evilclown

I know something about message board trolls. You guys are engaging with one on Lawler here. Cut bait.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Dave discussing the numbers like they exist in a vacuum is kind of amazing. The numbers are the last chapter in a long book. The real story is found in everything that came first. Is Danielson not moving merchandise and ratings, despite being the crowd favorite? It might be worth exploring WHY that's the case. That it is the case is really just skimming the surface on the issue.

I talked to Scott a year or two ago. His memory was pretty spotty, especially surrounding the WWF expansion, which was my topic of choice. He and his wife were involved in real estate down in Florida and he seemed to be enjoying retirement pretty well.

Just wanted to chime in, 15 years after we first started arguing about this match, to say that it is still awesome and the goofy finish is the best part!

I love Dave and the Observer. I hope that is clear throughout. He does an amazing job. And maybe you're right about blind sources. I just wouldn't personally want to be in the business of trying to parse the news that comes out of wrestling. "I know Daniel Bryan had a concussion because Paul Heyman heard it from Michael Hayes who is pretty sure he heard Hunter talking about it with Vince on the phone right outside the WWE doctor's office."

I'm going to jdw a couple of things out of this. Consider it an homage. Agree. It's abysmal. Of course, if you are a business reporter or cover the entertainment beat, WWE is small potatoes. Almost no major media company has anyone covering wrestling. Part of that is because wrestling is the kind of niche topic that attracts its fans but actively repels everyone else. Part of it is intentional on WWE's part. They've made a calculated decision that they are willing to bear the cost of not having regular coverage in exchange for not having people digging in their business. This is the 24-hour news cycle mentality coming back to bite us. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to create content, even when there is no organic "content creation" event. That leads to nonsense being written on the regular. It pays the bills. This is true, but in a different way than you see with WWE. I think news coverage of MMA is terrible, much of it aping political coverage that allows blatant lies and misdirection so long as those lies come in the form of a direct quote from Dana White. Feature coverage of the UFC, however, is very strong. Fans know the fighters better and understand what goes into putting an event together and the sacrifices fighters make preparing for bouts in a way we don't really understand the wrestler's lot. That's a result of access and some robust reporting in these areas. But is it? There's no real way of knowing because every item is a blind item and the only substantiation comes from Dave himself or other wrestling writers who don't show their cards. We have only their word that they are getting the key items correct. Don't get me wrong. I've read Meltzer long enough to know that he's on point quite often. But I've also read his MMA coverage and am close enough to some stories to know his sources on some things. If his wrestling reporting involves the same kind of exchanges, there's some bullshit that slips through. When I say that I wouldn't want to be in the business of breaking wrestling news or reporting in the dirtsheet style, it's not just preference either. I would literally not be allowed to run a series of unsubstantiated claims. A Turner company can't really risk being totally wrong on a story the way Keller or Meltzer can. Obviously the consequences legally would be very different.

I have no interest in being involved in that brand of "news." With respect to the dirtsheet guys, how much of it is really "news" anyway? How much is, rather, an elaborate mythology that is validated by, you guessed it, further blind reporting by the same people who created the original rumor in the first place? It wouldn't pass the smell test in media coverage of any other business in the world.

What does "confirmed" mean? Story on the front page of WO com where Dave says Bryan got a concussion? I assume that is sufficient for your needs. I don't think that's what confirmed means, no. That's what you would call a blind item or a rumor.

I think it was pretty clear, talking to Road Dogg before Old School Raw, that they were going to be around a bit.

What does "confirmed" mean?

The old Dave = the new Wade Keller (on one of the few occasions he breaks news today)? I do think that part of the reason coverage has changed is that the reporters don't go to the matches as much anymore, so they aren't around the wrestlers as much as they used to be. Also, today's generation seem much more scared to speak out for fear it would jeopardize their jobs than the old generation were. People are savvier. Why would a wrestler or executive want to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy influencing the opinions of these ancient taste makers with their four-figure audiences? Some still do of course. But that's such a shrinking and miserable demographic, I wonder why they bother?

