News From Cook’s Corner 04.10.12

Including potential news concerning a couple of WWE Divas that would shake this column to its foundation. I’m holding out hope that it isn’t true, but if it is…well, News From Cook’s Corner would never be the same again. We’ll talk about that in a little bit.

Does anyone else notice how many monsters have come out lately? From the main event monsters like Henry and Kane to the recent additions of Funkasaurus and Tensai, and now Brock Lesnar. It is good to see that Punk and Jericho are going to continue their feud–because otherwise I’d fear we’re going back to the era of big men. – JDW

It almost seems like American Idol or some type of competition. Which monster is going to get more over with the WWE Universe? SmackDown featured the debut of Ryback, a monster that was formerly known as Skip Sheffield. I think you’re seeing more monsters appearing on WWE television because of the success Mark Henry had as World Champion on SmackDown. They did a good job of building Mark up on that show with his Hall of Pain, and they’re hoping they can have the same type of success with another one of these guys.

Another reason is fairly obvious: most of the current monsters are getting old. Kane, Big Show & Henry have been around forever. Undertaker’s down to appearing a month or two per year. Brock’s only going to be around for a year. They need to develop guys that are going to fit into the monster role once all of these guys are gone, which is going to be sooner than you might think. WWE doesn’t need a roster solely consisting of enormous guys, but they need to have some around to make things interesting.

kick Chad Nevett off 411mania – wylun

I see Chad’s Raw Analysis was not well appreciated last week. Can’t say that I agreed with his take on the show, but everybody’s entitled to their opinion. In any event, I don’t have the power to kick anybody off this site…does anybody think that Stephen Randle would still be here if I had a say in things?

The reason Brock didn’t have much to say is that he was still gassy from the buffet he’d just raced from to make it to Raw 30 seconds before he walked out.

Have you ever watched a fat dude try to get up from a prone position on the ground? Funniest shit ever. It looks just like a turtle on it’s back trying to flip over. – Frisco Kid

There was tons of discussion of Brock’s gut in last week’s comment section. I noticed it, but didn’t see it as much of an issue since he was just F-5ing John Cena while wearing a t-shirt. Brock’s been retired from UFC for a few months and obviously he was enjoying his life in retirement. I’m sure he’ll be in reasonable shape once he steps back in the ring for an official match.

And even if he isn’t, do you really expect me to say anything about it? It’d be the pot calling the kettle black. Fortunately my gut makes this job easier since getting up out of my chair seems like too much work. Even thinking about it makes me break out into a sweat.

Do you remember Al Bundy getting squashed by Big Bad Momma on an episode of Married with Children that featured the old G.L.O.W.? – Toddo

Oh yes. I liked the King Kong Bundy appearances better, but Al trying to win money against Big Bad Momma was a good piece of business. Definitely Top 5 Wrestler Appearances on Sitcoms material. Off the top of my head, the other three:

-Vader’s occasional appearances on Boy Meets World as Frankie’s father
-The Bushwhackers’ appearance on Family Matters beating up Urkel & Carl
-The Rock & Ken Shamrock on That 70’s Show

Special mention goes to the show Nikki, which had appearances by Kevin Nash & Randy Savage and was about Nikki Cox and her husband that was trying to make it as a professional wrestler. Nikki was one of my favorite actresses back in the early 00s, but apparently she had a tragic plastic surgery accident a couple of years ago and hasn’t been the same since. I prefer to remember her as she was:

Boobs.

As much as people love Punk and want to say he never plays politics, anyone else find it a huge coincidence that Beth’s basically never on the show and a non existent champion problem started right after she and Punk broke up and he called her a douche on an interview? – Rob Hawkins

Coincidence. Yes, that’s exactly the word for it. I’m a fan of CM Punk’s work in general, but I wouldn’t make the argument that he never plays politics. Everybody does, it just so happens that some people are more successful at it than others. By his own account, Punk has a lot more say than he used to, and it wouldn’t be surprising at all if an ex-girlfriend of his ended up on the wrong end of things because of it. Obviously they don’t take his advice on everything. There are still no ice cream bars or Colt Cabana.

My dog D-Bry is the new peoples champ.

