Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! My name is Steve Cook, and I’m wondering if this Cincinnati Reds losing streak is ever going to stop. Seven straight games, and they’re headed to LA to play the Dodgers. It’s hard to get too optimistic about that, especially since the Reds weren’t the team that drafted Fernando Tatis Jr.

That’s right, a little baseball talk to start the column! Now we’re really kicking it old school, shades of 2005 up in here. You wanna do some wrestling talk? Cool, we can do that too…

Did Kenny Win The Impact World Championship?

It was somewhat strange that episodes of AEW Dynamite over the past few weeks featured no mention of Impact Wrestling’s Rebellion PPV event. After all, Rebellion featured AEW’s World Champion Kenny Omega competing against Impact World Champion in an apparent title unification match. When asked about this on Busted Open Radio, Tony Khan said that it was on Impact to purchase ads to promote their shows, like he’s purchased ads on Impact to promote his shows.

So far it’s been a pretty one-sided partnership. AEW gets to use Don Callis to manage Kenny Omega. The Good Brothers show up from time to time. Meanwhile, Impact gets Tony Khan commercials, a brief run from Matt Hardy & Private Party, and Kenny Omega as Impact World Champion.

Yeah, he won. I was going to try & tease it a little longer, but we all knew it was happening. There was a little bit of intrigue due to lack of mention on Dynamite and the presence of two referees in the match, but things went as predicted. Match was apparently pretty good, and Kenny now has two belts to add to his collection. Yes, the TNA belt is included as well, and thank goodness because it’s a nice looking belt.

Other notable events at Impact Rebellion included FinJuice retaining the tag team titles, Jordynne Grace & Rachael Ellering winning the Knockout tag team titles, Josh Alexander winning the X Division championship, and Taylor Wilde making her return to the Impact Zone. That last bit’s the most interesting to me, but that’s just me. Old school TNA fan over here!

TrashGate

Every major scandal has to end with a “Gate”, right?

We were all minding our business on Thursday afternoon, awaiting the WWE financials conference call with bated breath. Something took our attention from WWE’s latest record-setting financial quarter, something that served as a reminder of how WWE makes that profit margin go up with each passing day:

Dear @VinceMcMahon Im not sure if you’re aware, I did receive my @WWE care package today. Thank you. #AlwaysBlessedandGrateful #WomensWrestlingMatters 💋 pic.twitter.com/PyDC7ZC9lG

— Mickie James~Aldis (@MickieJames) April 22, 2021

Mickie James wasn’t too impressed with how WWE elected to send her items that were left behind on their property. Apparently WWE gets quite a bit of usage out of their official garbage bag company, who must love all the free publicity they’ve been getting the past few days. Once WWE higher-ups found out about this, action was taken at once! Mark Carrano, who was serving as Senior Director of Talent Relations but had recently seen John Laurinaitis return to take back some of his authority, was relieved of his duties.

There were some other heads to roll in the department. A more skeptical person might postulate that this whole thing gave WWE higher-ups a good excuse to do something they wanted to do anyway. Lotta heads have been rolling since Nick Khan started getting more power & moving his people into position. I’m not saying…I’m just saying.

Apparently the practice of sending fired women their belongings in trash bags goes back several years. Maria Kanellis-Bennett commented that she got one last year, while Gail Kim said the practice went back to at least 2010. No men, to the best of my knowledge, have admitted to receiving their belongings in trash bags. Possibly because men tend to keep their belongings in trash bags anyway. Now that winter is wrapping up, all of my hooded sweatshirts will find a home in a trash bag. Best place I have to keep them until next winter. I don’t think anything of it, but I probably would think something of it if somebody fired me and then gave me my stuff from the office in a trash bag. It’s all about the message being sent, and WWE might want to avoid using trash bags at a time when they’re making people feel like trash.

I mean, for heaven’s sake, did you see that financial report? WWE can afford to mail things in something better than a damn garbage bag. Come on now.

Charlotte Has Had Enough of Uncle Dave

I haven’t been able to watch much of Raw recently due to work. So sometimes I miss things. Occasionally, something will fly under my radar and I’ll get confused. Like last Monday night, when some random person came out to Charlotte Flair’s theme song. I’d never seen her before. Why was she using Charlotte’s music? Did the part get re-cast? I had no idea what was going on or what I was watching.

Turns out, it was Charlotte. She just looked a bit different than I remembered. Straight hair, new gear, stuff like that. “OK”, I said to myself as I moved on and didn’t think any more of it. I retired from the appearance judging business back in 2014. (OK, sometimes I judge appearance whilst drunk on the Twitter machine, but that doesn’t really count.) Show ended with Charlotte beating up a referee, and she wound up getting suspended as a result. It was later reported by Charlotte’s camp that she’s taking time off to have dental work done. Now, how come when I had a ton of dental work done several years ago I didn’t get to take time off of work? Doesn’t seem fair to me, but hey, I’m not Charlotte Flair, and “Cook” doesn’t rhyme with “Fair”. I also don’t have a camp.

