Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! For the second straight week, there’s enough going on that I feel compelled to sit here and cover some of it. Pretty cool, right? Nothing better than when there’s so much happening in the world of pro wrestling from so many different angles.

WWE’s heading towards SummerSlam, and tickets are through the roof largely due to John Cena. AEW’s doing well in ticket sales as well, and their ratings are trending in the right direction. New Japan’s coming to America. PWG is back running shows. Impact Wrestling’s crowds might not be the biggest, but they’re packing their studio and having a good time.

There’s a lot of good things going on in the wrestling world right now. There’s some kind of meh things going on as well. Guess which ones we’re talking about!

Bye Bye Bray

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Bray Wyatt on WWE television. Last time was WrestleMania, where something happened with Alexa Bliss and a giant box. I’m not going to speculate on what kept him off of TV, there’s some different stories out there and since I don’t know which one is true I’m going to steer clear of all of them. What I do know is that we won’t know whatever his story with Bliss was going to lead to, as WWE has released the third-generation wrestler behind the Fiend & Wyatt Family. Budgetary reasons.

In previous years, I would have been surprised. WWE made a habit of not firing anybody for years after Linda McMahon started her political career. Then they went into this phase where they wanted to keep every known wrestler in captivity under contract in order to keep them from helping other feds get attention. Now, the concern is the bottom line. One of the best ways to increase the profit margin? Trim the “fat” on the payroll. All the people who signed those big “please stay” contracts? They’re being sent away.

The only people safe? Roman Reigns & his bloodline. They’re fine. The rest of the WWE Superstars might want to keep their resumes updated. No surprise that we’re hearing reports that morale is in the dumper over there. They all know they’re expendable in the eyes of management, and there’s a headhunter looking to increase that profit margin.

Here’s a little secret.

Not sure if a lot of people know this or not, but I’m going to let you guys in on it right now. It’s something that a lot of other wrestling fans & just people in general either don’t know or don’t care to know.

You can not be a fan of somebody’s work and still be disappointed that they got canned.

I’m not going to sit here and make up new thoughts & opinions on the artist formerly known as Bray Wyatt because he’s the latest one to get axed by the Evil Empire. Honestly, everything after the Wyatt Family was a case of diminishing returns. I wasn’t a big fan of the Fiend shtick, the Firefly Funhouse stuff wasn’t for me, and the best thing about his tag team with Matt Hardy was that it put two somewhat annoying characters in one segment that I could ignore pretty easily.

At the same time, dude was a bit of a draw. Sold a ton of merch. Was definitely involved in some interesting moments, even if I had the reaction to some of them that others had to Nick Gage using a pizza cutter on Chris Jericho’s forehead. He was also popular behind the scenes, as various social media posts from WWE Superstars over the weekend would indicate. There was a time where somebody with Bray Wyatt’s characteristics pushed on the level he was pushed on would be in WWE forever.

As we’ve learned in 2021, WWE isn’t keeping people around for the sake of keeping them around anymore. Somebody looks at the payroll, notices Bray Wyatt hasn’t appeared on television since April, and wonders why he’s getting paid that kind of money. That profit margin can never be too high for the shareholders. So what if the guy sold some silly expensive merchandise? They can find somebody else to do that. So what if the wrestlers get upset about losing friends? They can make new ones. Or, they can join their friends elsewhere. Vince has mentioned the idea of giving AEW more talent, so I wouldn’t rule anything out at this point.

Gonna be interesting to see where this guy ends up next. He’s got interesting ideas that could be utilized by any wrestling promotion, or by a company in another genre of entertainment. The horror realm seems a natural fit. AEW wouldn’t be surprising, he obviously knows the key players there. They could make whatever he’d want to be paid off of his PWTees store pretty quickly. Then, I wonder what he could do in Impact Wrestling, which already has an Undead Realm. I don’t worry about his future too much, he’s a gifted cat with a lot to offer to somebody.

AEW Testing Their Limits

We’ve all done something like AEW did during their main event on Wednesday night. OK, so not all of us have taken a pizza cutter to somebody else’s forehead, or smashed light tubes over somebody, and maybe most of us haven’t fallen through a pane of glass. However, we all have tested various limits. At work or at home. We want to see just how much we can get away with before somebody gets mad.