Wait til he eventually turns face by defending AJ. – The Big Fat F*g

do you remember the raw after austins kitr win when there was 3.16 signs galore , well raw reminded of that. daniel bryan has arrived and punk cant touch him. punk jericho was good , but punk bryan wud have stole the show without a doubt. DANIEL BRYAN ERA HAS BEGAN – and hes the best in ring technician since bret hart and will be as over as austin and hogan were. – j

WWE has to be really, really hoping that the fans return to “normal” this week. WWE tried to tell a nice little story with Bryan losing the title after months of chicanery and then taking it out on AJ by breaking up with her. Makes sense. The problem with it was the timing. WrestleMania Weekend draws the hardest of the hardcore fans, the type of people that are going to support wrestlers like Daniel Bryan that put on good matches pretty much every time they step into the ring. Bryan has such a history with most of these people that they’re going to support him no matter what, especially when they think he’s not being treated fairly.

(Honestly, the guy’s a former World Champion and has been romantically linked to Brie Bella. No matter how hard they job him out the WWE experience has been a lot kinder to Bryan than most of us would have ever dreamed.)

We’ll see how regular WWE crowds react to things in the next few weeks. I think it’d be pretty awesome if “YES” officially became the new “WHAT”, but if it doesn’t and Bryan goes back to being the despised heel that gets booed out of the building on house shows, that’d be fine too. He obviously has the ability to remain relevant in the ring, and he’s improved by leaps and bounds with his character work. Whether Bryan remains heel or is turned face by WWE due to crowd demand, I think he’s established himself as a viable part of the WWE machine for years to come with his work as WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION.

No one mentioned Michael Cole and what i believe to be his finest performance at Wrestlemania. He was the “Michael Cole” charcter but plain old Michael Cole. I thought he put in a solid performance and whilst not the best commentary he didn’t detract from the product at all. I would say i actual like this Michael Cole – Mr. Telling It Like It Is

I didn’t hear most of the commentary for the show, so I can’t really comment on Cole’s performance. Apparently he was on his best behavior during Hell in a Cell and didn’t crap all over Jim Ross during the match, so that’s a good thing.

That pic of EVE makes this column MUST READ – J-Mo

If I do the Hot 100 again this year (and that‘s a really big “if”), Eve has a very strong case for number one. Yes, Zack Ryder may be the dumbest man in wrestling for taking her abuse as long as he has, but in a lot of ways it’s tough to blame him for it. Especially with great WWE photography like we saw last week.

And now, the fake news!

Let’s face it, Brock Lesnar is going to be dominating the wrestling news cycle for the next twelve months. There’s no getting around it since we can rely on the Meltzers & the Johnsons of the world to get whiny wrestlers to complain to them about whatever’s holding them back this week, and Brock is going to be this year’s Rock in that he’ll be the fall guy in the eyes of the wrestlers for all of the problems facing WWE from a creative or financial standpoint. To save myself some headaches, this week we’re going to run through all of the potential “news” that will come out about Brock Lesnar during the next year or so. Much of it is already showing up in the 411 newswire, as people are wasting no time dragging Brock through the dirt.

“Brock’s getting paid too much.” – Brock is reportedly getting five million dollars to work two days a month over the next twelve months for WWE. Nothing promotes jealousy more than money, and the fact that Brock’s making more money than pretty much anybody is definitely going to ruffle some feathers. (I have no idea what WWE salaries are, but John Cena’s the only regular guy I can see making more than $5 million a year) If shows that Brock appears on don’t have a spike in ratings or attendance, expect lots of “news” about how the locker room thinks he’s overpaid.

“Brock’s not a nice guy.” – We’re already seeing stories about how Brock didn’t get along with John Cena when they were working together in the early 2000s. He showed up to the arena about 30 seconds before he appeared on Raw, so obviously he didn’t have time to shake everybody’s hand and introduce himself. You know wrestlers are going to complain about that if the trend continues.

It probably will because Brock just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who cares what people think about him. Expect lots of reports about how Brock’s aloof or he keeps to himself or he rubs people the wrong way.

“Brock doesn’t care about the business.” – This is probably true, but I don’t think it matters. Lots of us have jobs in businesses that we don’t care about, but keep them so we can get paid. Brock can make some good money wrestling, so he’ll do it. Whether he cares or not is irrelevant as long as he performs. Hell, I think they should make lack of interest in wrestling part of his character so when John Cena goes on and on about how he loves wrestling and his opponent doesn’t it’ll actually make sense for once.

