News From Cook’s Corner 6.7.21: I Need A Scorecard!

Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! My name is Steve Cook, and I’d like to be honest with you people for just a minute. As much news as has been going on in the wrestling industry lately, I’ve been hard pressed to get interested in covering it. I don’t have a good explanation for it. I should probably speak to a therapist, but that’s expensive. So I spend a paragraph rambling about my mental issues before talking about some wrestling news. Probably not the most healthy thing for me mentally, but it makes feel like I’m doing something.

Who Did WWE Can This Week?

It’s becoming somewhat of a weekly thing here for WWE to release people and for us to break down the who & why. The who this time around: Braun Strowman, Aleister Black, Murphy, Lana, Ruby Riott & Santana Garrett.

To be honest, most of the recent releases haven’t come as big surprises to me, as they’ve largely been people WWE wasn’t really using anyway. Garrett’s fallen into that category since her arrival. She never did much on NXT television, got called up to the main roster earlier this year and made one appearance in the Royal Rumble match before disappearing for good. Somebody thought she was worth signing, and later somebody thought she was worth moving up, but nothing ever happened. Weird stuff.

Riott at least got her own squad for a while, but had only been on television twice since WrestleMania. Murphy hadn’t competed since the Andre the Giant Battle Royal on the SmackDown before WrestleMania, and in the previous months had largely disappeared after a big storyline with Seth Rollins & the Mysterio Family. Black had gone away for awhile after his wife was released, but had been brought back recently and started a feud with Big E. It feels especially random since we just heard a couple of weeks ago that his wife, the former Zelina Vega, was in talks to return to WWE.

It’s tough to keep track of all these hirings & firings in various relationships. Lana has joined her husband Miro on the list of talent released by WWE over the past year. Now the speculation turns towards whether they’ll be reunited in AEW or not. That would be the happiest situation for them, but it remains to be seen now many of these people AEW will want to bring onto their already bloated roster.

The biggest surprise, at least to me, was Strowman. We’re talking about a guy that was Universal Champion for the first few months of the Pandemic Era and who wrestled Shane McMahon at this year’s WrestleMania. He certainly seemed like the type of wrestler WWE loves to push, and would keep around for a long time. Braun also reportedly got a big contract extension last year, which ironically enough likely made him more expendable when the people making these decisions were looking for people to release. Injury isses were also a concern.

Still, Strowman had a certain aura about him a few years ago that had a lot of us thinking he would be a top WWE star for years to come. He still found some success, but the early mishandling of his push and his random face/heel turns ultimately made him a tougher sell as a top guy than he should have been. Braun never quite lived up to that potential, and it’s tough to see him doing it somewhere else because the wrestling business outside of WWE doesn’t seem to have much of his interest. He’s probably a little too big in size for AEW, as they mostly hire overly large wrestlers to serve as announcers.

Will we be talking about more released wrestlers next week? Maybe! Here’s the thing: WWE does have a ridiculously large roster. We talked about this before when they were signing every wrestler in captivity to keep them away from AEW. At some point, somebody was going to realize that the company had entirely too many wrestlers for what they were doing. Or, somebody was going to realize that they were never going to use some of these wrestlers, and it would serve them well to switch people out for somebody they might end up using.

And, let’s be honest: it isn’t entirely a bad thing to have an AEW or Impact or ROH or whoever around to keep some of these wrestlers busy. WWE doesn’t & shouldn’t feel threatened by these groups, even if AEW’s done well ratings-wise and with PPV buys. WWE has been making the shift to being more of a media company than a wrestling company as far back as I care to remember, and even if other groups have wrestling shows on par or better than what WWE trots out there, they’ve still got a long way to go to match what WWE has to offer as a company. These boys know how to make money, you gotta give them that.

None of this talk necessarily means that Vince McMahon is getting ready to sell the company…though it is really fun to speculate about.

Whose AEW Contract Expired This Week?

We know that AEW has shown more of a reticence to fire people than WWE. Firing people when you’re already making record profits is great for shareholders that care about money, but a bad look to fans that actually care about these wrestlers. AEW is trying to be the company that cares, so instead of firing people, they’ll let contracts expire. With all of this new talent on the market, & with AEW heading back out on the road, we’ll probably see more contracts expiring over the coming months.

Awesome Kong & Shanna’s contracts expired, so they were let go. Kong’s AEW experience was limited to a short stint as part of the ill-fated Nightmare Collective faction in late 2019 & early 2020. She went on hiatus in February 2020 to film GLOW, which ended up not happening anyway. The pandemic caused production to be shut down & Netflix wound up cancelling the show, much to the dismay of folks like me that considered GLOW the best wrestling show on television. Kong never returned to AEW television in any event. Her performances on GLOW were well-received, so there is some potential for a future in acting. ROH or Impact could also use her name value for their women’s divisions, so I doubt we’ve seen the last of Kong on television in one form or another.

