stomperspc

I think you are underselling what Meltzer does. His value is in far more than regurgitating what people could see on a streaming service for themselves. His value is in telling people about what they can’t see on the screen for themselves but want to know. His value is far, far more in news, history, and analysis then it is in recaps or match recommendations. If it wasn’t, he would have been irrelevant long ago. Given that, I think the increased accessibility to wrestling only helps him. His base has always been the hardcore fans. Increased accessibility has only made more fans into hardcore fans. There are far more people interested in learning more about New Japan now than five years ago and that plays into Meltzer’s business. Yes, you can find people on message boards who know a lot about wrestling but how much of their knowledge comes from Meltzer? There is not a single person out there that can match Meltzer for depth and breadth of pro wrestling knowledge. Could someone (or more likely, a group of people) outdo Meltzer on those important facets of his job (news, historical perspective, business analysis) and offer the service in one place at a a better price (or for free)? Sure and that might happen, but it hasn’t yet. In any event, I don’t think the services Meltzer provides are being marginalized and will become irrelevant anytime soon. If anything, the thirst for the reporting he provides will only increase with more and more hardcore fans, which is what more and more viewing options should create.

The high and low limits of a scale provide the rest of the points with their meaning. A point on a scale is only meaningful relative to the end points. If there is no upward (or downward for that matter) limit to a scale, then it is useless. A **** ¾ match on a 5-star scale derives its meaning from being so close to 5-stars. A **** ¾ match on an infinite scale doesn’t mean anything on its own. You’d have to dig into the person’s full history of ratings in order to see where on the scale a **** ¾ match falls to figure out how highly the rater feels about a match with that rating. Nobody has time to do that. That’s why we invent scales in the first place so we can easily know what the rater is saying with the rating. To Tim’s point about Amazon, if they had an infinite scale you would have to check every rating for a person to see what a ***** rating really means to them. At that point, the whole thing becomes useless. Also I don’t buy the “Meltzer doesn’t take his ratings seriously so you shouldn’t either” line of reasoning. Why would he waste time on a regular basis with something that isn’t meant to have any value. If it doesn’t have any value, don’t post the ratings. If he continues using them it is perfectly reasonable to discuss them from both a critical stand point (do I agree with his opinion?) and a general standpoint (does it make sense to have an infinite scale?)

Easily prefer matches that are shorter and/or end before the wrestlers have done everything I wanted to see them do compared to the alternative. In anything other than a definitive, top of the card blow off match, the goal should be to leave the audience satisfied but still wanting more.

I agree this wasn't as good as the Dome match but still a fun tag. I thought Matt's selling was more interesting than it was effective. It felt like the crowd never picked up on it to the extent they probably intended. That's the downside to that sort of subtle selling (both with the move that caused it and the way he reacted to it the rest of the way). The spot where he couldn't get off the power bomb and the spot at the end where he couldn't hold onto the sharpshooter didn't seem to resonate to the level you would hope. The intent and effort were there to do something different but I don't think it totally clicked. It might have been overly ambitious.

Only thing Dave said about an Undertaker/Cena angle on RAW in the lead up was that "one would expect an angle" to set up the WM match. He didn't say he heard or knew they were going to do an angle, only that it would make sense to do so. Logically, it would have made sense to use the big audience from last night to set up the big WM match (a point Meltzer made this morning on the audio show). He also didn't' say anything to indicate that Undertaker/Cena is off for WrestleMania on the audio show. Joe was supposed to work Cena on house shows and Dave says they had a big spot planned for Joe & Cena in the Rumble. With Joe out, that spot was given to Elias. The Elias feud is completely separate of any Cena/Taker WM plans.

Far more interested in for this show than I was for last year's but probably a little less so than I was for the '14-'16 shows. I've grown to really appreciate Tananashi (particularly in comparison to guys like Omega) and I don't ever doubt his ability to have a great match on a big show. Really loved White as a young lion and hope he doesn't abandon all of what made him good back then just because of where is on the card now. I don't have much expectations at all for Jericho/Omega being a good match but I am really interested in seeing how they work it. Naito vs. Okada should have some strong crowd reactions. Four Way junior match does nothing me. Not a big fan of Goto but I do like the hair stip in his match with Suzuki. The under card is just kind of there but that's not almost always the case.