“Brock can’t stand the schedule.” – Yep, we’re already hearing from ex-WWE wrestlers who think that he won’t be able to last the full year in WWE because he hated traveling around in his first run. Brock obviously isn’t huge on travel, but I think he can handle a couple of trips a month. He signed a one-year deal for a reason…if he doesn’t like how things go this year, he’ll be done with it.

“Brock needs to get in shape.” – I read a newsbite about this on Monday and immediately started wondering which 411 commenter is actually a WWE wrestler. Now, once Brock does get in shape we’ll hear this next one…

“Brock’s on the juice and WWE won’t suspend him.” – You know that’ll happen the first time he shows up with a decent physique. Rock showed up at Survivor Series looking all buff and everybody was saying it was because he was taking stuff for his movies. Add in the fact that Brock was arrested in 2001 for receiving what was believed to be steroids but in fact was growth hormone…yeah, this will happen.

“Brock’s sleeping with a Diva.” – This is a wild-card entry that I’m throwing out there because I figure somebody will want to get him into trouble at home.

Have I missed anything?

PWTorch.com reported that WWE management thinks that CM Punk is too small for a potential feud with Brock Lesnar. Considering that my favorite Brock match of all time was his No Way Out match with Eddie Guerrero, I don’t really see a problem with Brock facing smaller wrestlers. Hopefully this is just some crazy Wade Keller logic and not WWE logic. Brock vs. smaller guys works.

Mick Foley’s Hardcore Comedy tour will be taking a swing through Ohio & Kentucky at the beginning of May, including a stop in Covington, Kentucky on May 6. I live just down the road from Covington, so perhaps I can attend and say hello to Mick on behalf of the good folks at 411wrestling.com. I hear he’s a fan of the site, or at least a fan of the comment section.

Believe it or not, the comment section is rather popular with wrestlers. One wrestler told me that they enjoyed reading the comments more than my columns most of the time. Things weren’t the same between us after that revelation.

Speaking of Foley, he seems headed towards some sort of a feud with Dean Ambrose, the FCW wrestler formerly known as Jon Moxley. Ambrose confronted Foley during WrestleMania weekend & attempts by WWE, Ambrose & CM Punk to further the angle have been met with disdain by Foley. Could we see Foley vs. Ambrose? The best way to use Foley is to get young stars over, and Ambrose is a guy that a lot of people are expecting big things from. Could be cool

Randy Orton was scheduled to play the title character in The Marine 3, but he was taken out of the role after complaints from the military. Orton went AWOL from the U.S. Marine Corps on two separate occasions in 1999 and was dishonorably discharged after spending some time in military prison. Orton has taken part in WWE’s USO stuff and supports the troops, but it wasn’t a good idea to give him that role. Apparently WWE officials removed Orton from the role once they found out about this…you can’t be telling me that they actually didn’t know about Orton going AWOL. Seriously? Come on now. It’s been common knowledge for so long that there’s no way they didn’t know about it. I guess they’re just saying that to satiate people that don’t know better.

The wrestler formerly known as Skip Sheffield is back on SmackDown under the name Ryback, and he’s in line for a big push on that show. Vince McMahon is said to be a big supporter of Ryback’s, and I remember hearing the same thing during his Skip Sheffield days. He is a big ol’ boy with a lot of intensity.

There are rumors going around that there will be cuts from the WWE roster very soon. Nothing will become official until after I post this column so I can’t write about it. Hopefully the rumors about Nikki & Brie Bella leaving the company are unfounded. It’s hard enough for me to put this column together without Maryse, how does WWE expect me to get by without the Bella Twins?

Fortunately the Bellas tweeted to tell me not to believe what I hear. Whew! That was a close one. I don’t think they would have bothered to have Nikki defeat Beth Phoenix on SmackDown if she was leaving the next week, even if Beth isn’t allowed to win matches these days. As long as women don’t lie on Twitter, we have nothing to fear.

Alex Riley recently did an interview where he talked about how WWE Superstars always have to be in character, and how difficult it can be. I imagine it’s especially difficult for A-Ry since he hasn’t had a character in months. Life was probably easier when he just had to act like The Miz.

