Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! Have you noticed there’s a lot going on in the world of wrestling? It’s been one of those news cycles where there’s so much going on I don’t even know where to start. I should probably go ahead and get started then, right?

In case you’re wondering how your team did in the NFL Draft, check back in five years. Never ceases to amaze how people go crazy grading drafts of people that haven’t taken a field as a professional yet. Except in the SEC, all those cats have been paid for a couple of years, amirite? HEY NOW!

Yeah, I’m done. Let’s get to the news!

Tessa to AEW?

This story started developing when Daga, a Mexican wrestling star more known here in the States as Tessa Blanchard’s husband, vacated AAA’s Latin American Championship. That indicated that he was heading somewhere, and sescoops.com is reporting that Daga & Tessa are in talks with AEW. Now, why Daga would have to vacate that championship to go to AEW when Kenny Omega is AAA’s Mega Champion, I don’t have the slightest idea. (Probably because AEW isn’t the only company he’s talking to?)

It is pretty safe to reach the conclusion that if Daga signs with a US-based company, Tessa won’t be far behind. It’s also pretty safe to reach the conclusion that AEW’s wanted to bring Tessa in for awhile, considering she was part of the All In show back in 2019, and that her father’s part of the company. There’s about a 99.5% chance it would have happened for now, if not for a couple of factors:

-Tessa’s departure from Impact Wrestling
-The online hubbub about her being a racist & bully

See, I’m not sure any of those things have any effect on WWE’s level of interest in her. There was also some speculation that the “Diamond Mine” tease on NXT had something to do with Tessa because she likes to have a diamond design on her ring attire, so that’s something to keep an eye on. Especially since it’s doubtful that WWE cares about any of that Impact stuff, or those online accusations.

AEW does, though. Or at least they try to. It’s one of the ways they can differentiate themselves from WWE, acting like they really care about things like bullying, racism & other things that some of us get mad about. Signing Tessa would make a lot of these people mad. The question is just how big a percentage of a fanbase those people make up, and how committed they are to their stance on these issues.

I do think we’ll see Tessa Blanchard in a major promotion before the end of 2021. AEW or WWE. I think we can rule out Impact Wrestling. Assuming she hasn’t completely regressed as a wrestler, she’s too talented to be on the sidelines. People will get mad, but they’ll get over it eventually. Surely somebody else will come along to take the heat off of her.

WWE & MLW?

MLW’s been in the news quite a bit lately. Their big debut on Vice took place this past Saturday. I was able to watch it. Not bad, it wasn’t new but it was new to me, which is all that matters. I’ll stick with it, but don’t tell anybody because they’ll want me to review it and I’m not trying to get more of that type of work.

In some interesting news, Dave Meltzer reported that MLW is in talks with WWE concerning a deal similar to the one WWE had going with EVOLVE for a few minutes. WWE has a ton of people at the Performance Center training and not doing much of anything else, and they’d like to get them working matches somewhere. The talent, for their part, would also like to work matches somewhere. MLW doesn’t exactly have the largest talent roster among wrestling promotions, so they could definitely use the help. There’s also the idea Dave puts out there that WWE wants to make it look like they’re working with people now and not doing things their usual way, but I’ll believe that when I see it. People tried to tell me that WWE wasn’t going to do things their usual way of putting everybody out of business when they started the NXT UK brand, and it wasn’t long before they stopped working with people and putting them out of business.

My wild-ass guess is that Court Bauer would like to get one of those Gabe Sapolsky deals where he gets paid to be a consultant. I’ve been angling for one of those deals for years, but people keep wanting me to do stuff instead. Pretty lame.

CMLL Breaks Up With ROH

The partnership between Ring of Honor & Mexico’s oldest wrestling promotion is no more after CMLL announced its end last Tuesday. This is due to ROH Champion & former CMLL wrestler Rush being part of a new group promoting an event in June and promising big things, Federacion Wrestling. Rush’s brother Dragon Lee & father Bestia del Ring are involved as well, along with Matt Taven, Bandido, Kenny King, Rey Horus & Flamita. Most of the talent being shared between ROH & CMLL left CMLL some time ago, so the writing was probably on the wall here and somebody was waiting for the right time to make the move. There was mutual interest between Taven & CMLL in working together again, but pretty much everybody else seems to have moved on.

As for the new group, they’re running a show on June 19 featuring the above named talent along with the Lucha Brothers, Tay Conti, Red Velvet, & PJ Black, among others.

Including Andrade!

Yep, after a brief pause in the action, Andrade is beginning to pop up again. He did a video announcement for this group, and also did a video promo that aired at the end of AAA’s Rey de Reyes show. He’ll be part of AAA’s new top heel faction and challenged Kenny Omega to a match at TripleMania. Whether that means it’ll actually happen or not is TBD, because people make challenges all the time down there that never lead anywhere, but that’s not stopping Internet workrate fans from getting excited at the idea of Omega vs. Andrade. Let’s hope it does for their sake.

Sexy Star Update

Somebody else that appeared on the AAA event was a new Sexy Star. You might recall that the original pretty much got blackballed from wrestling after being involved in an incident at 2017’s TripleMania where she broke Rosemary’s arm on purpose. In spite of that, AAA still owns the rights to the Sexy Star character, and obviously thinks there’s money to be made by putting an attractive girl in a mask. There’s probably a little bit, yeah. I’d need to see some more of the new Sexy Star to compare her with the original, to be honest.

Speaking of the original Sexy Star, she had an MMA fight this weekend! It didn’t end well:

Claudia Diaz TKO2 Dulce García #CombateGlobal pic.twitter.com/606aW7xZ6s

— Streetfight Banned-cho (@streetfitebncho) May 1, 2021

Let’s just say the wrestling fans didn’t exactly feel sorry for her.

AEW Programming Update (United States edition)

With the NBA Playoffs coming at the end of May, AEW fans will have to tune to TNT at different times to get their Dynamite fix. The next three weeks will be business as usual, but then Dynamite moves to 10:00 PM Eastern on Friday, May 28. Day after my birthday, in case you’re planning on getting me something. The next week, Dynamite will either air on Friday, June 4 or Saturday, June 5, depending on the NBA programming schedule.

There will be more pre-emptions & time changes in the coming weeks. Wrestling fans will probably whine & complain, but that’s the nature of the beast. WCW Monday Nitro had to deal with similar issues back in the day. Maybe that’s why I just don’t see any of this as a big deal. Heck, I remember when Raw took a couple of weeks off every year for the US Open tennis tournament. Oh, and a week off for a dog show! We’ve become spoiled over the past decade or so of minimal interruptions to WWE programming. Kids these days just don’t know what us oldsters had to put up with.

They will. Not only will AEW have NBA pre-emptions, but in a strange twist of fate, they’re the wrestling company that will be sharing a network with the NHL. After all of these months where we wondered about what the NHL moving to USA would mean for NXT, Turner Sports ended up purchasing that NHL package that people kind of assumed would go to NBC. Now, we wonder what the NHL means for the future of AEW Dynamite. They’ll be on TBS & HBO Max too, but TNT was specifically mentioned for the Conference Finals & Stanley Cup Final.

Bottom line is that TNT’s going to get pretty crowded here over the next few years. As a sports-obsessed TV viewer I like all these leagues being on the same channel. It’s nice & convenient. Those of you that don’t like sports…well, you might not be as thrilled when AEW’s jumping around the schedule during the summer.

Oh, and we also don’t know when the NHL’s regular nights will be. Let the speculation begin!

That’s all we have time for this week! Thanks for reading, and keep your stick on the ice.