News From Cook’s Corner 2.21.22: Stone Cold Cody Rhodes

Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, and now that the NFL season is over, it’s time to take a step back from football and take a look at what’s going on in the world of professional wrestling. As it turns out, there were two main stories that seemed to take everybody’s attention and soak up all the oxygen in the room. Which is cool, but each story has one key thing in common…

We don’t know where the story is heading.

Sure, we can jump to conclusions based off of what we think is going to happen, but there’s a pretty good chance that we could be typing a bunch of words that don’t mean much of anything. Other people have an easy time doing this. Me? I like to let these things settle before formulating an opinion. Not a popular thing to do in 2022, but it’s how I roll.

Cody Rhodes leaves AEW. Is he going elsewhere?

We learned several weeks ago that Cody Rhodes’ contract with AEW had expired, and they were in the process of negotiating a new deal. Most of us didn’t think too much about this at the time, figuring that the parties involved would come to some sort of an arrangement. After all, Cody was an EVP and one of the Founders of AEW. Certainly he would be there for the long term.

Apparently not, as various parties involved announced that Cody & Brandi Rhodes would no longer be part of AEW. Everybody said very nice things about everybody else, and people got mad when reports came out that certain people weren’t very well-liked backstage. (Memo to wrestling journalists: Never report that *nobody* liked a certain person. There’s always going to be somebody that liked that certain person. I’m sure Adolf Hitler would have found a friend or two in a wrestling locker room, and I’m not just saying that because of the average wrestler’s political leanings.)

On one hand, Cody is a big loss for AEW. He was the top babyface in the company for the first several months. Cody helped establish the TNT Championship and has given many of AEW’s young talents their best chances to shine. He got celebrities involved. He had a reality show on TNT & was involved in a reality game show on TBS. He was one of the people that got AEW off the ground, and his contributions there shouldn’t be overlooked.

On the other hand…it’s been a long time since Cody was involved in the best parts of AEW programming. I’m not really sure what happened, but things seemed to go downhill for Cody once he got that tattoo. He drifted off into his own universe with his own people, only occasionally connected with the rest of AEW. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely highlights. Matches with Darby Allin & Sammy Guevara served to get those two more over. The Brodie Lee stuff was good. For whatever reason, there was a lot of stuff that just didn’t connect with the audience.

Not much Brandi did connected with the audience. She had a tough time deciding what she wanted to be, and nobody seemed interested in helping the situation. It was a shame, as it seemed like she tried hard and did some good stuff behind the scenes. So did Cody. Unfortunately, I don’t think the absence of Cody or Brandi has much of an effect on AEW television going forward.

Where the absence of Cody & Brandi will be felt most is behind the scenes…especially if Cody ends up signing with WWE as he’s expected to. See, Cody has plenty of friends backstage in AEW. Cody’s helped out a lot of young kids. Cody knows when those young kids’ contracts are up, and he knows how much they’re making. Now, I’m not saying that WWE would like to benefit from that infor-ok, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. WWE would love to know when AEW contracts are up and they’d love to know how much some of those people are making.

Maybe Cody doesn’t know as much about these things as we might think. But this is one of those things that might end up being a bigger deal than we thought, assuming Cody ends up signing with WWE. If he doesn’t, forget we said anything.

Steve Austin Back in the Ring?

Kevin Owens has been talking a lot of stuff about Texas lately. Makes sense, as we all know, the great state of Texas & the great province of Quebec have had issues with each other going back to the days of…ok, I got nothing. There weren’t even hockey teams in Texas the last time the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup. Kevin Owens is just mad at Texas for some reason, and apparently his anger with Texas is going to be enough to bring one of the biggest stars in the history of pro wrestling out of retirement.

That’s right, Fightful, Dave and everybody else are reporting that Stone Cold Steve Austin will be coming out of retirement to wrestle Kevin Owens at WrestleMania. On its surface, it sounds pretty ridiculous. The more one thinks about it, the more sense it makes. Not so much the idea of Austin getting hot over Owens insulting Texas, that part’s dumb as hell. What does make sense is the idea of Austin returning to the ring after a nearly 20 year absence.

