kjh

Yeah, the ladder match comment was strange, as the WM X match is still very highly thought of and is still talked about as one of the greatest matches in company history. None of the later ladder matches are still held in such high regard, even if they blew people away on the day. Part of that is that ladder matches have become so common that they all blur together, but part of it is that the "crazier shit" with all the props takes time to set up and can telegraph the finish.

Dave on people complaining about his SuperBrawl II ratings today:

I tend to agree with that, but there's certainly still a subset of smark fandom that takes their word as gospel. Also, at the end of the day, the non WWE version of wrestling history is going to be heavily shaped by the opinions of Dave (and to a much lesser extent Bryan and Wade). And given that Dave's opinions are somewhat out of sync with the current major smark tastemakers, I can see plenty of myths being propagated as facts in the future.

Myth, because it's not lost. Well, I don't see how any modern day WWE PPV main event could ever get lost, but I'd certainly say it was under appreciated and forgotten about by certain segments of the wrestling fan community. Sure it was well liked at the time, but it's not the sort of match that Dave Meltzer or Bryan Alvarez or Wade Keller would ever point to as a classic, so in that sense you could call it lost. With regards to Booker T, I really think it was the time to pull the trigger on him and give him a chance with the title. The fans were digging his act, he had some momentum on his side, they should have taken advantage of that, especially when the alternative was the old, broken down, injury prone, washed up Kevin Nash as Hunter's next challenger.

To be fair to Danny Bonaduce, it's not like many big name pro wrestlers didn't believe that to be true in the past and some still do to this day.

I think the bigger problem is creative team burnout rather than fan burnout.

From F4W/WO.com:

It wasn't even the highest rated fight of the night in the worst rated K-1 New Year's Eve show ever up to that point in time and that's without any direct competition from Pride. So it wasn't off any charts. But OJ's right the fight was after he was inducted. I suppose it means something that he had enough name value that he could headline a New Year's Eve show years after his prime even though it was a sad spectacle and a ratings flop.

IIRC the official number was heavily inflated. It also should be remembered that the New Year's Eve show is K-1's WrestleMania and featured fights with Kid Yamamoto, Bob Sapp, Masato and Musashi, all of whom were probably more responsible for drawing fans than Funaki who had been out of the fight game for years.

Shamrock isn't in the WON Hall of Fame because Dave decided to start an MMA HOF on a whim the year he was going to put Shamrock on the ballot (2005). If he hadn't decided to do that and stuck to his guns about shoot fighters in his HOF, I think Shamrock would have been voted in by now. There were enough reporters who bought his argument that MMA is a subset of pro wrestling, enough historians who mark for shooters and enough aging carnies who want their fake stuff legitimized to outweigh the voters who would refuse to vote for him on principle.

What bugged me wasn't so much Dave calling Japanese MMA pro wrestling, I'm used to that by now, but that his argument is so behind the curve. Japanese MMA is pretty much dead to the mainstream media and public nowadays. All the freakshow fights they booked didn't lead to anything more than a big short term fad. UFC would be wise to learn from some of their mistakes. Also, hasn't Dave pointed out numerous times that UFC's recent PPV success compared to the struggles of WWE and TNA is that wins and losses do matter and their title belts are protected.

Funaki's the pioneer. To Japanese fans he revolutionized the business by promoting shoot matches as a new from of professional wrestling. It shouldn't be forgotten that such a promotion was a dream of Karl Gotch, the so called "God of professional wrestling" in Japan and Funaki was the one to realize it, not Takada, not Maeda and not Fujiwara.

Dave from F4W forums on whether fight of the night bonuses are dishonest to the spirit of competition:

From Dave Meltzer's Monday news update - WWE tries to spin bad Mania fiscal performance:

I'm not even sure Dave would believe it himself without rereading what he wrote at the time. That Luger was at one point a good worker seems to be lost in the mists of time, replaced by the accepted talking point that Flair carried Luger so well that he conned management into believing Luger was actually good.

Were any criminal charges ever filed against Mel Phillips and Terry Garvin?

Really? Meltzer seems too friendly with Feinstein to make him the butt of his jokes and I don't think he would classify what Feinstein was caught doing as molesting underage boys. Doesn't Vince ignoring Mel Phillips and Terry Garvin's improprieties with young ring boys fit his cryptic comment much better?

Paul Heyman sucking up to the McMahons so he can continue picking up a pay cheque after the money marks behind his latest projects run dry should come as no surprise.

Didn't Meltzer say he heard the story before the sleaze thread? The sleaze thread certainly made the rumor more widely known, but I don't think it was completely made up out of thin air by some teenage geek like the Benoit Wikipedia controversy. Instead, it was probably made up by someone inside the business for their own shits and giggles.

When has Vince ever cared about looking like a horrible person?

That story did make the rounds, but it was from an accident when parasailing or windsurfing or something like that.

Actually on PPV in North America UFC is outdrawing WWE on a much larger scale than ever before. Domestic WWE PPV business is now so bad that their traditional 2nd biggest PPV of the year will probably be outdrawn by every UFC PPV this year, barring a major decline in UFC's PPV business.

Actually I think the economy is to some extent a BS excuse (sure it explains some of the decline but not all of it), as UFC PPV business has remained strong, which indicates that if WWE had matches people wanted to pay to see their PPV business would have held up. I mean, UFC's latest B-level afternoon PPV show from the UK headlined by Dan Henderson vs. Rich Franklin outdrew Rumble in North America by over 50,000 buys.

The Royal Rumble bombed (down 22% worldwide and 29% domestically). Given that they've got a weak card (no major celebrity involvement, no big name return wrestling, a dearth of fresh matches) with overall poor hype (though some angles have clicked none of the programs have had any sustained momentum or long term build), there's no reason to believe Mania won't suffer a similar year on year decline in PPV business as Rumble did.

Jericho seems to be facing Snuka, Steamboat and Piper in a handicap match at Mania with Flair and Rourke watching, presumably at ringside. Well that sucks. Outside of a miracle this card is going to bomb so badly.