News From Cook’s Corner 12.20.11

Not a great fantasy football week. If you had Drew Brees you were winning. I had him in one league and was going against him in two others. So I’m down to one chance at winning a fantasy football championship this season. I realize that I am one of about three people that cares about me winning a fantasy football championship, but this is the stuff I spend most of my time thinking about. Basically, I’m thinking about fantasy football or women 24/7, with the occasional interlude with Louisville basketball or Reds baseball, which only comes up this time of year when they make bad trades or let somebody good leave.

Oh, and one of my losses was to Jeff Small. This is completely and utterly unacceptable, and I hang my head in shame. OK, done with that. On to the column!

lol that woman’s wrestling company using an old wwe woman’s championship – Guest#0305

At least they’re not using a Divas title replica. Indy companies using WWE-inspired title belts is nothing new, I think half of the indy groups out there use a replica of the late 90s-early 00s version of the Winged Eagle title belt as their championship. Most of the ones that aren’t WWE replicas look pretty shabby. Considering where WILD is in the scheme of things, I don’t have a problem with their title belt. If they start to expand and have success running shows and things like that, perhaps they could change things around then, but for now it’s fine.

RE: The Asylum

So even if there’s going to be a focus on concerts, if they can host boxing, they can do wrestling. – King Tonga

The Asylum Arena’s website is teasing that the January 21 card will be the final boxing card at the arena. I’ve seen that NBC was scheduled to have four cards at the arena in 2012, but perhaps that changed when the ownership of the arena changed. I’ve seen reports of a card being scheduled for March as well. I guess we’ll have to stay tuned.

I can tell you from my days of living in Atlanta that it is almost impossible to get pulled over for speeding. I had a job working the SE and drove all over. On the highways around ATL I drove in the 90’s and was passed like I was walking. I red lined my engine (sports coupe) driving to other parts of the state and was never pulled over. Lita must have been doing some crazy driving to get a Georgia cop to even blink. – Guest#0185

There’s a joke here about women & driving that I probably should stay away from.

Kharma is still pregnant, and would need at LEAST 4-6 weeks of recovery time after having the child. She just left in May, February or March would be her earliest possible return date. And really, anybody that wants Awesome Kong back over Jericho isn’t much of a wrestling fan. – Jerichoholic

Kharma makes the Divas division approximately 16 times better. It’s not that I don’t want Jericho back, I just want his return to actually be a surprise. Sure, he tries really hard on Twitter to act like he’s not coming back and he doesn’t care about wrestling anymore, but nobody buys it. Jericho’s usually great at working people, but his Internet gimmick has totally been exposed. He tries too hard.

Shame you wouldn’t think Austin Aries would be a good fit. He’s a natural character as a slimy heel. Due to his size he’d be unlikely to break the glass ceiling (wait until Danielson does) but he’d be awesome at the IC/US title level. Samoa Joe also has a friend in a higher place, one John Cena. If Cena couldn’t convince McMahon to hire Joe, Punk and Austin would have a negligible effect. – Guest#0532

I forgot about the Cena/Joe connection, which predates Joe’s friendship with Punk & Austin’s love of him. I honestly expected Joe to go to WWE the last time his TNA contract expired, but I guess he was made an offer that he couldn’t refuse. As for Aries, it’s basically the height thing and the fact that he was turned down for Tough Enough earlier this year. I still don’t get that call, but something tells me that if he couldn’t even make it on Tough Enough, WWE won’t be beating down his door anytime soon even with the good run he’s had in TNA. He is a damn good heel though.