I think the problem with the generation gap argument is that it assumes that wrestling is always evolving for the better and it ignores the fact that the worldwide pro wrestling audience is significantly smaller right now than it has historically been. Dave’s point on the Midnight Express is valid to an extent (Cornette would come off far better if he acknowledged that there are obvious similarities between the Bucks and MX). My counterargument would be that MX’s athletic spots were generally executed in a less “choreographed” manner (for lack of a better term), they got over in front of bigger and more varied audiences, and their comedy had a broader slapstick appeal rather than the ironic appeal of a lot of the Bucks comedy spots. Dave seems to be taking the stance that as long as a group of people like a certain style that there is no such thing as taking things too far. Not sure that I buy that. Logic dictates that at some point the old guys complaining about the young kids taking it too far will be right. At some point it goes too far. I am not saying the Young Bucks are that line but I wish Dave and others weren’t so dismissive of the idea that line exists. I think it is perfectly valid for some fans to view the Midnight Express’ innovation as generally being positive and viewing the Bucks’ stuff as a step too far. It is a matter of taste. Likewise, the viewpoint that if the live crowd likes a spot or a match and there is no extra level of danger involved then the spot/match “worked” ignores the fact that something else could potentially have broader appeal. By its own historical standards, wrestling is not very popular now. ROH and the Bullet Club are still very much niche entities in a relatively small industry. It is good for the Bucks that they have their audience and have been able to grow that audience somewhat, but it is still a small, niche audience. It seems like a slippery slope. This is an extreme example but if a match gets over in front of 50 fans all with the same very specific tastes, does that mean the match worked and the wrestlers did the right thing even if a different type of presentation might have held broader appeal? Satisfying your core audience is better than not appealing to any audience but not sure the reaction of that audience should be the benchmark for what works or doesn’t work.

He harped on the money quite a but also wrote things like: "The bigger star is who gets the most talk, most media, who would be offered the most for appearances." "Most talk" and "most media attention" is where he starts to get into Loss' Big Bang Theory idea of buzz/talk/attention not necessarily equaling success. Dave kept mentioning Google Trends as concrete support that McGregor is more popular. If you compare Westworld with Big Bang theory on google trends for the period they were on the air last fall, Westworld consistently outperforms Big Bang Theory in that metric. Yet Westworld peaked at 3.6 million total viewers for its season finale while Big Bang Theory rarely dips below 4x that viewership number and makes CBS a lot more money than Westworld makes HBO. Point being, by the buzz/talk or even media metric, Westworld is above Big Bang Theory but by viewership and business metrics its the exact opposite (and not particularly close). Dave might be right about McGregor being a bigger star than Cena. I don't know. I don't think pointing to things like Google Trends or something as vague as "who gets the most talk and media inquiries" is as concrete of evidence of stardom/popularity as he thinks it is. Sometimes it matches up, sometimes it doesn't.

Yep, people have been tweeting at him that correction and of course, he hasn't replied or corrected his previous talking point. That was the part that irritated me the most. His main support for why Cena might not draw in ROH is completely false. Hardy wrestled one match in 2003 for ROH and a few earlier this year. Neither were after his run as Smackdown champion like Dave claimed. FWIW, Hardy did draw fans for his single ROH appearance (prior to this year) in July 2003. No way of knowing how many but I was there and there were a fair amount of people clearly there for Jeff which would disprove his point even further since pre-peak Jeff Hardy still appeared to draw well in ROH. The hardcore ROH fans rejected him before the match even started, but he sold extra tickets.

I don't think that's the reality of what happened. Ki was a regular in ROH for the rest of 2002 and most of 2003 after losing the title. He was being booked regularly by Zero1 but when he was not in Japan he was on ROH shows during that time period. I've never seen anything to suggest that that the title was taken off of Ki because he was difficult. Honestly, I don't even remember that being speculated about. Gabe's 2002 through early 2003 booking was all about taking the "wrestling as a sport" premise of the promotion and flipping it on its side to create angles. Xavier's "underserved" title reign was part of that and always seemed like a planned booking decision rather than a reaction to Ki being difficult to work with. I'm with Phil. Low Ki might be uncompromising, but that's a big part of what makes him such a fantastic wrestler. Is he hard to deal with? Probably. But I'll take a guy whose a legitimately great pro wrestler that refuses to compromise of a mediocre wrestler who goes with the flow to his own detriment. The fact that Ki continues to get work despite being "difficult to work with" is proof of how good of a wrestler he is. If he wasn't worth the headache, he wouldn't get booked anymore.

