Eduardo

A few months ago, Alvarez was talking about how he's been watching some 1989 WCW matches and while he enjoyed some of them (he said some of the basics from some workers were better than some today), he said he couldn't get into the finishes since he claimed they ruined the match for him: "The one thing that I will always notice is that I would watch these matches, and I'll be 'God these guys are great, this is a really good match, it's holding up', and then the thing that kills it is always the finish. The finishes, and it's because, I guess part of the reason is because as wrestling has evolved, things that used to be finishes, aren't necessarily finishes anymore. Or guys use new things, or what used to be a finish before become a nearfall. I mean, you watch a match out of 89, and guys will be a great match or anything like that. And then somebody will hit a double arm suplex and pin the guy. And that would never happen in 2009! And you watch it and you kinda think 'What the hell was that finish?!?'. Or some guy will do a vertical suplex for the pin, and those are the things that don't hold up in 2009. But if you took a lot of those matches and added a modern finish to them, they would hold up just fine and a lot of them would hold up fine, and a lot of them would look a lot better than the matches nowadays." - Bryan Alvarez I thought some of you would find this recent Meltzer/Alvarez claim very amusing and mind boggling: "The Shawn Michaels of 1992 would probably be the best worker in the business." - Dave Meltzer "He would undoubtedly be actually!" - Bryan Alvarez "Yeah." - Dave Meltzer

This is really unexpected and I'm assuming it's going to turn into a really interesting story at some point. As far as outside ventures, didn't Shane want to get involved in MMA a few years ago? Maybe I'm remembering the details wrong, but I think Shane was one of the main WWE officials that really wanted to buy PRIDE from DSE at one point.

On a similar note, this reminds me of this one time on WOR, Bryan Alvarez mentioned watching Married with Children, and I've never heard a man be as shocked as Dave Meltzer was. Meltzer then proclaimed that he didn't think Alvarez watched anything but wrestling in that loud Dave Meltzer proclamation voice. It was really amusing.

... But seriously, what a silly story, there has to be more too it.

This is Dave's blow-offish reply today to kjh:

I was just about to post them, but those appear to be all the quotes from Dave concerning Rude. The last two quotes are Dave's bizzare "arguments" against people saying that if Rude was in WWE nowadays, he would have easily been one of the top heels on either SD! or RAW.

Niebla is going to lend Casas the wig, and Niebla jokes that if Felino puts up his mask in a mask vs mask match against Mistico, he'll have the trashcan ready to cover his head.

Wait, Vinny has a ballot?!? To those that don't have access to the F4W board, Meltzer got annoyed that people were saying Rude was a better candidate than Edge. It was pretty amusing.

Here are the results: EDIT: Also, Everett Marshall was added as an overlooked figure.

Really enjoyable show. Bix, you accidentally linked to the podcast and not to the report.

Yeah, it tends to be really distracting for a babyface commentator to be such a prick to his co-partner. Ross just seems to get really annoyed easily these past few years.

It didn't make much sense, but wasn't Dave Meltzer claiming a few months back that Flair was actually doing great financially?

What do you guys think is the main reason why Atlantis never really comes close to getting voted in? The lack of support he gets has always been puzzling to me. 25 years as a featured charismatic player in Arena Mexico and a guy who is one of the elite trios workers in the history of lucha libre, he just seems like a far better pick than a lot of guys in the HOF. Meltzer says he's "not a Hall of Fame worker" but he is an excellent matworker (he probably works better with Blue Panther than anyone else ever), is a great brawler (has some awesome trios brawls against Villano III and of course the famous match from 2000), and was a spectacular high flier in the 1980s. I've seen Atlantis in some trios matches that featured Santo/Casas working against each other and Atlantis has stolen the show from them. His body of work includes some of the best title matches, mask vs mask matches, trios matches and tag team matches of the taped era of lucha libre.

Snowden started a thread on September 3rd, so I thought I would post some of the Snowden/Dave posts for you guys that don't have access: First from Snowden, as he quotes a story: Now Dave replying: Another Dave post: Snowden replying to Dave's last post: Another Snowden post: Then Snowden starts to get into arguments with random F4W posters...

This was a blast, you and Naylor should do these on a more regular basis. Rob Naylor recalling the time he gave his sister the Russian sickle was hilarious. Btw Bix, Kurt Brown mentioned doing some epic length podcasts with you about the WON HOF recently. So I was wondering if there is any time frame on when these are going to hit the internet?

Jerry Lawler is still doing great, his match last year when he teamed up with Chris Michaels against Todd Morton and Bull Pain was an excellent match. In 2009, he has a pair of really good matches with Jeff Daniels and a great match with Bill Dundee on 3/14/09. Also, Lawler had another with Dundee at XCW-Midwest but I haven't seen that yet.

Where was this posted Bix?

To be honest, I'm not sure.

I thought this too, but an hour ago I was on boxylucha going through a thread where they had photos of title matches over the decades, and came across this picture from July 17th, 1992: After seeing these pics, I started looking over Lynch's list, and found that he has this NWA World Light Heavyweight Title match in his collection under the title "MEXICO # 57 EMLL July-August 1992".

If we were to compare their careers up until they came to America, then yeah Psicosis blows away Mysterio's work. In AAA, Psicosis was a pretty great trios worker that was capable of some great brawling, comedy, some great sequences, and some insane bumps. But I can't see the argument for Psicosis being better than Rey, when comparing the last 13 years of their careers. Rey's WWE work is impressive enough that there is very few people I would put ahead of him, although I would love to hear an argument for Psicosis.

With the exceptions of Lawler and Funk, Bockwinkel is probably my favorite talker ever in pro wrestling. I love the title match he had with Terry Funk in the early 1980s, some really masterful use of holds and counter holds, with both guys working from the defensive always trying to figure a way out of the position they were in. I've watched a lot of the matches he had with Verne, and Bockwinkel is phenomenal bumping around and selling everything Verne is throwing at him. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I remember liking the way Bockwinkel worked with Otto Wanz as well. Also, I love his series with Lawler, I always thought it was a shame that Lawler beat Hennig instead of Bockwinkel when he finally won the AWA World Title. But yeah, I agree with Naylor, someone needs to make a best of Bockwinkel promos DVD.

I was shocked at how nasty Dave got when he was faced with the suggestion that he has a lack of criticism towards some of his buddy's in the business. Why would he get so worked up over it? Also, it seemed really odd of him to still be taking shots at MRV. I love Dave Meltzer, but he has this "living in a bubble" thing where he uses his Observer's "Year End Polls/WON HOF/PPV Polls/Readers's Response Letters" as facts to end every argument and anything that exists outside of the Observer universe doesn't matter.

His "overview" of Misawa's career and his childish defense of it are embarrassing, and it made me think, how did he get in the position he is at right now? Does Meltzer deserve the credit of his success by putting him as his sidekick on WOL in 1999? Nothing against Alvarez, I like him at times and he's done some great work in the past, but it just makes me wonder how he got chosen to be the number 2 guy and if there would be someone better.

I remember an old Observer Live episode when Jim Ross was asked about who he would like to bring in from Japan (Ross was VP of Talent Relations at the time), and if I remember correctly, he awkwardly stumbled to an answer with a little bit of help from Dave. Granted, that was about a decade ago but it was pretty apparent that he didn't watch much, if any, Japanese wrestling at the time.