Doctor Who can wear a bow tie and make it cool. Alfalfa can wear a bow tie and make it passible. Otunga…he needs the BA Star campain so the other rasslers’ don’t pick on his Carlton arse! Seriously, what can this guy do but make everything look bad! He can’ wrestle with a darn and rockin the bow tie ain’t happening…(Hey Rog & Duane!) Don’t ya think that Vinnie is only keeping him around cause he’s bangin Hudson? – Lord Keedik

David Otunga’s actually been growing on me since he started doing the lawyer gimmick. He’s found a personality that works for him and showcases the charisma that everybody insisted he had when he was on NXT. I don’t think he’ll ever be a tippy-top guy, but he can be a solid mid-card act for the next several years that gets good heat. I also think his in-ring work is getting better, or at least enough so that he doesn’t have bad matches with people now.

Of course you didn’t expect the Bengals to go the playoffs. No one ever does. – Guest#2763

I can’t really argue this. It should be noted that with the Jets & Titans losing this week, the Bengals haven’t been eliminated from postseason contention just yet. I think the Jets have the inside track on the bid, but

Hey Cook sorry to bug you about this but it’s been six months. Are you any closer to fixing the 2011 Hot 100? – mannik

I completely forgot about this, but I will promise to you guys that I will get the pictures put back into the system within the next week or so. Part of it was waiting for 411’s server to stop spitting pictures out like it was doing at the time, and it seems like they’ve finally got it figured out. So I’ll find some time this week to fix that up, though honestly that list is so outdated now it’s absurd. Some big names around here not on that list. Weird stuff.

I’m gonna go out of left field with this one…what if the It Begins Again videos aren’t for Taker, Jericho, or even Kharma? My pick? Skip Sheffield. You heard it here first. – Jason King

I’m a big Skip fan, but he’d be a bit of a letdown as the mystery man. He did make some interesting tweets over the weekend teasing…something. I’m not sure what. Nevertheless, Skip is on his way back, and if he continues in the direction he was heading before his injury, he’ll be a solid addition to whichever show he ends up on.

And now, the fake news!

There are a lot of things I could lead with, but those of you familiar with my work know that I have to start things off with the World Title victory of Daniel Bryan. It was decided that Mark Henry had to lose the title due to physical ailments that have rendered him unable to compete on a regular basis for the time being. He reportedly suffered a severe groin pull during his match with John Cena, and if you saw his match with Big Show on Sunday you saw that he wasn’t moving around all that well. So Vince McMahon made the call to take the title off of Mizark, and to move it to Bryan.

Most inside the business that have publicly commented seem happy that Bryan is champion. Gabe Sapolsky was so happy that he took credit for everything that Bryan & CM Punk have done in their wrestling careers. There is one notable exception…Batista:

“excuse me! did i hear that right? Daniel Bryan World Heavyweight Champ. ummmmmmm…..ok.”

“so to clear up any misunderstanding about me hating on Daniel Bryan…actually i’ve been a supporter of his for years,unlike most of you Johnny come lately smart mark supporters. we actually had a hell of a match together that was originally supposed to be a squash match until this old broken down ex bodybuilder who never deserved to be champion and only had it handed to me because HHH was my boy…refused to job the kid out because i knew how good he was and wanted to have a f–king match with him before i left the company. and a hell of a match we had considering where our respective places in the company were at the time. so yes im aware of all of his accomplishments and hard work through out the years and i’m thrilled to death for him….but still…World Heavyweight champ???ummmmmmm…ok. opinions are like assholes. my Twitter account,my opinion. and to all the b—h ass haters who just dogged me out and b—hed about how horrible i was…..i’ve worked with HHH, the Undertaker,Rey Mysterio,Randy Orton Stone Cold,Edge,John Cena,Chris Benoit,Ric f–king Flair!!etc.etc.. and they all respected me and my work. Eddie Guerrero respected my work. so don’t expect your little bulls–t remarks to actually carry any weight. in your b—h ass faces!!”

OK, there’s a lot of stuff there. So I’ll sum it up in a few bullet points.