I agree that Meltzer is probably basing his assessment of Casas' 1990's work on New Japan (where he didn't have any standout matches) and he probably watched very little of Casas in the 90's. To give you an idea, I went through the Mexico portions of WON's from the first half of the 90's rather extensively in the past year and Dave didn't do reviews or star ratings for most of the big Casas singles matches during that period. He has a few star ratings but they are in the results section which I generally tend to assume our his correspondent's ratings. No thoughts or star ratings of his own on 92 Dandy/Casas, 93 Casas/Fiera, 94 Casas/Cota, ect. Dave was into AAA big time during that period and by comparison was very much down on CMLL. He wrote just prior to the first TripleMania about how the young fliers like Rey, Heavy Metal, Winners, and Super Calo were transforming the style and putting on some of the best matches ever seen in Mexico, while CMLL was hopelessly stuck in a bygone era. In retrospect the complete opposite seems to be true (I think it was Loss who pointed out during the 1993 year book that it is actually the traditionally worked matches in AAA and CMLL that year that hold up the best) but that was his opinion at the time. I think it is probably safe to assume that Meltzer's opinion on Casas in the 90's is heavily shaded by his forgettable NJPW stuff, maybe a few opinions from others, the fact that he didn't think CMLL in general was very good for at least a good chunk of the 90's, and that he didn't seem to watch much of Casas' better 90's matches.

I am going to have to watch this again after reading your review. My recollection of the match was that I enjoyed how they pulled out a lot of stops for what was a relatively insignificant and predictable mask match. Between the dozen masked seconds Silver Fox brought with him, the mask ripping, the blood, and the rudo referee, they definitely dug deep into the bag of tricks to make something memorable out of what was only a hastily repackaged Guerrero de la Muerte dropping another mask. I liked the gimmicks, but remember thinking it was more of a wacky apuesta match than a very good one. I didn't think there was a whole lot of substance in between and despite their best efforts, there was only so much drama they could muster. Felt more like an average apuesta match to me (which is still better than the average normal match) and thought both Dr. Cerebro matches from earlier in the month were more fun but definitely want to give it a second look now.

I think the argument of “Dave doesn’t take his star ratings seriously anymore so nobody else should” is really flawed. I think he very clearly does still take them seriously. He often utilizes his star ratings as metrics to support his arguments on particular wrestlers/promotions/periods. He discusses and defends his ratings in the newsletter, on the audio shows, and on Twitter. As an example, in this past week’s issue with the Omega/Okada rating, he devotes several sentences to explaining why he gave a Jeff Cobb/Matt Riddle match from PROGRESS **** ¼ instead of the **** ½ that his readers who saw it live gave it. You don’t explain a ¼ rating difference if the ratings aren’t intended to be taken seriously. He continues to devote space in the Observer and elsewhere to his star ratings. At the most basic level, why continue to devote thought and time to star ratings if they don’t matter? That would say more about Meltzer than it would any of his readers. Not sure how you can look at all of that and conclude that Dave doesn’t take his star ratings seriously, at least to some level. He clearly puts stock in them. Having said that, I strongly suspect Dave wouldn’t use the “not meant to be taken seriously” argument on his own. I think that’s strictly an argument that others have levied on his behalf. I think he would – and has – argued that they aren’t gospel and there is not a science behind it, for example that the difference between a **** ¾ and ***** match is a gut feeling (the difference between having to think about whether a match was 5 and immediately knowing it is). There’s a difference between understanding the limits of the rating’s value and not taking the ratings seriously. I guess what I am trying to say is that “don’t take his ratings seriously because he doesn’t take them seriously” is a cop out. If the second part of that sentence is true, then Dave should stop giving out star ratings. That would be the issue, rather than blaming his readers for taking the ratings at face value.

