Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! I’m Steve Cook, and by this time next week we’ll know whether or not the Cincinnati Bengals have won their first Super Bowl Championship. In related news, the News From Cook’s Corner column will be taking next Monday off. We’ll either be celebrating or mourning, not sure which. I like to keep you folks in the loop though, so expect more rasslin news in two weeks!

In lieu of that, you’ll get some football content. Some throwback Bengals opinion should be posted on this very website soon, along with my official Super Bowl betting picks later in the week. We’ll pick the game & some prop bets, it’ll be a good time.

As for today’s news, we have a theme. People I did not expect to be writing about at this time last week!

Hi Shane! Bye Shane!

Since Shane McMahon is no longer with WWE
He should re-open WCW since he bought it🤷🏽‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/Vn9N8HuMZL

— Saint Wrestling🇿🇦 (@Saintwrestling1) February 2, 2022

Sometimes, we make the mistake of overlooking peoples’ positive contributions while talking about their current issues. Let us not say that Shane McMahon never made any positive contributions to the experience of pro wrestling. That WrestleMania X-Seven street fight with his old man was an excellent piece of business. He got over pretty good as a heel back in the late 1990s. Oh, and we can’t forget his big return in 2016, that thing got over like the Second Coming. People were so hyped to see Shane McMahon back in WWE.

The reason was pretty simple. To a lot of wrestling fans with an Internet connection, Shane was seen as “the good one”. His approval rating was much higher than Vince or Stephanie’s. People “knew” that Stephanie & Triple H would be running WWE some day, and that was a scary thought to your regular Internet wrestling fan. After all, Stephanie’s creative department didn’t have a great percentage over the years, & Triple H had a reputation for burying anybody in his path.

Which makes the way things reportedly went down at the 2022 Royal Rumble kinda funny. Shane was making his big comeback, which made sense as a way to add some extra flavor to WrestleMania season. He was a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble match, and was helping produce the match. He’d done it before, so this was nothing out of the ordinary. Now, I don’t know if previous years also involved Shane wanting to book the entire match around himself, but apparently that’s what happened in 2022. There were some disagreements between Shane & Brock Lesnar over how the end would go, and Shane’s father took Brock’s side. Shane & fellow producer James Gibson didn’t get along too well during the process. Apparently Shane even wanted to enter #1 & be the “iron man” of the thing, which considering how he looked after being in the ring for 5:38, would have been an awful idea.

Granted, the Royal Rumble match had a ton of flaws. “Not enough Shane McMahon” wasn’t one of them.

There was also a report from Fightful Select that Shane was supposed to enter after Randy Orton did, but one of those dreaded production snafus happened and Shane’s music played first. Hopefully this whole bit is true, and Randy Orton did tell Shane “You better go out there, cause I’m sure not coming out to “Here Comes The Money””. Because that’s friggin hilarious.

So much drama went down on Saturday that Shane wasn’t invited back for Monday’s Raw episode, and isn’t expected to be back anytime soon. No Elimination Chamber match, no WrestleMania match, no Shane on WWE television.

In the big scheme of things, Shane McMahon being “gone” from WWE doesn’t affect a whole heck of a lot, right? It’s an interesting story, sure. The gossip portion is especially fun. But let’s be honest. Shane is on TV a few months during his most active years. He doesn’t have any sort of major backstage role with the company. Him being there or not really doesn’t make much of a difference here in the Year of Our Lord 2022. Maybe there was a window open for him considering some of the other backstage happenings in recent months, but if there was, one assumes that’s been closed shut.

At least for now. I doubt the idea that Shane McMahon won’t be on WWE television again, unless Vince sells the company next week and the buyer isn’t interested in ol’ Shane-O Mac.

Hi Brian! Bye Brian!

