Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, and after eight years it feels like now is as good a time as any to get back to what I do best: ramble on about wrestling news.

For those of you that weren’t reading my stuff eight years ago, let me explain.

Back in the olden days, the Internet wrestling writing space was largely populated by things called “news reports”. There was rarely news broken in these columns, they were driven by the personality of the writer. Guys like Chris Hyatte, Rick Scaia and too many others to name became the Internet equivalent of your more knowledgeable friend down the street you talked the rasslin with. Whether they actually knew more than the average reader or not was debatable, but they were good with words. They presented things in an entertaining way that kept people coming back for more.

News From Cook’s Corner was my version of that. 411 had a ton of them in the mid 2000s from the likes of Larry Csonka, Stephen Randle and too many others to mention here. Greg DeMarco joined us along the way. Good times were had by all.

Until they weren’t.

During one of my 411 sabbaticals, it was decided that the “news report” was a thing of the past. People no longer wanted to read 3,000 words of wrestling talk. They wanted newsbites or a hot take. Maybe a list. Something short & sweet. The people didn’t want anything more.

Which was fine with me. Lists are fun, and the idea of doing some less than 100 people long was appealing. And fortunately I had developed into enough of a writer that I could get more than 1 paragraph out of a given topic. I’m pretty happy with most of what I’ve produced since 2017 here and elsewhere. The idea of going back to the old way? I wasn’t really interested. Until I started keeping up with the Wednesday night cable ratings, and noticed what the heck people were watching on a week to week basis.

Some would call it “the news”. I would not.

In fact, it’s pretty darn comparable to what we were doing back in the day. People not qualified to talk about news talking about news and passing off their terrible opinions as news. It seems to work for them, why can’t it work for us again?

Let’s find out…

WWE News

Everybody knows that there’s a number of banned terms that you can’t say on WWE programming. I’m sure there’s more than seven, or I’d rip off the old George Carlin bit. Of course, a bunch of new terms like “coronavirus”, “covid-19” & “ramen noodle moonsault” have recently made the list, but there’s one that might surprise you a little bit: “Roman Reigns”. This was mentioned in the Wrestling Observer according to the web sites, and I can confirm that I have not heard the Big Dog’s name spoken on recent WWE programming. I haven’t seen it all, maybe Roman was mentioned on Main Event or NXT UK. However, I can tell you that Roman Reigns was not mentioned on Raw, SmackDown, NXT or The Big Show Show in the last couple of weeks.

I understand why. We have no idea when Reigns will be able to return to television. He pulled himself off WrestleMania due to concerns over the virus, and nobody in their right mind blames him for that. He’s had previous issues with his immune system, and his wife has just given birth to two kids. That guy doesn’t need to be traveling to Orlando right now. It’s impossible to say when things will be normal enough for Reigns to make that trip, or to somewhere else where WWE may end up hosting shows.

Hence, there’s no real reason to mention Roman Reigns on television right now. He won’t be feuding with Braun Strowman over the Universal Championship any time soon, or doing anything else on WWE programming. If Roman’s not there, why bring him up? There’s a lot of reasons to get mad at WWE right now, but this is one case where they can actually be defended. No reason to build up somebody or something that they have no idea when they can present it.

Here’s WWE’s upcoming taping schedule after this week, where they’re still doing things live:

• Saturday, April 25; two episodes of SmackDown will be taped (airing May 1 and May 8)
• Monday, April 27; two episodes of Raw will be taped (one for that night and the other will air the following week on May 4)
• Wednesday, April 29; two episodes of NXT will be taped (one is for that night, the other will air on May 6)
• Monday, May 11; one episode of Raw will be taped for that night and one episode of SmackDown will be taped for May 15
• Tuesday, May 12; one episode of Raw will be taped for May 18 and one episode of SmackDown will be taped for May 22
• Wednesday, May 13; two episodes of NXT will be taped (one is for that night, the other will air on May 20)
• Monday, May 25; two episodes of Raw will be taped (one for that night, the other will air on June 1)
• Tuesday, May 26; two episodes of SmackDown will be taped (one will air on May 29, the other will air on June 5)
• Wednesday, May 27; two episodes of NXT will be taped (one is for that night, the other will air on June 3)
• Monday, June 8; one episode of Raw taped for that evening and another episode of SmackDown taped for June 12
• Tuesday, June 9; one episode of NXT will be taped for June 10
• Monday, June 15; one episode of Raw taped for that evening and another episode of SmackDown taped for June 19
• Tuesday, June 16; one episode of Raw taped for June 22 and another episode of SmackDown taped for June 26
• Wednesday, June 17; two episodes of NXT will be taped (one is that night, the other will air on June 24)
• Monday, June 29; two episodes of Raw will be taped (one for that night and the other will air on July 6)
• Tuesday, June 30; two episodes of SmackDown will be taped (one for July 3 and one for July 10)
• Wednesday, July 1; two episodes of NXT will be taped (one is for that night, the other will air on July 8)

List courtesy of a lot of places, namely Pro Wrestling Sheet.

This whole situation with whether WWE’s taping their shows or doing them live or whatever has been a bit of a mess. People like to make fun of ol’ Dave Meltzer when he goes to the “plans change” explanation for why something didn’t play out on TV exactly the way he said it would. Here’s the reason why I’ve never been one of those people: Plans change all the time in WWE. This taping/live deal is a perfect example. One day, Vince is like “we gotta bring everybody in to tape a bunch of stuff”. The next day it’s “WE GOTTA DO EVERYTHING LIVE, PAL! GET ME DESANTIS ON THE PHONE!”. That’s why I’m 99.9% sure this taping schedule won’t play out the way it’s currently being reported. Vince will change his mind, in fact, he probably already has twice by the time this gets posted.