-Bryan’s too small to be a heavyweight champ
-Internet fans hate Batista and he doesn’t like it
-He worked with a bunch of good wrestlers
-What the haters say doesn’t matter, even though he spent several tweets complaining about what they were saying

I haven’t ruled out the possibility that Batista’s working an online feud with Bryan to lead up to his comeback on January 2. John Cena’s going to be busy with Kane and then the Rock, so dude needs an opponent! Either Batista’s coming back soon or he’s one of the most bitter ex-wrestlers that has absolutely no reason to be bitter. I’m hoping he returns to challenge Bryan.

Hell, I have no idea how Bryan’s title reign’s going to go. He might not even be champ after Tuesday the way WWE likes to book things. All I know is that one of my favorite wrestlers has finally climbed to the top of the mountain, and no matter what happens now he can always say he’s a former WWE World Champion. Lots of Bryan’s fans from back in the day have whined and complained about how he’s been used in WWE, and there were some moments where I wasn’t so sure about it. But right now, on December 20, 2011, Daniel Bryan is your World Champion. And I have a hard time caring about what could happen. I’m happy to live in the now, and enjoy the champions we now have.

“If you can’t get behind this, you will be left behind.” – CM Punk

Trent Howell said it on the Offtheteam.com Forum, and it bears repeating here…this is one of the most IWC-friendly groups of WWE champions ever. Most of us think CM Punk is tremendous. Most of us are rooting for Daniel Bryan. Most of us like how Zack Ryder used social media to get himself over. Most of us think Cody Rhodes is a great heir to the Rhodes legacy. Most of us think Beth Phoenix is the best pick among the Divas to hold that title. Most of us think Air Boom is fun to watch. Basically, WWE has taken all of their championships and given them to people that we like.

So if it doesn’t work, it’s all out fault. I’m not sure I like having this kind of pressure on me, but whatever. I’ll roll with it.

John Cena is being featured on boxes of Fruity Pebbles as part of a contest WWE is running in affiliation with Post Cereals. I hope Cena & WWE are cutting The Rock in on the money they’re getting off of this, as you know this probably doesn’t go down unless Rock repeatedly calls Cena a Fruity Pebble. I don’t think there’s a joke left about how Cena’s next endorsement deal will involve lady parts, as they’ve all been used.

WWE is now selling an anti-John Cena t-shirt. Randle couldn‘t find a picture of it yesterday because he‘s a roody poo. I am not a roody poo, so here‘s a picture:

Cena said on Twitter that WWE’s been asking him if they could sell an anti-Cena shirt since 2008, and he had resisted until now. He says he feels disrespected by the shirts, but I have a feeling he’ll change his tune once the royalty checks start to roll in. It’s pretty ingenious by WWE…what better way to stick it to people that don’t like Cena than having Cena make money off of shirts proclaiming that he sucks? They’ll buy the shirts and chant “Cena Sucks” at the shows without knowing that they’re the reason John Cena is WWE’s biggest draw.

Kevin Nash’s match with Triple H at TLC is expected to be his last with the company. WWE has written him out of storyline with injury, and Nash thanked H on Twitter for his last match. Not a bad match for Nash to go out on…this WWE run didn’t live up to peoples’ hopes, but expectations may have been a bit high for Big Kev. It’ll be interesting to see if this really is Nash’s last match, or if we’ll see him pop up somewhere else in 2012. I never consider a wrestler fully retired as long as they’re physically capable of putting on their gear.

Nash draws a variety of opinions from wrestling fans. Some people think he’s the devil incarnate, a lazy SOB that never had good matches. He was WWF Champion for a year, but his reign didn’t do anything for business. He got a sweetheart deal with WCW, then helped to slowly kill the company via backstage politics. He came back to WWE and slogged his way through a bad feud with Triple H, then he went to TNA and did nothing to help that company either. Then he finally came back to WWE for this run, where all he did was interfere in CM Punk’s title match and cut some bad promos. To these people, Kevin Nash stepping aside is a good thing that should have happened sometime around a decade ago.