That sounds low. MMA Junkie/MMA Fighting/ESPN/SI/Bleacher Report/Fox/Globo/Yahoo I know are approved every time (minus Gross, Hunt). Often multiple people. MMA Weekly/MMA Heat/Wrestling Observer/Sirius Radio/SportsNet are almost always approved. Local paper/local alt paper/local TV and radio are always approved.

Gross. Hunt. Sherwood & Sherdog.com (banned in 2005-2009; then again in 2010-2012). Reporter from Home and Garden has credentials though. Not sure what was so confusing about them giving Home and Garden access. They were and are aggressively seeking out potential female fans, especially for Ronda's fights. HGTV is way more valuable towards that end than 100 MMA blog sites. It's also increasingly difficult to get credentialed to a major UFC event. Most sites that do are big corporate site, with a few legacy holdovers from the old days.

A literalist to the last!

This board and everyone on it is so distantly removed from the normal wrestling fan we might as well be from another planet. I don't mean actual history. I mean the kind of pidgin history you hear passed around outside of wrestling shows by the fans who "seem to know what they are talking about. They've seen the A+E special maybe, or just the WWE historical releases. That brand of history. Of course not. Being a Paul Heyman guy has nothing to do with ECW. It's a CM Punk thing. Cena is a made man. If the company does tilt even further towards appeasing their dwindling fans, however, I think you might see a Cena turn. He's the perfect heel for the IWC crowd. You've never met a know-it-all geek in your years as a wrestling fan? Really?

So my attempt here was to write something the Masked Man at Grantland might write. Thoughts?

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1920585...e-wrestling-war

Clearly Meltzer in particular has been right many times as John points out in copious detail. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't be talking about him in his very own thread. Of course, had I the time or inclination, I could make a similar list of faults and errors in judgement. However, I accept your point. I think Meltzer does a good job of writing about the business. But I think that's a different area than what I'm talking about specifically, which is about their aesthetic judgements, not how they cover the business side. Meltzer and Bryan have a certain type of wrestling they like. But that vision of wrestling didn't win in the 1980s. The stuff he likes hasn't won. So when they complain about angles being bad or the promotion pushing the wrong wrestlers, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Because what he likes isn't always what fans are going to like.

My point kind of boils down to this: when it comes to understanding what real wrestling fans want, the dirtsheet guys have been huge failures. In the biggest aesthetic battle of their era they were wrong. Hugely wrong. Despite being shown over and over again that "workrate" isn't the key to wrestling success, I still find myself reading about how they should turn the keys to the company over to the small indy worker dujour. The amount of projection in the average wrestling newsletter or column is staggering. What you like, as the dirtsheet writer, is not what the average fan likes. Poking holes in whatever the current direction is, calling it "illogical" and refusing to engage with it honestly, doesn't really work when your track record is so bad.

I don't even think Dave thinks in terms of sophisticated positions. John To them sophistication boils down to whether or not you're "smart." They consider sophisticated fans to be the ones worried about "logic" in the Daniel Bryan-Wyatt angle, instead of ones willing to go with it because they expect some awesome promos and skits along the way. The default position among hardcores for 20 years has been "the booking is awful" and "my guy is being buried." The insistence on being smarter than the booker has caused the internet fan to miss some awfully cool stuff that was right under their noses.

I'm not trying to say Bryan is some kind of intentionally bad influence, but whenever Meltzer is interviewed or talks wrestling with someone else, he really does come across much more positive and differently. I should have put current day wrestling. While I understand that modern stateside wrestling can be frustrating, I just don't think it's as bad as they make it seem to be at times. Absolutely they play off of each other in a bad way, creating a spiral of negativity. The obsession with whether or not wrestling angles are "logical" has killed their ability to enjoy anything about the sport.

If I do, it's going like this: "What memories do you have of Ric Flair." "What memories do you have of Mid South?" Just to troll you guys. Why would I ruin a great opportunity to troll 20 guys on a message board? That's just how I do.

What's interesting to me is how engaging Bryan and Dave are in person. And Dave can easily be pulled into interesting wrestling conversation. But the two aren't necessarily good for each other. It's two negative people who convince themselves that not liking things is the sophisticated position to take. They need to break up that tag team and try something else.