I consider myself a pretty big fan of independent wrestling. I know that most of you don't care about things that happen outside the WWE Universe & the TNA Galaxy, but I also know that some of you are like me and want to see the indies do well. So if you're anything like me, you get really frustrated when a promotion doesn't do the things it should to be successful.
Case in point: The Heartland Wrestling Association is a long-running indy promotion in my area. Talent like Desmond Wolfe, Shark Boy, Jon Moxley, Chad Collyer and many others learned their craft in the promotion founded by Les Thatcher. At one time, HWA was a developmental territory for the WWF and was even the subject of an episode of MTV's True Life back in 1999. (That was the same episode with Tony Atlas asking people for a cellaphone. Truly a classic moment in television history.) Unfortunately, most people probably don't know that the HWA is still around in 2010.
I was chilling at my friend's house on Saturday afternoon while he was surfing the Observer web site, and he asked me if I knew about the HWA's show last night. I said no, and he told me that Bryan Danielson had been on the show. Longtime readers know that I've been a big Dragon fan for several years now, and I always enjoyed seeing him in action up at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Dayton. Had I known he was going to be working a show right across the river, I would have made the trip.
I did know that the Northern Wrestling Federation was running a Roger Ruffin vs. Abyss match on Saturday night. The NWF is pretty good at doing things to promote their shows, whether it's running commercials during Raw, Smackdown or Impact, or putting up posters in various parts of the Greater Cincinnati area. These are not hard concepts to grasp…I'm sure the commercials aren't cheap, but running ads during wrestling shows on TV is the best way to reach the largest number of wrestling fans. It's common sense. I can't remember the last time I saw an HWA commercial, and I never see any flyers or posters anywhere.
And when you're the HWA and you have a show FEATURING A GUY THAT WRESTLED IN THE SUMMERSLAM MAIN EVENT AND ON RAW MONDAY NIGHT, why in the world wouldn't you take advantage of that and advertise it? That makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe they ran a commercial on Cincinnati cable and ignored the Northern Kentucky market, but that doesn't make any sense either when you have somebody that can draw indy fans from long distances and won't be coming back without WWE.
Rant over. Don't worry, Jeff Small will be back next week and I'm sure he won't subject you to any indy wrestling rants. Maybe something about Jersey Shore.
Speaking of which…SNOOKI!
John Cena = Unbeatable Discussion
There was a lot of conversation about John Cena, which comes as no surprise because he's only the biggest star in wrestling. Yes, Cena comes off as being unbeatable most of the time, and people like me get annoyed with it while we're watching the shows. In my Raw thoughts I complained about Cena a bit, and I stand by it. But it's not like this is anything new to WWE. The World Wide Wrestling Federation started on the back of Bruno Sammartino, who held their championship for reigns of seven and four years. He was an indestructible babyface that the fans loved to see. I've often wondered if there was a contingent of fans that complained about Bruno winning all the time, since history tells us that everybody loved Bruno, and there isn't anybody that everybody loves.
Lots of people like unbeatable baby faces. WWE typically does its best business when there's one indestructible guy on top that everybody wants to see. Personally, John Cena doesn't really bother me that much. It just so happens that he usually ends up going against people that I like more. I don't see him using politics to get what he wants…WWE sees that the majority of the audience that they're targeting likes him, so they push him. Fans like to root for a winner, and WWE has done a pretty good job over almost fifty years of giving them one.
I think Superstar summed it up best when he said "In real sports you'll have a guy or team is is neigh unbeatable. Think Fedor in MMA. In a sport that presents itself as real, then why wouldn't you have a guy like that? So when someone finally beats this guy clean, it means something.".
Even people who don't really beat Cena clean get something out of it. Ask Sheamus. I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but he's yet to defeat John Cena cleanly. However, he's still won the WWE title from Cena twice, the company's pretty high on him and he gets the desired reaction from the crowd.
ginger isn't very positive about The Nexus, saying "hey guys, nexus either won by count out or dq. none of them had to really wrestle except for the one who wrestled who cena. now if tna had done this you would have ripped them to shreds. they need more wrestling, less talk, less backstage junk, less gang up 7 on 1. this is not good if you are trying to be more kid friendly."
I had no problem with Nexus's means of victories in their matches. Sometimes it's tough to remember because they've been pushed at the top of the shows lately, but they are still rookies. With the exception of beasts like Bill Goldberg, Brock Lesnar & Bobby Lashley, most new wrestlers have to work their way up the ranks and pay their dues. It's how wrestling works. They need to get the advantage in numbers however they can because it's the best way for them to hang with the established superstars on the Raw roster. If Heath Slater had cleanly beat Edge, there would have been a wave of people complaining about how Slater didn't deserve it. The same goes for Justin Gabriel's victory over Randy Orton. I was surprised that nobody really said anything about Wade Barrett beating the multi-time world champion Chris Jericho, but I think that speaks to how much people are buying into Wade Barrett.