Finishing moves are sort of necessary tools to add heat/drama to a match. Great near falls do not generally occur unless the fans buy the move the near fall comes off as possibly ending the match and that buy-in doesn’t usually come unless the move previously won a bunch of matches. The problem is exasperated now on WWE TV because there are no squash matches and multi-man tags are not used as the basic TV match format. If those formats are used for TV, you can establish the finishers there and then tease the finishers in big singles match. Since all we have is singles matches, you have guys teasing and hitting their finishers in basically every match they win. The bigger issue to me – which I think is part of this – is that matches all around the globe have moved more and more to being battles of attrition. A match is won when the losing wrestler is worn down with high impact offense to the point he can no longer lift his shoulders before a three count. To use the Street Fighter analogy, a vast majority of modern matches end when the loser’s energy bar reaches zero. We don’t see as many matches being won when a wrestler catches his opponent in an inescapable and well-executed hold (submission or pinning). You don’t see a whole lot of those finesse finishers any more. Lucha used to be all about that (and they are still better than the US in that regard) but even Mexico has shifted more to the “cumulative damage” structure for big matches. I think the shift has largely been a function of the shift away from low impact offense leading to late match high impact offense to high impact offense being more or less the only offense. It is not a “less versus more” issue as much as it is a predictability issue. It is one thing to know that a match is likely going to be won by a finisher. It is worse when we know that a match isn’t going to be won until a certain point. That’s why so many matches now have dead crowds now early on. The fans have no reason to care until one or both wrestlers have been worn down enough that it is believable that the next signature move will end the match. Bryan Danielson is the last guy I can think of that tried to re-condition the fans to thinking that a well-executed hold can beat anyone at any time when he became the king of the small the package and used it to win some short matches. You don’t see many luchadores anymore who had pinning combinations as their finisher in the way El Dandy and Negro Casas did.

Diamond Dallas Page versus Goldberg at Halloween Havoc 1998. In that one match he did more to get over the title and Goldberg as big deals than the rest of WCW did at any other time during that period. Beyond that, it is an incredibly smart and well-crafted match. DDP was able to plant doubt that Goldberg might actually lose (even though there should have been little doubt) while still managing to put Goldberg over huge. Everyone else working Goldberg around that time was just putting him over quickly or building the match to make themselves look good (the Hogan match to an extent). DDP got that Goldberg would come out even stronger if the match showed that he could take a bad break (the shoulder posting) and weather the strong game plan of his opponent to still come out on top. DDP benefited because he looked crafty and tough, but did so without beating down Goldberg for 5 minutes. Goldberg still dominated, just in a different than usual manner. The Diamond Cutter reversal out of the Jackhammer is an all-time great spot in terms of ingenuity and timing. Goldberg played his part but DDP is the clear reason why this match stands well above any other Goldberg WCW singles match.

Taka Michinoku vs. Shinjiro Otani (ZERO1 – 07/28/2002) Man, they were just a few years too late on this one. Otani is in full-on heavyweight mode by this point while Taka is newly arrived back in Japan. The Fire Festival was Taka’s first big booking in Japan after his WWF run, as he was mainly worked his own upstart promotion upon arriving back in Japan. The selling point of this match is watching Taka work more of a heavyweight style match. They could have worked this as heavyweight versus underdog junior, but that would have been kind of weird considering their backgrounds. Instead Taka incorporates enough heavyweight stuff into his offense and adapts to Otani’s pacing. Heavyweight Otani does very little for me and the same holds true in this match, but I do think it is worth watching for Taka. He clearly makes an attempt to adapt and while not everything is perfect, I think he went in the right direction with it. Taka Michinoku vs. Masato Tanaka (ZERO1 – 08/04/2002) From the final day of the 2002 Fire Festival. If Takana won, he would win the block outright. A loss would mean he would win that Otani would have to beat Samoa Joe in the next match to advance or else Tanaka would still advance to the finals. You can probably guess show this one ended up. They opt for a quick start with both guys throwing out big offense and making covers right away. Taka again wrestles this one with a little more heavyweight-ish offense than usual, but this is far more of a sprint than the Otani match. Both guys are good at that sort of match, so I liked this just fine and think it is clearly ahead of the Otani match. Feels like these two could have wrestled the same match on ECW TV in 1999 or 2000 and people would have liked it a bunch. Just the pacing, high impact stuff, run time, ect. all screams ECW on TNN to me. I don’t know if it was ever a real possibility, but after watching these two matches I am glad Taka didn’t go the heavyweight route post-WWF. He was fine in these matches and there is some interesting stuff from him, but that’s mostly because I thought he did a good job straddling the line between junior and heavy offense. It is more that I think Taka works the best when he is a bully junior and well, that’s impossible to do when you are an undersized heavyweight.

