Gable Stevenson, The Briscoe Brothers, and Toni Storm’s new Only Fans–what do they have in common? The News From Cook’s Corner, that’s what!

Hi, hello & welcome to News From Cook’s Corner! My name is Steve Cook, and there’s just so much going on in the world that it’s tough for me to get interested in these wrestling news items. Sure, there’s big stuff going on, but anything as big as March Madness? No, not really, and I say that as a Louisville fan that’s men basketball team is way out of the loop. Hopefully Kenny Payne gets us back there!

As obsessed as I was with the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, the horrible officiating & everything that went into that, it still took a backseat to the Formula 1 season premiere in Bahrain. Some serious drama there. Red Bull falling aside at the end of the race, Haas getting some points, are you kidding me? Then we had the NASCAR boys wrecking each other in the last lap of their race. Baseball’s starting up again, hockey had a trade deadline and of course the NFL had to top that with some trades of their own.

Bottom line: things are always going on and I’ll never know where to focus my attention as a jack of all trades & a master of none. Enough people seem to want me to write about wrestling that we’ll spend some words on that.

The New Next Big Thing?

Congratulations to #WWERaw draft pick @GableSteveson! pic.twitter.com/4adtxgDvqc

— WWE (@WWE) March 22, 2022

It was a big weekend for one of WWE’s top future stars. No, I’m not talking about Cody Rhodes, who is now supposedly going to be debuting with the company on the Raw after WrestleMania, or maybe in an unadvertised match with Seth Rollins on one of the WrestleMania nights. Or maybe he’ll be on Raw this week! We’ll let you know how that goes. No, we’re talking about a future WWE Superstar that has the potential to exceed even the Codester’s legendary status.

Gable Steveson finished off his collegiate wrestling career by adding another national championship to his trophy case. Steveson, the University of Minnesota wrestler that had already won one national title and & Olympic gold medal, defeated Arizona State’s Cohlton Schultz in the heavyweight finals of the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championship. Steveson handled Schultz in impressive fashion, celebrated and left his wrestling boots on the mat. It was a nice finish to an entertaining event.

Apparently he tweeted about being at WrestleMania but deleted it. He either wasn’t supposed to mention he was going to be there, or he forgot he had a thing. Young people have lots of things to do, these things happen. Personally I thought WWE should have set something up at the NCAA event to get some of that good cross-promotion going. If Seth Rollins wants to be at WrestleMania so bad, I’d imagine that issuing a challenge to Gable Steveson or laying him out after his big national championship victory would be a good way to get there.

In all seriousness, Steveson is a pretty great athlete that should be a top notch professional wrestler. As much as we make mockery of WWE for how they handle certain talents, they generally do right by guys with credentials like Steveson’s. I think that most of us would agree that Brock Lesnar has done pretty well for himself. Kurt Angle would be the other obvious comparison. Even though Angle’s Olympic gold medal was a bigger deal since it took place in the U.S. during a regularly scheduled Olympics, Steveson still has enough name value that they can’t just file him away in the Performance Center. People will want to see him doing something sooner rather than later. Given WWE’s tendency lately to at least want to push some new people, that gives Steveson the chance to be a pretty big deal sooner than any of us might have thought when the NIL deal went down.

Briscoes Business Is Picking Up

2 weeks from tonight, @ringofhonor Supercard of Honor
ROH World Tag Team Champions BRISCOES @jaybriscoe84 + @SussexCoChicken vs @LuchaLibreAAA Tag Team Champions FTR @DaxFTR + @CashWheelerFTR
Friday April 1, 2022, Dallas Metroplex
tickets @ https://t.co/g7FvET2sJJ, on @FiteTV PPV pic.twitter.com/Wsey6dA8cU

— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) March 18, 2022

Things had been a bit quiet on the Jay & Mark Briscoe front since ROH’s Final Battle event. People were wondering when they were going to pop up in AEW & wrestle FTR, since that’s a thing that was built up on ROH’s final event of the Sinclair Broadcasting era. According to Fightful Select, the kibosh was put on that idea by an executive with WarnerMedia. It seems that the executive isn’t a fan of the Briscoes due to some homophobic tweets that Jay made several years ago. One used a slur, the other involved Jay’s disdain towards the Delaware legislature passing a bill allowing same-sex marriage.

