Dave Meltzer stuff

[khawk20]

I always wondered how that stuff played to Canadian audiences...

We would just get confused when Duggan would come to a Canadian town and try to start "USA!" chants.

[El-P]

I always wondered how that stuff played to UK and Canadian audiences...

You'd have to hear the huge U-S-A chant he got in Paris in 93... Fucking French dumbasses.

[Ditch]

Nothing beats Jericho getting a U-S-A chant vs Chono.

[tomk]

Dave Meltzer on why WWE has consigned the sneaky Japanese heel to the dustbin of wrestling history:

 

The gimmick was killed was the WWE's TV affiliate in Los Angeles refused to air Yokozuna matches unless they clamped down on the racist angle with Jim Duggan and toned down the racist commentary.

 

In other words, our society has changed, the Japanese political groups would get them shut down and sponsors would pull out, so no, you couldn't do it.

 

Kaientai was post Yokozuna. My understanding was that they dropped the Hirohito Jr gimmick because of concern for how it would affect foreign tours not because of Japanese political groups in the US.

[sek69]

Nothing beats Jericho getting a U-S-A chant vs Chono.

 

I think it was one of SKeith's rare funny bits where he mentioned the irony of Bret getting a USA chant in a match against Yokozuna.

[Bix]

He didn't live in the US until recently, but Bret's an American citizen by birth via Helen.

[S.L.L.]

In the long, long ago, I remember reading something on RSP-W from a British guy talking about a WWF event he saw there in '95 (I think) where Fatu was wrestling Owen Hart, and a "U-S-A" chant started up. In England. In a match pitting a Samoan against a Canadian with a Japanese manager. I think that's still the gold standard for odd instances of the "U-S-A" chant.

[jdw]

Davey Boy vs Iron Sheik got a good USA chant out here in Los Angeles. There are others like that which I've fogotten over the years.

 

John

[goodhelmet]

He didn't live in the US until recently, but Bret's an American citizen by birth via Helen.

Maybe but when I think of Bret Hart, I don't think American.

[jdw]

After Kobayashi jumped to New Japan for the “match of the century” with Inoki, it hurt IWE badly. The decision was made to go with the best worker at the time, Mighty Inoue, as world champion. But he was a small flyer, and it didn’t work. First, an interpromotional show was held at Sumo Hall in Tokyo, with All Japan, billed as promotion vs. promotion, a ten match series which saw Kimura, groomed to be the next champion, go to a double count out with Jumbo Tsuruta, in what was voted that year’s match of the year in Japan. Inoue dropped the title to Mad Dog Vachon, who immediately lost it to Kimura in a cage match, making him the established top star.

04/19/75 Kimura over Vachon for IWE Title

03/28/76 Jumbo vs Kimura MOTY

 

Yeah, I don't get that.

 

Also, Baba beat Rusher at least twice. The piece doesn't give much through to the long ignored All Japan vs IWE feud/rivalry that went from 12/75 through 02/78.

 

John

[kjh]

Dave Meltzer claims that Hulk Hogan is broke

[Loss]

Has it ever come out how much TNA is paying Hogan? Do you think he's getting seven figures?

[Bix]

Also, is Spike paying for part of his salary?

[Ditch]

I can believe it. He probably never adjusted to fiscal reality after the divorce. See also: Flair, Ric.

[sek69]

Flair was never good with money, by all accounts Hogan saved well and was set for life until the shit really started hitting the fan.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

I never heard that Hogan "saved well," (obviously from watching his reality showe you can tell he lived a pretty opulent lifestyle) but there was always a hell of a lot more money coming in for Hogan than Flair. It's absolutely astounding to think of the amount of money Hogan was being paid in WCW - consider that Starrcade '97 received 650,000 buys, multiply that by 29.95, take the 40% that goes to WCW and give a quarter of that to Hulk - that's nearly $2 million for one match. The Rodman/Malone match probably made him over $1.5 million, Superbrawl VIII around a million, he was gauaranteed a minimum of $600K, plus he was making 5 figures for every TV or house show appearance, surely collecting heavy royalties off of the nWo shirts, and apparently he and Sting were even getting paid when toy stores sold Jericho & Malenko figures. He and Flair aren't even in the same stratosphere financially, or at least they weren't before. I'd be curious to learn what Flair's best year was, money-wise. I don't think he ever got a million-dollar contract in WCW, which is sad because he probably could have played hardball and gotten one.

[sek69]

Well, OK maybe saying he saved well was a bad choice of words. Hogan clearly didn't go around eating fish out of a tin can like Brody, but he also didn't take every opportunity to squander his money like Flair did.

[rovert]

Not new news remember the reports during the divorce when his WWE royalty check was his only income.

[Bob Morris]

It seems to me Hogan was just as guilty of spending a lot of money, he just spent it in different ways than we associate with Flair. I believe Hogan put a bunch of money into these other wrestling ventures he went into and lost money on them all.

[Bix]

I've never heard of him having a financial stake in the XWF or the Hulkamania Tour.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

XWF had a money mark named Walter Frank who supposedly was willing to invest $30 million or more into the promotion. For his sake, I hope he didn't.

[BruiserBrody]

 

 

 

[Marty]

Dave Meltzer claims that Hulk Hogan is broke

He should've put millions in retirement funds like Flair did.

[kjh]

Dave on Dana White accusing unnamed sites of taking payoffs to influence top ten rankings:

 

Ratings are a sore point with everyone because they are an anachronism from another era of boxing.

 

Rating MMA fighters is ridiculous (even though I have to do it) because it's a game of inches, fighters in different groups fight with different rules and top guys don't fight each other. How am I supposed to compare Gilbert Melendez and Kenny Florian? It's absolutely impossible, and to even do so is both stupid and irrelevant. Each company and culture has different mentalities. It's a professional sport where entertaining the audience is more important in the big picture to almost everyone except the fighters than pure wins and losses. I've seen fighters often win dull fights and promoters who have them on guaranteed number of fighters per year deals, don't book them and starve them out. When a show is over, people never talk about how ratings get changed based on who won and lost, they only talk about if they were entertained or not by the show.

 

I think Dana was referring to promotions that advertise on web sites and the sites then favor those promotions or feel the need to get people from those promotions in the ratings. I don't think he meant, nor did he say, that people are directly paid off by promotions to get their fighters rated, because that doesn't exist as far as I know. He's made the same speech to me.

 

I don't think it's an issue. The issue certainly was, but has become less of late, the idea that somebody like Matt Lindland would be ranked No. 1 at middleweight or Shinya Aoki at lightweight.

 

Every promoter claims ratings are biased again their promotion.

 

Essentially White's words were twisted and even what he meant is probably a stretch in most cases. It's a non-issue to begin with, and now people are jumping on the twisted version of the words knowing that there's no evidence of a promotion paying off people who vote in polls.

Does Dave not understand how Dana's thought process reflects on him as a Yahoo! Sports columnist?

[jdw]

My head hurts after reading all of that.

 

John