Or maybe people did say something and I ignored them. That happens sometimes.
Now some Wednesday talk!
Lopez doesn't like it when I talk about other wrestling promotions. He asks "Does Steve Cook hate TNA so much that he is getting all excited about Luch libre USA and the mystery promotion in Florida and is predicting that those promotions will be successful???"
Lopez & Friends, you couldn't be more wrong. The fact of the matter is that I want everybody to be successful. I want TNA to succeed. I want ROH to succeed. I want Lucha Libre USA to succeed, and I'd like the Florida Mystery Promotion to become an actual promotion and succeed. And yes, I hope WWE remains successful for many, many years to come.
Why is that? Simple…more wrestling on television is a good thing. Good wrestling on television is a great thing, and great wrestling on television hopefully leads to a boom period and wrestling being obscenely popular again. I loved it back in the late 1990s when Raw & Nitro were scoring huge ratings and everybody at my high school was talking about Austin, Goldberg, Rock & the New World Order. The same people that made fun of me for watching the stuff a couple of years earlier would ask me when I thought Goldberg‘s winning streak would end, or if I saw what Stone Cold did to Vince. That was a pretty great time. Then WCW & ECW disappeared, interest died off and pro wrestling fandom once again became something you didn't really publicize. WWE fell into a phase where nothing they were doing was clicking with the masses, and nobody was really there to attract the casual wrestling fans that'd stick around for something cool
TNA showed up, and they've had some good periods, but they've mostly seemed content to relive the glory days of other wrestling promotions while giving lip service to pushing younger talent. I don't "hate" TNA just because I talk up other promotions. I don't remember predicting that the FMP would be successful, what I said was that I was waiting until they actually did something until "getting excited" about it. That was in response to reports that some top ROH talent had signed with them. Of course, these reports haven't named any names.
As for LLUSA, I've been saying that it's going to take some time if they're going to be successful and they need to be patient. I haven't agreed with everything they've done, but I'm not going to be too harsh to a promotion that's been airing TV shows for a little more than a month and still trying to establish themselves as a wrestling company running shows across America. TNA's had eight years and they've brought in everybody under the sun and have tried just about everything that you can think of. They don't get as much leeway as newer promotions, or as much as a group like Ring of Honor that has a fraction of the funding that TNA does. Some might not find that fair but that's the way it is.
neverAcquiesce chimed in on Honky Tonk Man's promo on Bubba the Love Sponge, saying "It's like someone bet HTM he couldn't cut a promo with a bunch of random objects and he was all, "Miracle Whip and a thermometer? Roll the fucking camera.""
I think that would be a great challenge on NXT. Give the rookies different props and tell them to cut promos on each other using them. It'd be kinda like the Prop Game on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and more challenging than having them talk about whatever they feel like, which they‘ve already done at least twice this season that I can think of. Then they could use the props as weapons afterwards. I like this idea.
Chungles asks "Steve, do you not get tired of catering to the perpetually pre-pubescent?" That phrase sounded recent to me, and then I remembered who I read using it on the same day…
Admittedly, these facts are kind of dry compared to the subjective opinion of those with their own agenda or the inflamed rhetoric that appeals to those perpetually pre-pubescent, parasitic internet "experts" who neither have any legitimate experience or success as executives in the television or wrestling industry, and the rants of the terminally irrelevant trying desperately to hold on to their last 200 fans.
Eric "I Don't Care What The Internet Thinks Yet I Can't Stop Talking About Them" Bischoff
Chungles = Eric Bischoff! I should have known all along!
I like Chungles, so I'm going to answer his question…no, I don't. I used to do serious business on this website when I wrote the Ask 411 Wrestling column longer than anybody in history (until Sforcina passes me pretty soon), and it really started wearing on me. You can only answer the same questions about Randy Savage & Stephanie McMahon so often before you get tired of talking about it. It got to the point where I no longer enjoyed writing about or watching the pro wrestling.