This isn’t the first time this issue has come up in regard to the Briscoes’ career situation. WWE had been interested in bringing them in years ago, but cooled off on the idea due to the social media kerfluffle. That’s the thing about social media, and why I’ve always recommended that anybody trying to make a living in entertainment keep their thoughts & opinions about non-entertainment topics off of it. Activism is fine, though I think it would be better accomplished in arenas other than social media. Maybe donate some money or help out in the community instead of make a tweet? I dunno.

I doubt that Jay Briscoe would be the first person to step into AEW’s locker room that harbored negative thoughts towards the LGBTQI+ community. The others were smart enough to keep their beliefs off of social media, or lucky that nobody was paying attention. Just keep your dumber ideas to yourself, and they won’t affect your means of living.

Jay re-visited the issue on the Battleground Podcast last week and apologized again, saying that the Briscoes love everybody. There was some good news for the Briscoes on the professional front this week, as Jay & Mark won the NWA’s Crockett Cup and were also booked for that long-awaited match against FTR on the upcoming Supercard of Honor event. If Tony Khan booking a Ring of Honor separate from AEW & AEW-related media deals is a thing, one could envision the Briscoes maintaining the “Lords & Masters of ROH” role they’ve had for the past couple of decades. Or maybe they’re just there to give FTR some other title belts that the Young Bucks don’t care about.

There’s no question about the Briscoes’ in-ring ability. They are among the best of their generation. The question people have is how much tweets from nearly ten years ago matter. From what I’ve found, the answer varies depending who the tweeter is. There’s also the peculiar reality that people get punished for saying offensive things years ago while elected officials get rewarded by re-election for passing offensive legislation meant to hurt the people that hate speech is often targeting. But I’m not allowed to talk about that.

Toni Storm making some of that Moonnnnnnaaaaayyyy

Toni Storm’s husband is more than okay with her doing OnlyFans.. and last time I checked, his opinion means more to her than y’all’s does.

TONI, GO GET THAT $$$$.

sh*t, if I looked like her, I’d be doing OF, too. 🤷🏻‍♀️

— 𝕄𝕖𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕤𝕒 🖤 (@melissax1125) March 21, 2022

We haven’t had occasion to discuss Toni Storm much since she asked for her release from WWE and was granted it. She’s been pretty quiet, hasn’t been throwing people under the bus or anything like that. Then she opened up an OnlyFans site last weekend, and apparently there was a lot of interest. Ryan Satin told us that she made five figures after one hour, and I’ll take his word on that. I don’t usually take his word on everything, but I’ll trust him on this one.

This apparently started a debate. People that were glad that Toni Storm made some money versus people that were offended that Toni Storm made some money. God forbid that Toni Storm make some money off of her body instead of wrestling promoters. How dare she!

I have no time for the people offended by Toni Storm, or offended by anybody else on OnlyFans making some money. I also have no time for the people offended by folks spending money on Toni Storm’s OnlyFans, or anybody else using that to make some cash. For heaven’s sake, we all know that success in pro wrestling and physical attractiveness goes hand in hand. Vince McMahon made sure that was a thing. We used to have fat boys doing well in the business until WWE took everything over. I can’t even delve into the attractiveness of female wrestlers since I was cancelled like Jay Briscoe back in 2013 since I ranked them back in the day, though I’m sure I’d be fine to run for political office.

Here’s the thing: People really want to shame other people for spending their money on OnlyFans accounts for Toni Storm or anybody else. They say they’re above it, and I hope they are. From where I sit…I can see places in my budget that are spent in worse ways. I know I’ve been spending way too much money on alcohol that will put me in an early grave. Am I supposed to get mad at people spending the same amount of money on OnlyFans accounts? That seems wrong to me, as OnlyFans accounts are surely less self-destructive than the things I spend my money on.

I never saw the point of telling other people what to spend their money on. Maybe some of you more intelligent or paid for people out there could, but that’s not me. I’m not here to tell you to spend your money on anything. You wanna spend some money on Toni Storm’s OnlyFans account, or anybody else’s? I won’t tell you not to. I don’t have any OnlyFans subscriptions. Frankly, most of the things I spend money on will put me in a grave much faster than pictures Toni Storm is putting on her OnlyFans account. So I’m not going to get mad at people for being wiser with their money.

A lot of wrestling fans want to shame people for being different. Which is odd since most “regular people” would shame people for being wrestling fans. Some wrestling fans just can’t accept being different. They want to think they’re normal, even though “normal” isn’t really a thing. People are weird! Normal? I’ve never seen anything that fits that word.

We have no issues with Toni doing her thing. It might not last long, but I fault nobody for putting off taking bumps as long as possible.

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