Taka Michinoku vs. Shiryu (Hamada’s UWF – 05/07/1993) About what you would expect from a prelim match between two talented but inexperienced wrestlers. Shiryu looks off at different points and the match comes to a screeching halt at one point (Taka puts on a chin lock as they regroup). There’s some good stuff in here including what was basically a corkscrew lucha arm drag by Taka. I liked the simple mat work opening. The ending sequence – quick reversals of a variety of roll ups – shows off both guy’s athleticism. Average match, but once again you can see how talented and diverse of a wrestler Taka was even at such a young age. Taka Michinoku vs. Gran Naniwa (Michinoku Pro – 09/29/1994) I liked this a lot. You can break the match down into three distinct stages, starting with the high-energy opening. They slug it out right away with Naniwa getting the advantage and landing a top rope plancha to the outside. After a few minutes, they settle into a lock back and forth segment where they trade submissions back and forth. This was my favorite part of the match. It had a real lucha feel to it in that even after a move or after a hold was broken, each wrestler would take another shot at getting a submission. The final part was high spot heavy. Taka goes for TWO springboard planchas and wipes out on the first one, which had to hurt. There are lots of big moves late with Taka showing off his wide range of offense. Naniwa was still blowing stuff rather egregiously from time to time and struggling through singles matches in 1996 so I didn’t expect much from him here, but he was on his game. Highly recommended – not a MOTYC but one of the better Kaientai-era M-Pro singles matches I have seen.

I ranked Taka #44 on my Greatest Wrestler Ever list., which I felt was a pretty aggressive ranking and one I wasn't completely comfortable with it. The fact that he has had such a long career working well in a variety of styles and a variety of places helped him a lot. 44 felt high in isolation, but I also didn't think any of the guys I had below him on my list had better careers. After watching and re-watching some of his work since last March, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t lower his position at all. If anything I would bump him up a little bit the next go-around. He has been a top tier wrestler going on 25 years now and is as well-rounded as any junior heavyweight in history. I would go to bat for Taka being the second greatest Japanese junior heavyweight of all time behind Liger. He doesn’t have Liger’s charisma, but I like Taka just as much as Liger working the mat and better when flying. His career is hurt by spending so much time in the 2000’s in All Japan which was a poor fit for him so the overall output from his career might not match his true talent level. Here’s a few matches I watched recently (I'll be adding more here and there). All but the Malenko match in this first group are worth watching. ***************** Taka Michinoku vs. Mens Teioh (Michinoku Pro – 03/16/1993) From M-Pro’s debut show. From an in-ring style perspective, this match is a harbinger of what was to come for the promotion during the Kaitentai fueled heyday of the mid-90’s. It is a true hybrid of Japanese juniors, lucha influences, and traditional US style (which you would expect from Teioh). They work all of those different stylistic influences into one strong, cohesive package. The heat is great, the structure is familiar, and at just a tick under 10 minutes the match doesn’t overstay its welcome. Both guys are relatively early in their careers at this stage but you would never know it but how polished their work is. Not a classic (wasn’t meant to be) but a very good sub-10 minute match that is also worth seeing due to the historical implications (ie. M-Pro’s inaugural show). Real Hero has this up on his archive. Taka Michinoku vs. Super Delphin (NJPW Sky Diving J – 06/17/1996) For Delphin’s CMLL World welterweight title. Meltzer gave this match the highest star rating of any match on the show (****) and it is hard to disagree with that. They work it like a title match with a lot of low impact stuff in the early and middle portions before going near fall heavy at the end. Taka does a few awesome dives and the crowd completely loses their mind on his springboard moonsault. Delphin was always a weird guy to me because while almost everyone else involved in the Kaentai feud had something that set them apart (Togo was the great rudo, Sasuke was the ace, Naniwa’s comedy, Hamada was the old guy, Yakushiji’s ridiculous arm drags, Teioh’s Terry Funk tribute act, ect.) Delphin was just the solid wrestler with a cool mask. That’s basically his role here which is fine, because Taka brings enough high end stuff for two guys. I thought the finish was a little kick out heavy but this is still a very good match that I would group in the 2nd or 3rd (probably 3rd) tier of the New Japan juniors 1990’s golden age. Taka Michinoku vs. Dean Malenko (WWF Smackdown – 04/04/2000) Dean’s the Light Heavyweight Champion here and a couple of weeks away from his ballyhooed title defense at Backlash versus Scott Taylor. They get five minutes which isn’t bad for those days, but there’s not much here. The best spot was Taka arm dragging his way out of a standing gut buster from Malenko. The disappointing part is that if Dean wanted to exchange holds and do mat work for 3 ½ minutes before the finishing stretch, Taka could have done that. If he wanted to work a sprint that showcased Taka’s athleticism, Taka could have done that. There were different ways to go here that would have allowed Taka to show off in way or another. Instead it was just your basic ho-hum Malenko match where they wrestled an unremarkable, sort of unfocused match for five minutes. Dean was never very good at laying out matches to highlight his opponents (which makes him a questionable choice for an agent) and this is another case of that. Taka Michinoku vs. Kaz Hayashi (All Japan Pro Wrestling – 07/02/2010) All Japan actually headlined a Korakuen Hall show with this junior title match. It’s a dual limb work match with Taka going after Kaz’s neck and Kaz focusing in on Taka’s knee. I really like the transitions here. Both guys had a way of quickly shifting momentum without the match ever becoming too much “your move, my move” back-and-forth. Some really slick counters and submission set ups from both former Kaientai members, but especially Taka. The match stays grounded for the most part but Taka does do a springboard moonsault from the second rope into the crowd which was really incredible looking. I liked the progression and the twenty two minutes went by quickly, but I think it is more of a good/very good match than a great one. Not a big fan of Kaz’s AJPW work in general and he was just okay here.