Eventually I came to the realization that I don't know everything about wrestling and I never will even if I watch it for every waking hour of the rest of my life…and quite frankly, I don't need to. I'll leave it to everybody else on the Net to know everything about everything and get all angry about the way things are. Me, I just want to chillax and spend some of my free time writing about something that I've enjoyed for twenty years. I also spend way too much time watching a whole lot of new & old wrestling, and sometimes that results in me not knowing a Raw guest host or two because I haven't seen a TV show or a movie. I hope that people enjoy it, and maybe it helps some people lighten up and even crack a smile. If my work "caters to the pre-pubescent", that's probably because I'm a big kid that hasn't grown up in most ways. "Arrested Development" would be a pretty good title for my autobiography if it wasn't already a TV show.
Christopher wants to know " Who is the woman in the other wrestling news image?" You mean this woman, right?
There are some questions that I wouldn't mind answering every week, because suckas gots to know about the radiant Reby Sky, a young, up and coming favorite of the News From Cook‘s Corner staff. Reby appears on Lucha Libre USA: Masked Warriors under the more formal name of Rebecca Reyes. She plays the role of a captivating interviewer that sometimes gets liquored up and marries midgets in Las Vegas. But who among us hasn't done that, right? She's in training to become a professional wrestler (presumably to fend off the advances of crazy wrestling midgets and goofy Internet wrestling writers), co-hosts the Busted Open radio show, which airs Wednesday afternoons on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio, does some photography for Supermodels Unlimited Magazine, and spends her free time obsessing over the New York Giants. I guess the New York thing explains how she finds the time to do all this stuff, since those people don't sleep.
Speaking of football…
Who-Dey…
Who-Dey…
Who-Dey think they gonna beat dem Bengals…
NO WHAMMY!
Hi, hello and welcome to the Tuesday Steve-For-All Report! I'm Steve Cook, and it's another double-shot of wrestling news from your humble correspondent. Pretty soon I'm going to have all of these days on lockdown because 411 can't hold me back. JP Prag can keep Thursdays because business news makes my eyes glaze over, but the 5 & 1 and the Wrestling News Experience can't take more than ten minutes of effort to do. Harrison can stay around too as long as he gets his lucha recaps up in a timely mannerDon't you love it when I act like I'm important around here? It makes me giggle.
"I don't care if you're awesome, TALK TO THE HAND."
WWE sent most of their wrestlers to Japan & China, having already taped all their television for this week. So how did the front office decide to fill all of this spare time they suddenly have? If your answer was "By picking a fight with an unhappy ex-employee", you know the WWE brass way too well.
It all started when Linda McMahon commented on the death of the wrestler known as Lance Cade last week, insisting that WWE couldn't be blamed for his death any more than the movie studios could be blamed for the death of Heath Ledger. She added that she might have met Cade once, maybe, she wasn't sure. This drew the ire of former WWE Superstar turned concussion expert Chris Nowinski, who went on New England Cable News and talked about how Cade's death was the latest in a pattern of deaths that WWE should at least partially be blamed for.
WWE issued a statement on Sunday attempting to refute some of Nowinski's claims and taking shots at his character, going as far to say that they weren't even sure that Nowinski ever had a single conversation with Lance Cade. I guess since Linda wasn't sure she had one maybe they thought nobody did. After looking in Nowinski's match history, it turns out that Nowinski had in fact teamed with Lance Cade on at least one occasion in 2003. On January 15th of that year, Cade & Nowinski (with Kenny Bolin as their manager) took on the team of Rob Conway & Charlie Haas. One has to assume that as tag team partners on at least one night, Lance & Chris had to have some words with each other. It'd be awfully tough to team with a guy that you've never talked to…I guess it's possible, but it'd have to be easier if you could talk to the dude. On the other hand, if Nowinski did go through tables four times a week, it's unclear when that would have happened when you look at his match history. The list is incomplete and doesn't include house shows and things like that, so maybe he was going through a lot of tables on house shows.
I guess the bottom line here is that some wrestling companies should be a little more sympathetic towards deceased wrestlers. Unfortunately promoters and other people in positions of authority don't have a lot of regard for their underlings sometimes, and there's a story I'll be talking about tomorrow that's one of the more disturbing examples of that that I've ever seen.
Meanwhile, Chris Jericho spent his time in Japan picking fights with Pro Wrestling NOAH's Yoshihiro Takayama
TAKA Michinoku & Sho Funaki were visiting backstage while the WWE was in Japan. No word on whether they talked to people in their evil English voices. INDEEEEEEEEEEEED.
Alberto Del Rio is going to be a big deal in WWE. How can I be so sure? Well, other than the fact that he looked really impressive Friday night in his victory over Rey Mysterio, there was this little gem on WWE.com:
I'm digging Del Rio's act, so this is good news to me. You see rich guys being driven into the arena all the time, but they're usually not driving themselves and blaring their horn incessantly. The ring announcer is also a nice touch. I really do need to learn Spanish sometime so I can understand what ADR & Rey are saying in their promos, anything that's going on in AAA, and so I can understand the Lucha Libre USA promos. The captions aren't very helpful when they're covered by MTV2 graphics.