Big Sexy also has plenty of fans that think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. He was a funny SOB that provided tons of entertainment wherever he went. He was one of the forces behind the New World Order, a supergroup that helped change wrestling and lead it into its boom period in the late 1990s. He held multiple world championships and main evented countless PPVs that got buyrates that WWE would kill for today. Sure, he didn’t do anything for TNA’s business, but those Paparazzi Productions videos were hilarious. To these people, Kevin Nash stepping aside is a sad day, and they’ll miss seeing his similing face on TV.

The truth is somewhere in the middle of all this. I’ll miss Big Kev. He won’t make my all-time top 10, or top 20, maybe not even my top 50. But he always kept things interesting on TV, and off TV he did plenty of stuff to give people like me things to talk about. Where would IWC writers have been in the late 90s without Kevin Nash? That will probably be what Kevin Nash is remembered for…he always gave people something to talk about.

Rey Mysterio says he is recovering well from his latest knee surgery and he hopes to be back in action for WrestleMania. I think we all figured Rey would try to be back by then, if for no other reason than to get his biggest payday of the year. There’s also been talk of WWE trying to break the record for “Most people wearing wrestling masks in a single place”, and if everybody was wearing Mysterio masks that’d be something he’d want to be part of. He had some strong words for Alberto Del Rio, teasing that ADR will be his target upon his return. Unlike Kane, who is a maniac that doesn‘t operate with rhyme or reason, I think Rey would want to exact some revenge against the man that put him out of action. I think Rey makes it back by WrestleMania because that’s the type of competitor he is, and he doesn’t want to miss out on getting his family some good money.

Kaitlyn’s heel turn may have been removed from Smackdown two weeks ago, but booking sheets for future shows still indicate that she’ll be making the turn. WWE is advertising a Santa’s Little Helpers match with Kaitlyn & Tamina taking on AJ & Alicia Fox. I’d be lying if I said that was a match I’m looking forward to, as I don’t think it’ll be any better than those AJ/Kaitlyn vs. Alicia/Tamina matches that set women’s wrestling back forty years. In any event, putting Kaitlyn with Beth Phoenix & Natalya would be a great help for her career and she’d fit in real well with the Pinup Strong thing.

Speaking of Beth & Natalya, both have been teasing a future feud with Kharma on Twitter. Bad move, girls. Honestly, if beating Kelly Kelly & Eve Torres is such a problem for them, what chance do they have against Kharma once she comes back? Absolutely zero. I dunno, if I was a Diva I’d be trying to get on Kharma’s good side. Volunteer to do some babysitting, maybe some laundry if she needs it done. You’re not going to beat her, so you might as well avoid getting killed.

Then again, maybe Beth & Natalya aren’t as doomed as I originally thought they were. It’s not like Kharma’s never lost a match. As a matter of fact, I was doing some YouTube research the other day and I found a match featuring the lady formerly known as Awesome Kong against the current OVW Women’s Champion, Taeler Hendrix! Perhaps the Divas of Destruction can find some inspiration and learn a thing or two from Ms. Hendrix’s quality effort here:

I’ll have to ask young Taeler about her experience with the Awesome Kong on the January 6 edition of the 411 on Wrestling. Can’t wait!

-I think Tajiri is having some Raw Thoughts in that picture.

-CM Punk fills us in on who retained the WWE title last night. He’s helpful like that.

-He’s also going to fill us in on who won the US title!

-WOO WOO WOO YOU KNOW IT

-And here comes our new World Champion!

-MURPHY REC!

-Miz, Dolph & Del Rio have no words. Their best promo ever!

-Johnny Ace books the obvious six-man tag for the main event. Good times.

-I remember when Wade Barrett’s theme used to suck. After the tenth re-mix or so it’s become one of the best themes in WWE. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

-Huh, Barrett got disqualified for the Chuck Liddell thumb to the eye? If that rule was around in Ric Flair’s day he never would have won a match.