Shanna’s AEW stint was also derailed by the pandemic, as she was stuck in Europe for several months. Prior to that, her main contribution was a feud with Nyla Rose, helping further establish Rose as a Native Beast. Fightful Select reported that there had been some issues between Shanna and some other wrestlers, in particular the extras that weren’t under contract. Probably not a good idea to crap on the extras if you’re pretty extra yourself.

SummerSlam Date & Venue Set

WWE’s second biggest event of the calendar year has been set for August 21 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Two different things about this: It’s a Saturday night, and it’s a night where Vegas will also be hosting a Manny Pacquiao fight. SummerSlam will be starting at 5 PM Pacific and should be done before Pacquiao hits the ring, so maybe it won’t be an issue.

The big question is how many people they’ll stick inside that football stadium. Dave Meltzer reports that ticket sales are going well for the dates they’ve released so far, so hopefully people are ready for some ‘rasslin. AEW has previously found success with their Double or Nothing weekends in Las Vegas, it’s a market that people like traveling to, so WWE should get a big crowd.

Especially if they can get John Cena to work Roman Reigns at the show like some are speculating.

Andrade is All Elite!

Andrade El Idolo made his big AEW debut this past Friday night. Some expected this to happen sooner, as there was this big deal made online about how Andrade didn’t have a 90-day non-compete clause to deal with, and as WrestlingInc’s Raj Giri reports, talks between Andrade & Tony Khan started the week after the release. The process took some time, as apparently Andrade wanted creative control & veto power on losing. That honestly wouldn’t surprise me, as most of the famous luchadores we know of are known for being very, very reticent to lose matches. Heck, LA Park lost a match on MLW a few weeks back, and it was notable because it was the first time he’d cleanly lost a match in the U.S. in ages.

They still take wins & losses seriously south of the border. Especially older legends that are looking to keep their name value as high as possible. Andrade learned from them.

For Tony Khan & AEW’s sake, hopefully this story is largely BS, as the last thing they need is everybody WWE is releasing to insist on creative control and veto power over losing in their contracts. Or their current wrestlers having similar demands when their contracts come up. I know Andrade is a very talented wrestler, but if he’s getting the WCW Hall & Nash deal, everybody else is going to want it too.

The NWA Had A PPV!

To be honest, I haven’t seen a lot of the NWA since they went behind the FITE paywall. Hope it works out for them, but since I’m not getting paid to cover the Powerrr shows I’m not watching them. Just being honest…we’re doing what we’re paid for here at the Corner these days. Like anybody else you’d find on a street corner, if you know what I’m saying.

There were three things I noticed from this particular show, so let’s talk about them.

1. Kylie Rae is back!

We’ve seen Kylie’s ups & downs over the past few years. She was going to be the focal point of AEW’s women’s division, she tapped out. She was going to be the focal point of Impact Wrestling’s women’s division, she tapped out. Now, Kylie Rae is part of the NWA’s women’s division. I’m rooting for it to work out. But, man, if I was a wrestling promoter, I wouldn’t bet on it unless I planned on running shows in one city that nobody ever noticed. Which would be a bad way to run business as a wrestling promoter.

2. Tyrus beats a champion!

I try to avoid political opinion in this column as much as possible. But when your company decides to push a Fox News pundit that’s been accused of sexual harassment, I have to comment on it. So yeah, this sort of thing is why I don’t feel bad about not paying money to watch an NWA show.

See, this is the kind of thing that keeps me from ever having sources anywhere in the business.

3. Nick Aldis will be champion forever…should we care?

The main event of this show saw Nick Aldis hit a referee with a chair to get a blatant disqualification against Trevor Murdoch. Nick Aldis’s current title reign is at 959 days, and if Cody hadn’t got a 50 day title reign after All In, Aldis would already be over 1,000 days.

And who said overly long title reigns were a thing of the past? I remember back in the day people were trying to sell me on Aldis as NWA Champion, and he has some good qualities. He can wear suits and cosplay Ric Flair pretty well. Is he taking the NWA where the company wants to be? I dunno, maybe I’m just an old man remembering the days of actual NWA Champions and confused by it all.

I mean, would Trevor Murdoch be a better champion? Dick Murdoch probably would be, but he’s been dead over 25 years. Tough to say.

Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep your stick on the ice.