-The Three Stooges are on Raw tonight. The Three Stooges from back in the day were pretty great. I don’t have the same expectations for these guys, even if one of them does have a victory over Bret Hart to their credit.

-About time Big Johnny got some entrance music. It’s pretty regal.

-Johnny introduces the new face of WWE…Brock Lesnar! Well, putting him with Big Johnny might turn him heel.

-Johnny announces that he’ll be wrestling John Cena at Extreme Rules. It wasn’t like you could keep those guys apart until WrestleMania, but I would have expected a longer wait for this one. Maybe they also don’t think Brock will stick around the whole year.

-Lesnar promises to bring legitimacy back to the WWE. When did WWE have legitimacy?

-Cena slaps Lesnar, they start fighting and pretty much everybody in WWE comes out to break them up.

-Looks like Cena got busted in the mouth! I think Brock forgot how to throw a worked punch during his time away.

-I think Daniel Bryan single-handedly drug Lesnar out of the ring. That’s my boy D-Bry!

-Super SmackDown Live: Blast From The Past is…tomorrow night? How come nobody tells me about these Tuesday SmackDowns until the Monday before?

-Big Johnny blames Teddy Long for not doing his job and keeping John Cena in the locker room. There was never any chance of this happening.

-Eve wants Big Johnny to call her. Usually it’s the other way around, or so I hear.

-SOMEBODY CALL MY MOMMA

-Apparently Billy Kidman was out for the first segment. Guess we know what Marsico’s writing about this week!

-Jack Swagger has a real shiny singlet.

-Lawler’s using the A material tonight! I think he & Cole are trading lame jokes so the Three Stooges look funny by comparison.

-Funkasaurus & Santino beat Swagger & Ziggler. Santino needs to work on his funk.

-John Cena talks. I zone out.

-It’s Curt Hawkins & Tyler Reks! Santino is looking for the Three Stooges. Hilarity will probably ensue sometime tonight. Yay?

-Santino finds Kane while looking for the Stooges. Kane will wait until later to kill him.

-Cody Rhodes beats up R-Truth for a minute or so before Big Show distracts him with a clip from last week when Big Show cost Cody his match by showing him his WrestleMania moment. Good Lord, if Cody falls for this again…

-Yup, he falls for it again. Zack Ryder thought Cody was being stupid there.

-The Stooges emerge from a crate. Some stuff happens. I doubt anybody reading this cares, so I’ll move on.

-And now, Lord Tensai! Apparently Yoshi Tatsu challenged Tensai to a match on Raw this week. I guess you gotta do what you gotta do to get on Raw.

-Remember Tensai’s match from last week? That happened again. Not much of a response from the crowd except for an “Albert” chant during the match.

-CM Punk comes out to try & wake up the audience after that last half-hour of nothing.

-Punk tells us about how the smell of alcohol reminded him of his father. Jericho joins us via TitanTron to talk about CM Drunk. Pretty good stuff there.

-Mark Henry comes out to kick ass & split wigs.

-CM Punk gets himself disqualified by hitting Mark Henry with a TV monitor! Henry still kicks his ass & splits his wig, he just doesn’t get a title belt for doing so.

-Jericho has some beer this week. He better get Punk out of the ring or that mat’s gonna stink the rest of the night.

-You’d think Jericho would know that you can’t drink beer by pouring it on your back. Maybe that’s how they do it in Canada?

-Alberto Del Rio is not a man that should be wearing his t-shirt to the ring. He’s above that. Sure, it works for Zack Ryder, but this is supposed to be a man of class.

-The man of class dispatches of Ryder, but not before eating a nice-looking Broski Boot.

-Ah, the Stooges are still here. I thought/hoped they left.

-One of them does the Hulk Hogan entrance complete with a costume. Will Sasso did a Hogan impression, right? I’ll assume its him.

-Oh good, Kane’s coming out to kill the Stooges. Well, it’s a belated killing, they were already dying out there.

-Kane choke slams the one dressed like Hogan. Impact Wrestling probably liked this segment more than anybody.

-Mark Henry will win the World & the WWE Championships next week. I don’t doubt it.

-Brock’s mentioning UFC! The reports were that they weren’t going to mention that company, but it would have been impossible not to.