-Wasteland through the table! So much for Orton being the New Talent Killer, eh?

-A nasal rapture sounds pretty painful.

-That music they play when the Divas walk backstage…I dunno, it doesn’t fit.

-Beth vs. Alcia, If this is good, I should have voted Beth higher in the Year-End Awards.

-Alicia wins in a minute. Yeah.

-Then she wishes everybody a Foxy Holiday. The crowd is…well, they haven’t left, so that’s good.

-Sheamus vs. Mahal. The hits keep coming.

-Apparently the 49ers can’t pay their power bill. I wish somebody would have turned the power out here during Beth vs. Alicia, and turned it back on in time for the main event.

-On the bright side, I doubt Mahal will want a rematch after this debacle.

-Philly loves them some Cena!

-Kane chokeslammed Cena to hell…and sure enough, Cena’s in Philly!

-Mark Henry walks out like my 89-year old grandmother.

-Some Sexual Chocolate fans in the house!

-Yeah, you bet your ass Lawler’s not getting involved in a Kane/Cena melee. He’s smarter than that.

-Kane chokes Cena out and steals his shirt. Perhaps he will present it to Papa Shango?

-OK, probably not, but I think it’d be cool.

-Isaac Yankem & Sexual Chocolate are trending on Twitter. Good times.

-Colons vs. Usos! Rosa needs to keep dancing the whole match.

-The Usos are good dancers too.

-I have no idea what Rosa’s saying. This doesn’t matter.

-Epico wins with the Backstabber. It’s really too bad Carlito is so lazy, because he would totally complete this group and be the mouthpiece they need.

-Cody really looks afraid of the Cobra. Well, not really. Not even Cody has the acting chops to pull that off.

-Cody targets Santino’s Cobra hand during the match. Yay psychology!

-And he wins with the Alabama Slam! Poor Santino, he doesn’t even warrant a finishing move anymore.

-“Coby Rhodes” is trending. This is worse than “Rosa Mendez” trending.

-Oh, apparently Santino called him “Coby”. I wasn’t paying attention.

-The Bellas kiss Johnny Ace, then Hornswoggle kisses Vickie. I hope this is the extent of the sexual relations going on here.

-At least Big Show remembers that he told Bryan to cash in his MITB briefcase. Foisted by his own canard!

-Oh, Josh. What have you done now?

-The new January 2 video tells us we are prophetless. Which is not even a word. Obviously George W. Bush is the mystery man.

-Ryder, Bryan & Punk enter through the crowd because they are men of the people, by the people and for the people. I dig it.

-Dives all around!

-I think there’s a good chance Cole has an aneurysm before this match ends.

-ADR taps to the LeBell Lock!

-Man, these guys are having some fun.

-Apparently ADR suffered a shoulder injury sometime during the main event. I didn’t see it, but chatter online and a picture from the venue seems to indicate so. Hope it’s nothing serious.

-In other injury news, this happened when Alicia Fox legdropped Beth Phoenix in their match:

-Not good.

It’s time for another edition of Total Request Cook! Yup, there was not a whole lot of Impact & other wrestling news this week. If you’d like to request a topic for Total Request Cook, feel free to chime in with one down in the comment section. I have a feeling the next two weeks will be very light with news.

How the internet has turned former fans into current critics. – Penguin

I’d like to think some people give the Internet far more credit than it deserves for shaping opinions…but then I remember being a teenage wrestling fan whose opinions began to change when he started reading wrestling news sites. I was totally one of those kids that thought IWC writers knew everything when it came to wrestling. Once I became one myself I learned that wasn’t the case, but these people had opinions that made sense to me. I never liked Hulk Hogan quite as much as WWF & WCW told me I should. I liked quite a few heels that people wanted me to boo. I thought having great matches meant more than having a good look. Even better than all that was finding out all the inside information that I wasn’t supposed to know. Yup, those were the days.