In your "Wardrobe Malfunction" News Of The Week, Michelle McCool's right breast popped out of her top while cheering Kaval's rap on NXT last week. Unfortunately the camera cut away in time for people like me not to notice. I'll tell you what, that's not the first time Kaval's had the ladies coming out of their clothes. Guy's got some game. I think it's the Barry White voice that does it for them.
WWE was not nearly as high on AAA luchadora Sexy Star as I was hoping. The scuttlebutt from Da Meltz is that they thought her work was horrible, her English wasn‘t good, she didn't look pretty enough without a mask on and she was over the WWE Diva weight limit. I've thought Sexy was a pretty good worker on the AAA show, but I guess it's possible that she isn't good without the Apaches around. Can't really comment on her English or how she looks without a mask. I wouldn't say that the word "overweight" comes to mind when I look at her either.
Reusing an old image for those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Star
But it's their company. I'll at least give Johnny Ace credit for being honest about WWE's standards for their Divas. Back when Jim Ross was in charge of these things you could never be sure what they were looking for. I think JR's line was "they shouldn't be afraid to break a nail", which didn't really explain the presence of most of the women they had under contract at the time, who were deathly afraid of their nails breaking.
This probably still isn't the worst review that a foreign talent has received from WWE. Japanese heavyweight Takeshi Morishima didn't get signed in 2009 because Vince McMahon thought he looked like a fat girl
Ted DiBiase Sr. admitted that he took steroids for a brief period during his career. You know, I think it'd be more newsworthy if somebody that was in the 1980s WWF said that they never took them.
SyFy will be twice as Dashing tonight, as Dashing Cody Rhodes will be appearing on Warehouse 13 at 9 PM leading into NXT. Here's a description!
SmackDown Superstar "Dashing" Cody Rhodes™ joins Warehouse 13 as Myka Bering's (Joanne Kelly) unrequited high school love interest.
Cody guest stars as "Kurt Smoller," the former captain of Myka's high school football team. Charming and good-natured, Kurt shows up at her high school reunion and sparks begin to fly. Myka finds herself romantically drawn to Kurt in spite of complications brought on by exposure to an artifact.
Kurt Smoller? Are the WWE writers naming people on SyFy shows too?
Two hours of DCR greatness just might be too much for me to handle. Will two hours of Raw be too much for me to handle? Let's find out together…
-SHEAMUS FELLA! He seems to have a problem with children. He could never cut this promo in the Impact Zone.
-Randy Orton is a spoiled child? Well, he wouldn't be the first son of a wrestler to come off that way.
-The crazy mystery Raw GM rewards Sheamus by letting him sit on a throne and decide his next WWE title contender. This reminds me of how I celebrated my 7th birthday. And Orton's the one that's a spoiled child?
-Is it just me or does Michael Cole age rapidly every week? In a few weeks he's going to come out looking like Mike Wallace.
-Are they trying to make me like Truth's rapping because Cole doesn't like it? I guess it's about time me and Vintage Boy agreed on something.
-Remember when being a nine-time world champion meant something?
-Cool cross-body running charge by Edge. I don't think I've seen that one before. I'll wait while you comment on how he did it at a PPV and I'm a loon.
-Pretty decent match with Edge defeating R-Truth. Edge yells at Sheamus about how he hasn't beaten anybody. It's weird to think of him as an old-timer, but I guess he's been around long enough.
-Khali vs. Jericho. All right Mr. Best In The World At What You Do, let's see what you do with Jeff Small's celebrity crush!
-Wow, Jericho got him in the Walls. And who said Khali has no athletic ability? I was kind of hoping Khali would win just to see if he would have gotten votes in WOTW.
-I guess everybody gets to do a post-match promo tonight where they run through all of their accomplishments. Well, except for John Cena, who gets a pre-match promo.
-Wait a minute, did they deliberately release purple and yellow Cena gear because they were in LA? That's pretty cool…and pretty funny when you remember that Cena's a Celtics fan.
-Jillian sings some Eminem for us. Melina's home town is Los Angeles. Jillian's is Ashland, Kentucky. I'd have to think long and hard to come up with two more dissimilar towns.
-I'll be honest and say I ignored the Jillian/Melina match to work on my Wednesday news column. Can you really blame me? I did catch the feed cutting out during Melina's finish. Impressive!