-OK, add “Brock has problems with promos” to the list of upcoming Lesnar stories.

-With flubs by Brock & Mark Henry tonight, I don’t know why they’re doing these promos live. Maybe Vince was running around backstage freaking out like he was Bill O’Reilly or something:

Audio not suitable for work.

-Why is David Otunga wearing a movie usher jacket?

-John Cena vs. David Otunga is your main event.

-Otunga gets quite a bit of offense here, making me wonder how Cena’s supposed to have a chance against Lesnar in a few weeks.

-Cena makes Otunga tap out. Then Brock runs in and punts Cena in the jewels! Ha!

-Show had a pretty outstanding opening. The Funkasaurus match was all right. I liked Punk’s promo, but that angle seems pretty divisive. Once you got outside Cena vs. Lesnar & Punk vs. Jericho, there wasn’t a whole lot going on.

-By the way, this week’s Raw got a higher rating than last week’s Raw in Instant Analysis. So…yeah. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Maybe I’m just depressed over this whole Bella thing.

TNA & Spike TV have agreed to a contract extension keeping Impact Wrestling on the channel until 2014. Dixie Carter appears optimistic about the possibility of other TNA shows airing on Spike, and Spike management seems happy with what TNA is bringing to the table as they are the highest rated show on the network. This is good news, as having different wrestling shows on TV is a good thing and TNA can remain an option for employment for wrestlers that can’t get into WWE for whatever reason.

I realize that sounds anti-TNA and I‘m sure I‘ll hear about it in the comment section from people that think TNA‘s off da hizzle fo shizzle dizzle, but it’s the truth. WWE is the largest wrestling company in the world, but they can’t hire everybody. Wrestlers need other places to work, and TNA can provide them with that. TNA staying on Spike TV for at least the next couple of years is a good thing for the wrestling business, and frankly I’m impressed with how they manage to make these deals and will likely end up staying in business longer than World Championship Wrestling did. I wish they could sell PPVs as well as they sell themselves to the suits at Spike TV.

Ric Flair is expected to return to WWE next year. His TNA contract expires at the end of this year, and WWE is reportedly interested in Flair to help promote the WWE Network, which they still expect to be on the air next year. WWE owns most of the footage of his career and will likely be using it on the channel, so it’d make sense to have him available.

Flair recently did an interview with a Charlotte radio station where he still claimed that his match with Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 24 was his last wrestling match. Eh, Flair’s match with Mick Foley on Impact was shockingly decent, but if I was him I’d probably want that to be remembered as my last match too.

Kurt Angle still wants to go to the US Olympic Trials, but the injuries seem to be piling up. Angle posted on Twitter that he injured his knee during training while overcompensating for his bad hamstring. Of course, anything Angle says should be taken with a grain of salt at this point.

Eric Young will be hosting a show on Animal Planet titled “Fish America”. Apparently EY is an avid outdoorsman, and he will be traveling the country to fish and get into typical Eric Young shenanigans. He has a certain flare for comedy and this could be a pretty interesting show. If you’re into fishing shows.

Chief Jay Strongbow passed away last Tuesday at the age of 83. Strongbow was a longtime employee of the World Wrestling Federation, and he was most known for his work for the New York territory throughout the 1970s & 80s. My main memory of Strongbow is an angle he took part in with Tatanka…he & Wahoo McDaniel presented him with a special headdress, then IRS got mad because Tatanka didn’t pay a gift tax and beat up Strongbow & Tatanka while destroying the headdress. Luckily YouTube has footage of this so you know what I’m talking about:

The Tatanka vs. IRS feud was dropped soon afterward, making this angle somewhat pointless even though I do remember it almost twenty years after it happened and I can’t remember most of what happened last week on Raw. I also remember a Shark Cage match he took part in on one of the Wrestling Gold DVDs, which was memorable for how ridiculous the concept was. Strongbow was one of the most popular wrestlers of his era.