There’s a pretty obvious reason why wrestling fans co-opt a lot of their opinions from what they read on the web. I know that one of the really cool things about discovering wrestling websites, and has become a really cool part of doing this gig, is getting to talk to other wrestling fans. Anybody that grew up loving wrestling knows what it’s like to have most of your peers mock you for watching it. It wasn’t easy to find other people in the “real world” that shared a passion for wrestling, unless it happened to be a boom period. I had a few friends in school that watched wrestling, but there weren’t many. It wasn’t until the Internet took off that I had tons of people to talk wrestling with, and I’m sure most of you would probably say the same thing. Hearing different opinions that the ones I was used to hearing was quite the ear-opening experience.

One of the reasons 411 and other news sites do so well is we’re not told what to say by wrestling companies. We’re not the WWE Universe, we’re not TNA’s PR firm, we’re not ROHbots…we’re just people that like to talk about wrestling. And sure, we complain sometimes, but people like to complain about everything. It’s not the exclusive property of Internet wrestling fans. If we just said that everything was great and full of sunshine and butterflies, nobody would read us. They can get that kind of coverage on wwe.com, or impactwrestling.com. 411 appeals to those that don’t want to hear the same old thing from people getting paid to toe the company line.

Yeah, we’re critical sometimes, but that’s what you want. Be a fan first, of course, but you have to have a mind of your own too.

The Fall of the Valet: Why Nobody Can Top Sensational Sherri or Miss Elizabeth – Jis

Most of us have very fond memories of Sherri & Elizabeth. Sherri is still my pick for the greatest valet of all time…no woman has been more effective in getting involved in her men’s matches, generating heat from a crowd, or making their men more interesting than they already were. She helped Macho Man become the hated Macho King. She was tremendously influential in helping a young Shawn Michaels become the Heartbreak Kid and get attention as a singles wrestler. Sherri was an effective valet wherever she went, and all of her charges were better off for having her. You’d like to think that the young valets are made to watch Sherri tapes to see what a good valet does, but even if they watch, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be able to replicate what Sherri did.

Elizabeth was the first valet to get over on a major level. There were valets before her, but none of them rose to the level of the wrestlers like she did. The WWF did a great job in marketing her as the First Lady, and she stood out as a symbol of class on shows typically full of people that lacked it. The fact that she was the first has a lot to do with her enduring popularity. There wasn’t a bunch of Divas around doing the same thing that Liz was doing. They had Fabulous Moolah and the lady wrestlers running around, but they weren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, and they weren’t sold with the class and dignity Liz was.

In fact, Miss Elizabeth may be the only woman in the history of the WWF/WWE that wasn’t booked as a slut. Any other female character in the history of the company would have cheated on Randy with Hulk. It could have been justified, Randy treated Liz like crap most of the time and Hulk was the most popular guy in the WWF Universe. Fans would have been ok with it, but that wasn’t Liz’s style. She remained loyal to Randy even when Randy cast her aside. She still cared enough about him to attend his retirement match at WrestleMania VII, and to save him when Sherri attacked him. She had loyalty, a character trait that you just don’t see the WWE Divas showing a lot of. Liz’s character was treated with respect, so the fans respected her.

Today’s mainstream wrestling promotions are incapable of repeating that. People writing wrestling shows are so bitter over how they’ve been treated by women in their own lives that they can’t write for a deep, likeable female character. Pretty much the only Impact news this week I saw that was interesting was how the Impact Wrestling writers have Karen Jarrett run Velvet Sky down because they think Velvet’s a whore. This is a pretty typical thing within wrestling from people jealous because they can’t get with their favorite Diva/Knockout/indy wrestler. It’s this negative outlook towards women that keeps them from accomplishing more in the business and keeps us from seeing another Elizabeth.