Nominating: Golden Magic vs. Pirata Morgan Jr. , mask vs. hair (IWRG - 02/12/2017) Not sure if it is a MOTYC exactly, but a really fine mid-level apuesta match that struck a nice balance between violence and "normal match offense". Pirata Jr. was an offensive machine. I loved all the variation elbow drops and back elbows. The crowd brawling to start the match and again in the third fall was short and sweet. Both times they built to one big spot, but each of those spots was set up quickly and naturally so it was the tedious kind of lucha extrema. Pirata Morgan was excellent s his son's second, interfering at all the right times, being in the right spots, and taking a bump or two when called for. I have been disappointed with some recently hyped lucha indie matches (including last year's Delta/Galactar mask match from Monterrey), I was getting Pirtata Jr. mixed up in my head with Hijo del Pirata Morgan, and while I really, really like Golden Magic as a flier I wasn't sure how well he would adjust his offense in a blooding brawl, but the match met or exceeded my expectations. Voting NO: Imposible vs Relampago (IWRG 1/22) As a stand alone match, I thought this was only okay (I've felt similar about all of their matches). I thought it did a nice job building to a possible mask match and some of the bigger spots were good but otherwise I thought it wasn't anything all that special. The brawling became a little repetitive at point and the third fall didn't have the quality of near falls/drama needed to put it over the top. Rey Hechicero vs. Caifan (Promociones El Cholo de Tijuana 1/6) Technically this was fine, but the crowd was so disinterested in what they were seeing. Heat is not everything, but they got so little reactions for most everything they did that it hurt the match. I've also though both guys have had far better mat based matches (with different opponents) the past couple of years. Katsuyori Shibata vs Matt Riddle (RevPro 1/21) If the entire match was worked similar to the opening minutes, it would have been great. The opening minutes had the interesting, unique mat work and hold/counter hold stuff I want from a match between two guys with Shibata and Riddle's backgrounds. Unfortunately, the match quickly shed that uniqueness and was wrestled like every other from about three minutes in up through the end. The no-selling spots are so played. Even if someone doesn't have an issue with those spots conceptually, I am not sure how people can defend the same no-selling suplex spot being shoe horned into every single major Shibata singles match. Also another match where I failed to get the hype on Riddle. I think he has potential but he wrestles just like everyone else. Not sure - besides experience level - what makes him different from any number of indie guys. Voting YES: Kazuchika Okada vs Minoru Suzuki (NJPW - 2/5) They could have accomplished the same in a 30 minute match, but otherwise I liked this a bunch. The pacing and structure (Suzuki continually going back to leg locks) was a breath of fresh air for current New Japan. Okada's selling was good, although I didn't find it was otherworldly as Meltzer did). John Cena vs AJ Styles vs Dean Ambrose vs Bray Wyatt vs Baron Corbin vs The Miz (Elimination Chamber 2/12) Exactly what I want from a match like this - constant action, well done eliminations, and a few big bumps. Story wise, I thought they nailed this. Every wrestler in the match had some sort of role whether it was getting themselves over and putting someone else over (sometimes both). Ambrose was the only wrestler in the match who didn't stand out in some way, but at least they used the match to set up his feud with Corbin. Loved the way they handled Wyatt eliminating Styles and Cena. When WWE tries to give a quick push to a career mid carder it usually feels forced, but his victory here felt natural.