People get dental work done all the time. Some for appearance. Some for comfort. I’ve spent zero seconds of my life wondering why other people get their teeth fixed. Not something I particularly care about, and since I’m not Charles Xavier or Jean Grey, I can’t read somebody’s mind and tell you why they’re getting their teeth fixed.

This is where my peers tend to run into trouble. They decide they know exactly why these wrestlers do what they do, which is always a dangerous proposition. Even if what they come up with makes perfect sense considering decades of historical evidence, there’s no reason to think that *fill in the wrestler here* is taking the same things into account as *fill in your favorite writer here* does in their assessment of the situation.

That’s why I can’t really defend Dave Meltzer here in his tiff with Charlotte Flair.

Yeah, I just listened. I thought @davemeltzerWON would have learned his lesson last time commenting about women’s bodies, but apparently I’m fair game 🙄

So I get to respond. Again. To a rumor about my body. Again.

You know what? This is when I stop.

Dave, Go To Hell. https://t.co/rUATF480eK

— Charlotte Flair (@MsCharlotteWWE) April 22, 2021

Not that Meltzer is the only wrong actor in this scenario. The twitter account in question here is known for taking Uncle Dave out of context & using brief clips in order to stir the pot, which is somewhat easy to do given Meltzer’s form of talking himself in circles to eventually get to a point. And let’s face it, Charlotte likely isn’t listening to wrestling podcasts during her workouts or plane rides, though we here at The Chairshot definitely appreciate those of you that do.

I would jump on the “Dave should have asked Charlotte” train as well, but that might be a little hypocritical of me. After all, it’s not like I ask any of these people any questions before I write about them. What would the point be? We probably should have higher standards for Meltzer since people actually talk to him, but I’m the wrong person to be saying it. Better one of these Twitter trolls go there instead, people apparently talk to them too.

The bottom line is that we need to stop acting like we know why people do the things they do. I don’t know what goes on in Charlotte’s head, and neither does Dave Meltzer, or *fill in your favorite writer here*. Hell, Andrade doesn’t know everything that goes on in Charlotte’s head, and he knows her a bit better than any of us do.

MLW on Vice!

We got a big TV announcement last week, as Major League Wrestling announced a deal with Vice. MLW content will start airing on the channel on May 1, which is coming up pretty soon according to the calendar on my laptop. It won’t be new footage at first, Court Bauer isn’t a fan of the idea of doing empty arena stuff, and would like to introduce MLW to the channel with footage from earlier in 2020 when they were apparently hitting their stride. Fans should be returning by July.

Hey, more wrestling on my television is always a good thing. Vice obviously saw Dark Side of the Ring doing bigger ratings than anything else they air and are looking to get more of those wrestling fan views. I still think it’ll be kind of awkward for a current wrestling show to air on the same channel as a show that talks about unhappy wrestler endings, but at least MLW could give them footage for future episodes.

That doesn’t sound too mean, does it?

MLW has all kinds of fans in the fire at the moments. Deals with DAZN & Bein Sports are ongoing, and there’s also rumor of a spinoff promotion called Azteca Underground that would bring back most of the people from Lucha Underground. That one seems less likely to happen due to legal issues with LU’s operating company, not to mention how tough it is getting people across the border legally these days.

That’s Our Mongo

We close with some sad news this week, as former Super Bowl & WCW US Champion Steve “Mongo” McMichael has been diagnosed with ALS. McMichael was one of the biggest personalities on one of the NFL’s most famous teams, the 1985 Chicago Bears. He went to the Pro Bowl twice, was named to the All-Pro first team twice, and played in the NFL for fifteen seasons. Prior to that, he played at the University of Texas, was named first team All-American in 1979 & inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2010.

After retiring from football, wrestling was the next step. His first wrestling appearance actually took place for the WWF, as he was one of several football players in Lawrence Taylor’s corner for his match with Bam Bam Bigelow at WrestleMania XI. Mongo got a bit more involved than the others, as he got to do guest commentary with Vince McMahon on a Raw leading up to WrestleMania & got into a fight with Kama Mustafa. It was WCW where McMichael ended up spending his in-ring career, preceded by several months on commentary during the early days of Monday Nitro.

He became a member of the Four Horsemen, which is a controversial subject to some people as the late-90s versions of the group aren’t as well-regarded as the 80s versions. Personally, the late-90s versions are the ones I grew up watching, and I liked them fine. If you ask Ric Flair, McMichael was a perfect member of the group due to his toughness and partying ability.

Was Mongo the best wrestler of all time? From an in-ring perspective, not exactly. In fairness, he got into it in his late thirties after a lengthy football career & his body was pretty beaten up even before stepping in the ring. He was always an entertaining personality though, even as a snot-nosed teenager I could tell he was having fun and trying hard. He always lived life to the fullest, which is something we all wish we could say we did.

McMichael’s family has a GoFundMe set up to assist with the cost of Mongo’s daily care & medical needs. To the surprise of nobody, Chris Jericho is among the top donations, as contributing to his fellow wrestlers has become something he’s known for. Go ahead & check that out, and feel free to donate if you have the means.

That’s all we have time for this week. Until next time, keep your stick on the ice.