Ring of Honor will be using a new provider for its Internet Pay Per Views in the future. Difficulties with Go Fight Live during their Showdown in the Sun events on WrestleMania weekend led to the decision, and the company is considering several new options for carrying their next iPPV event on May 12 in Toronto. Yup, they’re going to have to make this decision pretty quick. Ari Berenstein posted this news item on his Facebook page and I commented that ROH pretty much had to make changes based on what happened WrestleMania weekend. His response merits print in this column:

“Maybe. I chalk up the PPV feed going out the first day to the limitations of the building they ran in, in which case ROH shares some of the blame because they are the ones that booked it (and should have made sure that GFL field tested it before the day of the event to make sure it could handle sending out an iPPV feed). The second day was not either ROH or GFL’s fault, but rather a freak brown out and was unfortunate to have happened just one day after the major issues that were their fault. Where both GFL and ROH failed was in the handling of these events after they occurred, in “making right” to the paying customer. GFL should have been way more vocal and up front about giving out refunds (I’ve read different stories of how some who wrote in and complained got full refunds, some partial, some not at all, which is a BS way of doing business). People got mad with ROH /SBG for putting out the missing matches for free instead of simply sending it to the paying customers, but honestly, I don’t feel like that’s a terrible call, IF there was also a partial refund set-up for the purchasers as well. Joe Koff’s statement that put it all on GFL didn’t sit well either and only made people more upset with ROH, to the point I guess they had to take action because what they had done up to that point didn’t satisfy their clientele.

There is a big HOWEVER to this all, because I really don’t know (OR trust) that ROH / SBG are up to the challenge of doing an iPPV feed on their own. They may do that or they may sign up with another iPPV provider company. IF they do it on their own, I actually have very little faith that they will be able to run a smooth show without any hiccups whatsoever (and really, it would be completely naive of ANYONE who has now purchased an iPPV through GFL or WWNLive to think that would be the case) and so any mistakes, feed disruptions, whatever, will only result in a greater amount of outcry about the situation. They are now under the microscope and they are going to get hammered if that happens and if they do it themselves they will have no one else to scapegoat this time around. Topping all of that is they have TWO iPPVs coming up in two months, so they have to scramble for an answer, and of course rushing through a process like only increases the chances of making bad decisions and amateur mistakes in their iPPV coverage.

This is going to be a VERY interesting and very critical next few months for the future of ROH and their iPPV program.”

When it comes to coverage of Ring of Honor, there is Ari Berenstein and then there is everybody else. The sooner we realize this the better off we will be.

Colt Cabana is your new NWA Champion, defeating Adam Pearce for the championship on an NWA Hollywood show Sunday night. Wait a minute, haven’t we heard this song before? I hope he doesn’t have any bookings in Florida in the next few weeks, as it’d be nice for Colt to get a proper run with the strap this time. Maybe he’ll give our boy Chance Prophet the title shot he’s been asking for. I gotta say, Chance was a great guest on our podcast, but Colt was a pretty awesome dude at Buffalo Wild Wings a few years back. I’d have to go with Colt on that one.

Not that I have any say over NWA politics.

Resistance Pro Wrestling will be airing a weekly show on Chicago’s WCIU-TV in the near future. The promotion owned by Billy Corgan has run three shows in Chicago…they feature a lot of big-name indy talent along with ECW style booking. They even brought in Rhino to unify the ECW title with Harry Smith’s RPW title. Hopefully once Corgan gets the ECW stuff out of his system they’ll have some interesting things to bring to the table.

There was no 411 on Wrestling last week, but we should be back this week. Maybe Wednesday, maybe Friday. Keep an eye on the newswire for programming information.

A special WrestleMania edition of Fact or Fiction featured the return of Jeff Small as he took on his arch-nemesis Scott Slimmer.

I was back on The Man Cave Podcast with Jeremy Lambert & Todd Bergman to talk WrestleMania & baseball. Shockingly, Bergman & I have the Reds going all the way.

Tonight’s Greg DeMarco Show will feature the winner of the ECWA Super 8 Tournament, Greek God Papadon!

Ronny Sarnecky was in attendance at WrestleMania 28, and he gave us his full report.

The Triumvirate of Truth goes over WrestleMania and a couple of TNA topics.

David McGregor presents a Sandwich full of Brock Lesnar speculation! No, Brock didn’t eat the sandwich. Stop that.

Michael Ornelas lists the top ten striking finishers of all time. Somehow Matt Striker didn’t make the list. Do I even want to know what’s up with this deal on NXT where he got kidnapped? I guess I should ask Tony Acero since apparently he’s booking the show now.

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