Presumably if Kelly was a fulltime employee he was technically a Sinclair Broadcasting employee. I believe Meltzer said way back when New Japan first brought Kelly into do their English announcing that the deal was not made through ROH, meaning that that New Japan was paying Kelly directly. If that is the case, his New Japan announcing job would be a second job in the eyes of Sinclair. I could see why the company would have trouble understanding why an employee should be allowed to take a week off to go work his second job, even though ROH and New Japan do have a relationship. If Delirious or Joe Koff just decided on their own that Kelly can’t go and there would have been no other issues with Kelly going, then I agree that is strange. However, I can definitely see from a corporate standpoint how the ROH and New Japan jobs would be looked at separately and Kelly taking a week to go work for New Japan would be akin to you or I taking a week off from our main job to go work a second job. Unless we were taking vacation to do so, I doubt that would fly. It is probably difficult to explain to someone outside of wrestling that ROH and New Japan work together and it is good for ROH for Kelly to have that job. All they are likely to hear is that one of their full time paid employees is taking significant time off to work for another company that both hired him directly and pays him directly.

I think the debut ROH show main event still does the best job of this of any 3-way match I have seen (four ways are inherently different since they usually involve tags). It doesn't look easy. You got to come up with a lot of logical three person spots and transitions .

Agreed. I think if we are discussing natural athleticism there is no noticeable difference between current wrestlers and wrestlers 30 or 40 years ago. A baseball player from the 50's who was considered a good athlete in his time probably isn't at the same general level of physical fitness a a comparably athletic baseball player from 2017. The difference has nothing to do with their athletic abilities. The difference is attributable to scientific advancements more than anything else.

The main issue I have is the hot take culture that is rather pervasive, but I also don’t think that is in anyway wrestling specific. Maybe this is unfair but it often comes off to me like everyone is in a race to be the first to watch a match or the first to praise it. I can recall at least a couple of instances this last year where someone got on a website for not having a review up of a show within 24 hours of it happening when the only way to get the review would have been a live one. People have complained about VOD’s going up 4-5 days after a show takes place rendering the show “old news” by then. That all seems so silly. What's the rush? I don’t completely agree with Parv that there is a widespread “you must love everything” attitude. I think there are people like that, but they aren’t the majority. It is more along the lines of there is so much wrestling out there and every wrestler/promotion/match is going to appeal to someone. We all like to have our niche so people find something they genuinely like and they want others to like it, so they hype it incessantly. The end result is everything is hyped (by at least someone) which can create the illusion of “everyone thinking everything is great”. People have always pushed their favorites it is just now everyone has a forum to do so and everyone generally has access to the same insane volume of matches so the impact is magnified. For me, I’ve kind of limited who I follow and read for match quality opinions/reviews. It is not that I want to isolate myself necessarily but there is only so much time and I was wasting a lot of mine watching matches that I didn’t like simply because someone somewhere hyped them. After I’ve watched a handful or however many matches that a certain person or group of people hyped and don’t see the same things in the matches that they did, it doesn’t make sense to continue down that path. I’d rather be “late” to a match by limiting the number of people whose match opinions I follow rather than waste time watching matches recommended by people who I have already determined do not share my same tastes. If something is truly great the hype will persist and spread and I’ll eventually get around to it.