I do like this idea of holding Money in the Bank matches at Titan Tower. It seems like The Office on meth. If nothing else it should make things a bit different. The only thing that makes me a bit uneasy is the “climb the corporate ladder” tag line. If I was WWE I wouldn’t be leaning into the “heartless corporation” thing, but maybe that’s just me.

AEW News

To be honest, AEW flew a bit under the radar last week with all the WWE stuff going on. Their biggest news was the announcement that Double or Nothing will still take place on May 23rd, just not in Las Vegas. All I can say is good luck getting people to spend $49.99 on an empty-arena show. I know AEW has their diehard fans that will purchase every show no matter what, and the company could certainly use the revenue boost, but I don’t see this going very well. They’re going to have to lower that price or stick it on B/R Live for free or something.

Also, is it just me, or does AEW need to do a better job of promoting their other stuff? Dark barely gets mentioned on Dynamite, and I just learned this past weekend that Being the Elite has had some matches featuring AEW’s California crew. Maybe I’m just an old fart and the kids are all over this stuff already, but I don’t think advertising this stuff on TNT would hurt anybody.

My favorite Netflix show recently, like everybody else in the world, is Tiger King. (The Big Show Show runs a close second.) It turns out that Cody Rhodes has a bit of a loose connection to the show, as he had heard about Carole Baskin killing her husband and feeding him to tigers years ago. Not that we’re sayin-oh hell, yeah, we’re saying Carole Baskin killed her husband and fed him to tigers. Everybody else is saying it, why not us too? And who knew that Chris Jericho was onto something deeper when he started talking about “Cody Exotic” a couple of weeks ago?

The above was an example of a completely useless news item, but it gives me an excuse to mention Tiger King. Hey, sometimes you have to entertain yourself.

Dustin Rhodes’ match with Kip Sabian this week on Dynamite has huge implications. Not only is it part of the TNT Championship Tournament, but the Natural has gone on record saying that he’ll retire if Sabian can beat him.

Shocking clip from the next episode of “Road To”:

“If I cannot beat that son of a B***h, I will retire.” – @DustinRhodes on his TNT Championship Quarterfinal match up with @theKipSabian

Road to the TNT Championship drops this Monday, April 20th at 7/6c – https://t.co/ovL0W5rMeS pic.twitter.com/eReOzl5wVR

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEWrestling) April 18, 2020

Guys, I hate to say it, but we might not be seeing much more of Dustin Rhodes in an AEW ring. Even if he manages to beat Kip on Wednesday, that just means he’ll be facing Lance Archer in the semifinals of the tournament. There wouldn’t be a better message for Archer & Jake Roberts to send Cody, the man they’ve targeted for destruction, than his brother’s head on a silver platter.

I haven’t seen anybody report that Dustin’s wrapping up his in-ring career, but why else would this become a story point? If Dustin’s still wrestling full-time through the next few months, I’ll be wrong, and that’s great because I love watching Dustin Rhodes matches in 2020. It just feels like an AEW without Dustin active in-ring is where we’re heading.

Other Wrestling News

I’ve been critical of ROH’s parent company, Sinclair Broadcasting, in the past. I’ve certainly not been the only one to criticize their business practices. At the same time, I’ve always believed in giving credit when it’s due, and Sinclair has been doing ROH employees right during this time where they’re not able to work a bunch of previously scheduled shows. They’ve been doing non-employees right as well. Katie Lea reported on Twitter that she had been paid for a ROH show she was scheduled to work that was cancelled. Reportedly, wrestlers & staff have been paid for all ROH shows scheduled in April & May.

New Japan Pro Wrestling is paying their wrestlers their regular salary & benefits. Other promotions are doing their best to take care of their wrestlers as well. I don’t know if they insist on branding their wrestlers as “family” or not, but they at least haven’t thrown their employees under the bus. That in itself qualifies as “news” these days, does it not?

Finally, Dr. Wagner Jr. made his triumphant return to AAA this past Saturday night at their Lucha Fighter empty arena event. He had been away for three months and was rumored to be going independent. Nobody else being able to run shows probably put a dent in those plans. The highlight: he has a new theme song!

Yeah, I don’t know where they found the WCW Slam Jam musicians, but I am here for it.

Plugs!

Expect me to pop up four times a week here at The Chairshot until I run out of things to talk about. It’s not like wrestling news has slowed down, so that probably won’t be a problem…

I talked about how WWE Superstars are having an easy time at the airport.

I hyped up Zelina Vega’s Boys..

Two top 5 columns: Howard Finkel Moments & Wrestling Doctors.

In podcasting news, I appear on the 411 on Wrestling every Thursday morning talking NXT, AEW & whatever else happened that day. Also doing some retro stuff with them…on Sunday I talked WrestleMania XX & Backlash 2004 with Larry Csonka & special guest @VPenguin!

Oh, and follow me on Twitter @stevecook84. I’d rate myself a perfectly average tweeter.

Thanks for reading! I want to close by giving a special thank you to Greg DeMarco for suggesting this. Hopefully it won’t get him in too much trouble.