know Jerry Jarrett personally, but I do know people that learned most of what they know about the wrestling business from him, and they swear by him. They probably swore a lot when they received their paychecks too, but that’s another story for another time. Jarrett’s not “bitter”, he just knows good pro wrestling when he sees it, and the promotion he helped found doesn’t produce it. He doesn’t go out of his way to get interviews and drag people through the mud, but if people ask him questions he’ll certainly give his opinion, whether you like it or not.

411’s Al Norton reports that Hulk Hogan will not be appearing on Dancing With The Stars this season. Not a huge surprise there, as the Hulkster likely has a “match” coming up that he needs to prepare for. I wonder if he tried to get Brooke on the show, or if he decided against it because those dance outfits would be too darn revealing.

Pink Ladies FTW!

Goldberg is making a wrestling comeback, and it’s in a place you probably wouldn’t have expected. He’ll be working a show in October in the Democratic Republic of the Congo entitled the “Rumble in the Jungle 2”. The first one was the Ali/Foreman fight back in 1974, so it’s been a little while since they’ve had one. Goldberg is the first name that’s been promoted for this show that might actually be there, as MVP & Batista have both denied they will be there despite being advertised for it. Also being advertised are Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle, Matt Hardy, Daivari, Ric Flair & Shelton Benjamin. I make no promises that any of those people will actually be there.

I will promise that Goldberg won’t be with WWE or TNA anytime soon, as he shot down both of those possibilities to his fans asking on Twitter.

There was a rumor going around that Melina was making some exorbitant demands of indy promotions wanting to book her, but WSU, one of the first promotions to book her after her dismissal, shot down those rumors, saying they weren’t paying nearly what the rumor said. I believe WSU here, as I figured Melina couldn’t possibly be asking that much if she was getting booked there, and at some other show in NYC where she appeared in Eric Young’s corner. That would be an interesting pairing for sure.

In an update from a story Greg DeMarco & I both extensively covered on this site last week & had both ladies involved calling into the Greg DeMarco Show to state their case, Terra Calaway emerged victorious in her match with Buggy at Lucha Pro’s Biggest Show Ever on Sunday. Sadly Tony Acero was not able to make it due to commitments elsewhere, but Buggy made a blog post describing her version of the events that took place…

It was a #1 Contenders match and also it was a match for the LuchaPro Womens title belt. I came out with my manager, the evil Shannon Ballard (definitely, most likely racist towards ALL of the LuchaPro audience lol) His evilness might’ve rubbed off on me a little during the match, i couldnt help myself, nothing i did in the match was working….he handed me the belt after the ref took a bump (accident ^.^ oops!) and i hit her with it!!! BWAHAHAHAHHhahahah YES YES it was ME!!! but the ref didnt see it, he counts to 3 and BEWM i win! right??? RIGHT?? WRONG >=[ the crowd gives me away….he sees the belt on the floor and says the match is STILL ON! what! u cant do that…i already won!! UGH we start to play tug o war with the belt an clumsy me falls over poopy face terra calaway she rolls me up for a quick 1..2…3! WTF she paid that ref she pad him!! i already won he said it, NO do-overs. I will be back Terra, when you least expect it……

So Buggy’s cheating ways came back to haunt her in the end, and our favorite Terradactyl was victorious. I knew she would be all along, there was no other possible ending. Due to winning the match, Terra becomes the #1 contender to the WILD Women’s Championship, and will be challenging Winter for the title at a later date. I know Terra’s looking forward to wrestling Winter, and it can only make her better as a pro wrestler to work with somebody like Winter who’s been all across the world, has all sorts of experience and will be the biggest name that she’s faced thus far in her career. I’ll be sure to keep you guys posted on how that goes, as this column is your official source for all Terra Calaway news.

Buy or Sell featured Greg DeMarco & myself discussing ROH & PWG business. He’s fearing my call into his pod cast tonight, which shall be glorious.

Hot or Not features this gem of a line from Sean Reid that was probably meant to be a compliment but really, really shouldn’t be taken as such:

I have met Matt and Nick and thought they were great guys that had the chance to become the next Hardy Boys, but stories like this really make me wonder.

Yeah…funny story about that.

The Triple Threat talks about Booker T, sucka.

Fact or Fiction featured the 411 return of the Penguin, as he took on Todd Bergman from the MMA Zone. Lots of disagreement here, which always makes for a good read from where I sit.

I recapped Impact Wrestling on Thursday night, and as Guest#7355 suggested, it may have ruined my mind.

Bazar ranks the ten best years of the Undertaker. What, no 2011?

MMA Fact or Fiction featured me getting knocked on my ass in the first few seconds but coming back to take a decision over Wyatt Beougher. One of these days I need to find out why Todd calls me “Juvi Juice”.

All The King’s Men featured us trying to fix Fedor.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week! Join me on Thursday for Fact or Fiction, Friday for the 411 on Wrestling, and make sure to visit 411wrestling.com everyday for the latest & greatest wrestling news! Until next time…

– Listen to the latest edition of the 411 on Wrestling podcast! On the show, 411’s Larry Csonka is joined by co-host Andrew Critchell to discuss the matt hardy situation, WWE Raw, the viability of Kevin Nash in WWE, the UFC deal with FOX and how it could impact the wrestling business, some great phone calls and more!

You can listen to the show on the player below, or you can download the show here.

The show is also available on iTunes!