In AEW’s case, they’re trying to figure out just how much violence they can get away with. It’s no surprise, we all know that Tony Khan loved him some CZW back in the day. We’ve pointed out where a good chunk of the talent roster comes from. We’ve seen exploding rings, lights out matches, blood & guts. It’s an itch Khan has, and he’s going to scratch it when he can. Honestly, I’m surprised Dynamite has had as much blood & guts as its had. Things have changed since the days when WCW announcers had to refer to “international objects”. TNT’s management seems willing to do whatever.

There was a bit of an issue this week though, which wasn’t surprising since Nick Gage was booked. It mostly had to do with the unfortunate timing of a pizza commercial, as it came right after Gage used a pizza cutter on Chris Jericho’s forehead.

This is officially the best picture in picture commercial in professional wrestling history. @dominos @thekingnickgage #AEWDynamite pic.twitter.com/FoGCIQgun2

— ⌨️ Patches Chance 💖💜💙 (@patcheschance) July 29, 2021

I understand the concern. Pizza companies don’t want people having pizza cutters at home. That means they’re probably getting their pizza from the grocery stores instead of ordering it via delivery or takeout. Have you ever taken your pizza cutter to something you didn’t take right out of the oven? Of course not! Pizza cutters are competition to Domino’s, much like WWE is competition to sleep.

Oh, and you probably don’t want people bleeding on the other side of your picture in picture commercial. Honestly, that might be a bigger gripe to Domino’s than anything else. These advertisers have to know that nobody’s paying attention to them during the picture in picture breaks during wrestling, racing or anything else. Me, I completely tune out and go to my computer screen.

There’s also the little issue of how this is becoming even more of a story. Apparently somebody associated with WWE was contacting reporters from “mainstream publications” about writing articles about the AEW/Domino’s issue. A writer for Front Office Sports did jump on it, and oddly enough, another article that writer published got retweeted by WWE’s public relations Twitter account & Roman Reigns. Wonder how that happened. Not that I’m necessarily knocking the writer, we all know that I’m for sale to the highest bidder. Game recognize game.

Listen, I’ve always said the same thing about deathmatch wrestling. There’s a spot for it. I know a lot of people don’t want to hear that, but professional wrestling is many different things. Pure wrestling. Sports Entertainment. Comedy matches. Strong style. Ultraviolence is one of the genres. You can’t go to it too often though, it’s gotta be a last resort kind of thing. Nick Gage being brought in by MJF to take Chris Jericho out with light tubes & pizza cutters made sense as a one-time novelty. It didn’t hurt viewership, that’s for sure. Having him work every week desensitizes people to the ultraviolence & makes it old hat. Then you gotta go bigger & bigger every week, and you’re doing twice as much while getting half the response.

This whole story seems like much ado about nothing, to be honest. The Domino’s response from their PR guy wasn’t nearly as damning as people were telling us it was. And let’s be honest, AEW can find another pizza sponsor pretty quick.

No big deal.

What Happened to Hangman?

That’s what I was wondering while watching Dynamite last week. Like many, I assumed that Hangman Adam Page would be challenging Kenny Omega at All Out. #1 ranked contender, on fire with the fans, seemed like the thing to do. Until it wasn’t. Hangman lost on Wednesday, taking away the idea of a title shot at All Out. We scratched our heads over this until the weekend, when Uncle Dave Meltzer told us that Page wouldn’t be on All Out at all. What happened?

Some said it probably had something to do with all this incoming talent. Which seems logical. You have two top stars coming in that are going to be incredibly popular with fans, which is great for the company, but at the same time it could lead to somebody like Page being overshadowed. It may have led to plans changing, and Page being shunted down the card while outside talent took over the main event scene. Which wouldn’t be the first time that happened in a wrestling fed.

As it turns out, dude is having a kid. Honestly, didn’t these AEW guys have anything better to do last year? Seems like all the wives of AEW wrestlers got knocked up while everybody was sheltering in place. It does seem like a good way to cycle people out for a few weeks.

Some wonder if AEW is waiting too long to pull the trigger on the Hangman title run, and if it runs the risk of making Hangman into Lex Luger/Naito/whoever you want to name that got a rep of not being able to win the big one. It’s a fair thing to wonder. Even though it might make for better storytelling to drag this thing out as long as possible, it’s not like wrestling fans are known for their long attention spans. We’re quick to give up on people and move on to the next hot thing. Nothing against Hangman or anybody else, it’s just what we do.

This is where I would add a nice tagline to end the column with, but my attention span is so short that I’ve already moved on to writing my next column. How bout that?