-LayCool has an offer for Melina that she can't refuse. I had an offer for them that they refused.
-Miz talks about being a team player. What does he know about teams, he's from Cleveland. Obviously Cena kept him off Team WWE to stay away from that bad karma.
-All right, the Nexus title ban has been lifted! It was nice knowing you, Sheamus.
-Cena vs. Miz! Remember when Miz had no chance of beating Cena even if Cena had his arms and legs sawed off? Those were the days.
-OK, Rey Mysterio giving the straw to the dude in the 7-11 commercial is kinda funny.
-I approve of Miz using old A-Train moves.
-The definition of "Five knuckle shuffle" according to Urban Dictionary:
The act of male masturbation. See also wank, spanking the monkey.
"Johnny's mother caught him in the middle of a five knuckle shuffle."
Pfft, and WWE says they're PG.
-I don't typically approve of non-finishes, but when they involve Daniel Bryan beating up Miz I couldn't be happier. Hey Cole, run in there and help out your boy!
-Santino & Kozlov vs. Usos. Time to write more stuff for Wednesday!
-Tamina kisses Santino. Boy, I can't wait for that wedding. Maybe Tamina will dress Santino up like one of the Usos.
-What is Maryse wearing? It kind of matches the green tye dye Brickyard 400 shirt I'm wearing while I type this. Oh I'm going to hear it for that fashion selection, I'm sure.
-Randy Orton RKOs John Morrison & Ted DiBiase. People should stop diving at Orton, because only bad things happen to them. Sheamus walked out on the match because he's already made his decision. That's right, he's taking his talents to South Beach.
-That joke's gotta be worn out by now.
-Sheamus has decided that his next opponent shall be Zack Ryder. WOO WOO WOO. It'll happen right now, and it'll be pretty quick since it's 10:56 EST.
-Big kick and it's over. Well, that was special.
-Sheamus says he's taking the month off since he doesn't have to defend the WWE title for another 30 days. Wade Barrett, who has a title shot coming to him, has other plans. He gets a title opportunity at a PPV of his choice, and he's choosing Sheamus at Night of Champions!
-The crazy Raw GM e-mails Cole and tells us that Wade Barrett's request has been upheld. Woohoo! However, there will be four other people in the Six-Pack Challenge: Chris Jericho, Randy Orton, Edge & John Cena. Well that's not fair to Barrett!
-Not only that, but Barrett gets jumped by everybody else! Outrageous! Finishers all around! It's Randy Orton standing tall as we fade to black…which probably means he won't be winning the title.
There were two big releases in TNA this week…Rosie Lottalove & Homicide. This is probably the first and last time that these two names will be listed together. Rosie appeared for TNA a grand total of one time. Homicide had been asking for his release ever since I can remember, and TNA hadn't used him since the June 24 edition of Impact. He should be back on the indy circuit soon after recovering from a groin injury he suffered in July. Obviously it wasn't in TNA.
Homicide had a pretty good thing going in TNA for quite awhile, but once they decided that LAX needed to break up he never really did a whole lot. I don't really see him working well in WWE, but you know that all the high-profile indies will be dying to book him, and AAA will probably have some interest since they've been pushing Hernandez in his LAX gimmick. I think he'll be all right…if nothing else he's finally got what he's wanted all year, his release from a company he had no interest in working for.
Team 3D's contracts expire this week. The latest word is that they aren't really close to coming to terms and haven't been booked for anything at the Impact tapings. You know that 3D was hoping that the EV2.0 ratings bump would have lasted a little bit longer, that would have helped their status quite a bit. Brother Ray was at the tapings working as an agent, so things can't be that bad.
Balls Mahoney is not happy with Axl Rotten. Apparently something happened with Axl at the Hardcore Justice show that resulted in Balls not being offered a job with TNA. He wasn't very specific about it in the interview that I read, but he did have this classic quote on the situation:
"I can honestly say now I will NEVER team with Axl Rotten again. If WWE or TNA called me up and said we want you to come in and team with Axl of course I'd have to say yes but otherwise it isn't ever going to happen again."
So Balls will never team with Axl again unless he can make money with it. Gotcha.
Balls has been getting into all sorts of trouble lately…he was charged with disorderly conduct on Saturday after getting into a fight with fellow wrestler John Kissell. The story was that they were staging the fight in order to drum up interest in an upcoming indy show they'll be appearing on. Well, I guess that's more inventive than my idea of advertising on televised wrestling shows. The downfall happened when the onlookers saw that one of them had a knife. I guess none of these onlookers noticed the guy that was just on TNA PPV a couple of weeks ago.
There's a mean joke there somewhere.