Omega’s performance (as it often tends to be) was too “look at me and what I can do!” for my tastes. It hit me as being Shawn Michaels like with the table spots, big flying spot, ridiculous match length, major bumps, and gratuitous near falls that came across as Omega showing off what he can do rather than working to put together a cohesive match that served a greater purpose other than Omega being able to show off. A lot of what he did was impressive. Some of it did work on a level other than making Omega look impressive. A lot of it didn’t, however. The table stuff especially felt out of place and merely an excuse for Omega to take a big bump. The ending stretch was way too long and way too over the top for me. It makes Tanahashi and Okada’s ending sequences look downright simple by comparison. I am an Okada fan but agree this wasn’t his greatest match. I don’t know if that was because he was forced into working closer to Omega’s style or what but it really doesn’t matter. Like everyone else, Tanahashi/Naito was my favorite match followed by the junior title match. On first watch, I didn’t enjoy anything on this show as much as I enjoyed Tanahashi/Okada from last year’s card.

About Meltzer and the WON’s influence on lucha – even the periods when Dave has been into lucha he has still written broad, negative things about Mexican wrestling. I think stating that Dave watches CMLL on Friday evenings and says positive thinks about the shows on occasion doesn’t tell the full story, I think. Meltzer has liked lucha at times but even at those times he does often treat it as a different, often lesser form of wrestling. 1990 WON Yearbook – “Lucha Libre for Beginners” (Written after he saw Hamada UWF shows in Japan and started watching EMLL weekly on Galavision when he got back from this trip. Important to keep that in mind that this is a period where Meltzer is watching the Friday night Arena Mexico shows weekly and generally enjoying them – enough so to write an article aimed at getting other US fans interested in Mexican wrestling – but he nonetheless writes stuff that seems more likely to turn someone away from lucha than draw them in.) That certainly doesn’t read like a person who is really into Mexican wrestling. The full article comes off as written by a huge wrestling fan who views lucha as a fun but weaker subsection of wrestling. Just prior to the first TripleMania, Meltzer wrote “This new breed of wrestler like Rey Misterio Jr., Heavy Metal, Psicosis, Winners and La Parca have been responsible for taking the ring work to a completely new frontier . . . and have been responsible for some of the best matches ever seen in the country.” In the same article he writes that the new style makes the CMLL “style” seem “outdated.” This is a period where Meltzer is really into AAA, although far less so CMLL. In the same article hyping up the first TripleMania, he flat out says that matches involving young, unpolished fliers (matches which frankly don’t hold up as well as other AAA/CMLL matches from the same time period) are among some of the best matches every in Mexico. The implication is that matches prior to then weren’t very good, a point he hammers home with the “CMLL style is outdated” line. You can read WON’s circa-2005 where he is excited because Mistico is doing amazing flying and drawing big where he still takes potshots at certain stylistic choices (a small example is he didn’t get at all why guys would do arm drags out of dives even though those are the type of pretty moves he tends to like). Last couple of years he has written more than once about luchadores using too many dives and he has referred to matches with nothing but big move after big move and near fall after near fall as “CMLL style matches”. Like all of us Dave likes what he likes and he prefers the Volador Jr. style match to many of the other styles to be found in Mexico which is fine, but I can easily see how readers of his newsletter and Twitter account would come away with a false impression of what Mexican wrestling is about, even when Dave is ostensibly praising CMLL. There have also been long chunks of time where Meltzer watched almost no lucha and his coverage was limited to news items passed along to him. I think it’s a fair assessment that his lucha fandom of the past 30 years has been large periods of time where he hasn’t been all that into it with a few periods where his interest was peaked, yet he still levies some potentially unfair criticisms at it. I’m not laying the entire blame for Mexican wrestling not being as popular with US/Canadian/Europe wrestling fans as Japanese wrestling at Dave’s feet but I think his personal viewpoints and coverage have undoubtedly played a significant role. Not sure to what extent, but its there. As Tim said earlier, its no coincidence that the one match that won Observer match of the year was a match that Dave watched right away and heavily praised. I am sure many people share the same opinions on lucha as Dave (or even more negative opinions) and arrived at them independently. That doesn’t change the fact that he is a major influence and has been for many, many years and it would be a stretch to paint his overall coverage of Mexican wrestling as positive. On another side note, I also disagree somewhat that Japanese wrestling was easier to come by than lucha. CMLL Friday night shows aired on Galavision for many, many years at a time when the only way to Japanese shows was to tape trade. Certainly presently CMLL is easier to watch than any Japanese promotion with three weekly FREE streaming shows. People can watch whatever they want to watch but I don’t think its an accessibility issue. Anyway, don’t really have a side in this discussion, I just find Meltzer’s writing on lucha (particularly CMLL) over the years to be very interesting.