Listen, we all know that WWE is making money hand over fist. No matter how any of us might feel about their current creative output or how WWE conducts themselves business-wise, we’re constantly reminded by WWE’s defenders that the company is more profitable than ever. WWE’s got the money to spend on anything they could possibly want, or anything that they wouldn’t really want but could still draw a house.

WWE has a big house to fill. AT&T Stadium is a gigantic building that’s tough to fill even when things are optimal. WWE needs to try and fill it twice on back to back days. I’m sure they’ll announce a ridiculous number for entertainment purposes no matter how many people they get in the place, but they need enough to make it look good. The more stars they can get in there, the more fans they’ll get in there.

It doesn’t get much bigger than Austin. Especially when you take into account the current wrestling fanbase. I recently did a Top 7 column over on 411 ranking Joes in wrestling. The commenters were outraged because I didn’t include a man known as “Just” Joe. A man who was largely a backstage character stirring things up during the Attitude Era, and didn’t even last a year on television. This goes to show me that most of the people that read Internet wrestling columns are still hung up on events from the late 90s & early 2000s. The demos on these wrestling TV shows prove the same thing.

Wrestling fans are old, y’all.

Bringing back Steve Austin is going to generate more interest in WrestleMania than anything else WWE could do for the show involving current members of their roster. It’s good for business, and I assume it’s good for Steve Austin’s business too, as he’ll be getting paid out the yin yang. God bless him for it if that’s what he wants to do.

It’s not something that I’m frothing at the mouth to see, but I have faith in Austin & Owens to provide a good show. Austin’s game during his main money drawing years consisted of punching & kicking, and as long as he can still do that he should be fine. Nobody sane is expecting a 5 star pro rasslin classic. As long as Austin stays in his lane and doesn’t try doing Canadian Destroyers like he’s Dustin Rhodes or something, he should be fine.

I think this will end up happening, as long as Austin is physically able to do anything in the ring. There’s too much money to be made.

A Busy Weekend!

There was a lot going on this weekend, especially on Saturday. WWE went over to Saudi Arabia to do their Elimination Chamber event. I was working during the show and frankly have too many other things on my watchlist to bother with it at this point. Notable things that apparently happened:

Roman Reigns beat Goldberg & Brock Lesnar won the Men’s Elimination Chamber match, seemingly setting up a unification match at WrestleMania. Roman winning couldn’t have been a surprise to anybody outside of Bill’s family, but Brock’s victory was a little more surprising. Until you remembered he was Brock Lesnar, anyway. Bobby Lashley is reportedly going to be out for months with a shoulder injury, hence the title change here.

Bianca Belair won the Women’s Elimination Chamber match, setting up a match with Becky Lynch at WrestleMania. Seems logical to me. Apparently some people were mad, but I’m not sure who in that match was supposed to be a better option. Rhea Ripley if she was booked right, sure. Alexa Bliss a few years ago? I have no idea. I’m just surprised they managed to get these Elimination Chamber matches done in just over fifteen minutes. Doesn’t look like the Saudis are paying people by the hour.

AAA held their Rey de Reyes event, which I reviewed for 411mania. The main takeaway most people had? John Morrison has yet another name, that of “John Superstar”. He had a pretty good match too, but people in the English-speaking world were more interested in the name business. Taya Valkyrie also made her AAA return and picked up right where she left off there. Also making the move to AAA from WWE was Carlos Cabrera, who had been released by WWE sometime last week after announcing there for nearly thirty years. One assumes he didn’t have a non-compete clause. Fans are happy to see him reunited with his longtime broadcasting partner, Hugo Savinovich.

As for the show itself, it was a bit of a cluster. That’s how most AAA shows tend to go. Part of their charm.

There were also Impact, New Japan & GCW events held over the weekend, so there was a little something for everybody. That’s one of the great things about pro wrestling…if one show doesn’t scratch your itch, there’s bound to be something out there that will.

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