Another reason for the lack of good valets these days is wrestling companies wanting all of their women to wrestle. Take Rosa Mendes, for example. She’s proven to be solid in the valet role in the past alongside Zack Ryder, but they took her away from Zack because they wanted her to wrestle. That wasn’t a good idea, and she’s been one of the least useful people on the roster for a long time because she was cast in the wrong role. Now that she’s managing Primo & Epico, people are starting to notice how attractive she is and how good she is in the role. She isn’t a good wrestler, and I think that girls like Rosa, Alicia Fox & even Kelly Kelly that aren’t great wrestlers should be used more as valets.

Vickie Guerrero has matches once or twice in a year, and she’s the most over female on WWE’s roster. Sunny was one of the WWF’s most popular women ever, and she might have had five matches at the most. during her time there. There’s a lesson to be learned from that…this isn’t me hating on women wrestling, as anybody who’s read this column in the past knows that I’m a huge fan of it. What I’m saying is that there are girls in the business that should wrestle, and there are girls in the business that are better off being valets. Sara Del Rey is good at being a wrestler. ROH made her a valet, which she was ok at, but not nearly as good as she is at wrestling. Why wouldn’t you want to maximize your talent’s potential by putting them in a role that suits them? Rosa’s not a good wrestler, but she’s a good valet. Go with that.

Managers. Can they make a return like the 80s/90s? Captain Lou, Miss Elizabeth, Jimmy Hart, Bobby Heenan, etc. Can they put a cast of characters together like that today? – Jay

Honestly, my guess would be no. It’s not for a lack of options, as WWE has plenty of people under Legends contracts that would make fine managers for the next generation of talent. It’d be a great idea to have some of the younger guys not capable of cutting good interviews with managers that can take care of things like that for them. It’s just not something that WWE is terribly interested in doing. They started getting rid of managers in the late-90s because valets were more physically appealing, and with a few temporary exceptions like Armando Estrada & Paul Heyman, they’ve mostly stayed away.

I feel bad for my friend Kenny Bolin, as he had pretty much the worst timing ever as far as getting to a mainstream promotion goes. He was the top manager in OVW when the WWF started using the territory as a developmental league, and there was talk that eventually he would be brought in. Right around that time WWE decided that they wanted hot chicks at ringside instead of fat guys that could talk. So Kenny didn’t get to follow his friend Jim Cornette into the WWF. Kenny seems happy anyway, but it’s still a shame that he was a few years too late.

There are people within WWE that would like to have managers around. There was a plan a few months ago where Tyson Kidd would run through several managerial candidates, but it was given up on after about a month or so. I don’t know why Michael Cole hasn’t been turned into a manager. He’d be several thousand times more useful in that role than he is as an announcer. We’ll continue to hope that WWE changes their minds on this, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

The 411 on Wrestling returned last Friday night and featured Larry Csonka & yours truly talking about the latest and greatest wrestling news! Larry had a show with Andy Critchell on Monday night, and we should be back on Friday night to talk about SmackDown, Christmas, football and whatever else happens to be on our minds. It’s the best 10 PM EST Friday night wrestling podcast out there!

Speaking of Csonka, he ranked his top ten wrestlers of 2011 and showed the people why he’s the best at what he does. Good times.

Calaway presents some Hot Stuff. She’s getting better at letting us know how she really feels, and apparently some people don’t like it! It’s all right, I know some of you aren’t used to women that actually have opinions on things.

Wright presents the Heel Report. Nobody tell Wes Kirk about this column that ranked Bobby Roode as the best heel of the week, it’d totally wreck his whole “411 IS BIASED AGAINST TNA” thing.

Sarnecky has a Christmas list for his favorite wrestlers.

Weyer goes over some of the lesser moments of 2011.

Fact or Fiction pitted Trent Howell against Manu Bumb in a battle of 411 contributors. “Contributors” is code for “people that are too busy to write columns”.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week! Nick Marsico will be in tomorrow with the WedWi, and I’ll be back next week with more News From Cook’s Corner! Until then…