Vince McMahon rn after seeing this Brian Kendrick news:pic.twitter.com/PO0pZoB2Hz

— P E R C • P H A R A O H ★ (@TranquiloSZN) February 2, 2022

If you’re like me, you haven’t spent much of your time the last few years thinking about Brian Kendrick. Don’t get me wrong, dude was a perfectly cromulent wrestler back in the 2000s-early 2010s. He might have deserved a little better than what he got from WWE during his various stints there…but just a little.

I probably would have continued not thinking much about Brian Kendrick until a unique situation popped up. Pretty much out of nowhere, Kendrick was booked on AEW Dynamite in a match with Jon Moxley. Apparently Kendrick was granted his release back in December, and his non-compete clause didn’t last as long as some others. This seemed like a fun little surprise, and it was going to be interesting to see Kendrick in his most high profile match since….um, whenever he & Paul London lost WWE’s tag team titles? I’m not sure, I just know it’s been awhile.

It’ll be even longer now, as Kendrick was pulled from his AEW debut. Comments Kendrick had made about the Holocaust & Jewish people and conspiracy theories several years ago resurfaced on social media, creating a huge hubbub. Kendrick later apologized for his comments, but one doubts it’ll be enough to get him back on television in a featured role.

Obviously Kendrick’s comments were ill-advised, and I’d disassociate with anybody else making similar comments. That being said, the story to me here is a trend that seems to keep popping up with big AEW signings. Granted, not all of them end up despised for something they said on the Internet. Its a big enough percentage to wonder if Tony Khan are doing the proper background checks on these people before bringing them in.

Jay Lethal is a top-notch wrestler. But there’s a reason that feds bigger than Ring of Honor weren’t going to touch him. A modicum of research could have brought that to AEW’s attention before they were stuck with a good wrestler that a chunk of their fanbase doesn’t want to see. The same goes for Brian Kendrick, it’s not like these comments weren’t part of a production put on sale. Sure, Kendrick lasted in WWE for a long time. It’s not like they featured him on anything more relevant than 205 Live. Out of sight, out of mind. Kendrick could hide in the Performance Center. Everybody in the ROH office was behind Lethal. Once they left their comfort zones, things were a bit different.

One just hopes that Tony Khan has done a better job vetting his next big signing. The way he’s hyping this one up for Wednesday night, the last thing they need is a third strike.

Hi Nia! Bye Nia!

No, I didn’t expect Nia Jax to be in the news either. She got fired a little while back and things seemed pretty quiet on that front. Then she did an interview with Renee Paquette that had a couple of interesting tidbits. One was something I wanted to support her for, as she said she turned down an offer to be in the Royal Rumble. I’m all for people not immediately running back to WWE for a quick payday after getting fired by them. It shows a certain level of self-respect that most people don’t have.

Unfortunately, Nia immediately flushed this bit of goodwill down the toilet with most people. First off by admitting she probably got fired because she wasn’t vaccinated. Yes, she implied previously that her vax status had nothing to do with it. It gets more interesting though, as she went on a Twitter troll hunt like she was Greg DeMarco the day after WWE financials. Which she could have survived without comment here, as my interest wasn’t really raised until this point:

Hahaha! I stand by that too. Honey, if you really think that all your favorites don’t feel the same as I do, you’re sadly mistaken. I know a lot of people in many professional sports that just paid & got a real card from a doctor..sooooo https://t.co/CG8PC7cQHJ

— Lina Fanene (@LinaFanene) February 4, 2022

Nia saying that she knows a lot of athletes in different sports that paid doctors to get vaccine cards? Now that’s the kind of thing that’s newsworthy, and will likely never be followed up on. It’s one thing to be an anti-vaxxer, it’s quite another to lie and say you got vaxxed when you didn’t just so you can maintain a sports career. I’d also say it’s quite the thing for a doctor to pass out fake vax cards, and there should be some type of a punishment for those folks, in addition to the liars with fake vax cards.

And to think I was on Nia Jax’s side for a split second! That’s what I get for trying to give people some benefit of the doubt.

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