Sean Liska

I think sek is too vociferous of his criticism of Foley, but I think he does have a point. In WWE he lobbied to have programs with Orton and Edge where he helped make them as stars. I think we can conclude from how he's being used currently that he's not doing the same in TNA, that he's more interested in rubbing shoulders with the real stars, his old pals like Angle, Jarrett and Sting. He may do some comic relief with the Motor City Machine Guns, but he hasn't any interest in genuinely putting them over in the ring. That's telling, given that he's got much more sway in TNA than he ever had in WWE. Can we say that for sure given the way TNA has been booked over the past few years, though? The company has never shown much interest in creating stars. He has sway, but he doesn't have total creative freedom to where he's dictating PPV lineups. If Jarrett wants him in the King of the Mountain match and in PPV matches with Angle and Sting, we don't know that he has the ability to veto that and demand to work a PPV program with the Machine Guns or AJ Styles.

I don't know about complain, but he did make comments about how Angle shouldn't be wrestling anywhere with his drug and injury issues when he started with TNA. Also during the times where Impact was the Kurt and Karen Show, he'd make comments on how it wasn't a good idea to spend so much time on them which can be taken a number of ways. Of course when talking about TNA it's easy to bash the usual suspects like Russo and their "avenging their high school traumas" booking style, but a large part of why TNA isn't any better than it is has to be due to the fact that not only are so many of their main eventers ex WWE/WCW guys, they're almost all old and/or broken down. Nash, Sting, Steiner, Angle, Foley. The only guy who isn't a complete wreck is Booker. The rest of them get mentioned in the WON, it's usually with some remark about them not being able to cut it anymore. Foley gets mentioned and it's more "well it's TNA, what can you do". Honestly I don't give a shit either way who Dave bashes and doesn't. I just threw it out there as an example that what Bix was talking about with him and Tenay is hardly the only example. Dave has said that Foley doesn't look the part anymore and can only wrestle in protected situations in order to be effective. But I don't see anything wrong with Foley being on top and wrestling monthly. He's a huge star, can still cut among the best promos in the industry, and is famous for his ability to help create new stars like he did with Rock, HHH, and Orton. He's amongst the most unselfish guys ever. He's perfect for TNA. They just need to actually use him correctly. Imagine if they built a feud for him as compelling as the ROH program with Joe that never got blown off. They could immediately make a new star with that type of clever booking. I also don't sense that Dave's PPV reviews for ROH were different from his other ones. He loved the action on the Gabe PPVs but said that the production value and star power wasn't there. He's sour now because ROH sucks. When did he print show reviews from Gabe? WON readers were always in attendance at their shows and sent in reviews.

Dave was absolutely in the tank for ROH when Gabe was booking. Actually it was more Gabe being smart enough to realize most of the ROH fanbase would be WON readers or at least be aware of its existence, and using that to his advantage. It was also the first time I realized that Dave has a tendency to turn a blind eye to things involving his sources. Also him not really getting on Foley for being nearly as blatant about going to TNA for a pure paycheck grab as Kevin Nash. I don't know if Foley's a source per se, but he's definitely a Friend of Dave, and as such his TNA run (including another rehash of the tired commissioner role and a run with the promotion's top belt) has largely escaped the wrath most over the hill wrestlers using a promotion to masturbate with would be getting. In fact, I can't imagine anyone else getting a pass on the "quits a cushy announcer gig in WWE because Vince is a meanie" deal either. In fact, in his rush to justify Foley quitting rather than put up with it had the unintended consequence of making Foley look like a giant pussy who couldn't handle the same stuff guys like JR and Michael Cole deal with all the time. Why would Dave rip Foley for quitting his job? It's his life. He fulfilled his contractual obligations and is the one turning down an easy jobs that pays well. I don't know where it would be Dave's position to judge him on that. How can you critique Foley for quitting a cushy job, and then say that going to TNA was a paycheck grab? Especially when he's clearly lost a bunch of weight and is taking big bumps when I can't imagine it's something he needs to do at this point in his life. I don't agree that Dave was overly in the tank for ROH. He loves that style of wrestling. He goes crazy for mediocre Chris Daniels spotfests in TNA. Of course he praised ROH. But he was always realistic about their limitations and faults.

How does Dave always seem to get attached with people that don't seem too bright when it comes to wrestling analysis? Is he like a version of Vince McMahon, where he has to surround himself with people that agree with everything he says without ever being challenged? Look at all the people that have written for the site over the years. There's no original thought anywhere. How did he think that Ben Miller was worthy of a column in the Observer? I remember chatting regularly with Todd Martin about ten years ago on AOL IM's, and he's a nice and smart guy, but his reviews could easily be written by Meltzer. Everyone around Dave is like that. Alvarez is horrible. That he would throw out Dave's 5-star ratings for Misawa's matches as some sort of objective statistic with no reference is typical of people associated with Dave. I say this as a huge Meltzer fan. I don't know what I would do with myself if he ever stopped covering wrestling. But I don't think he's ever attached himself with someone who can offer an original take. I don't know if that's a character flaw on his part or if people are overwhelmed by his presence. At least Wade Keller was willing to disagree with Dave back when the Torch was tiny and he was a nobody.

I love when Dave loses it. It's like an old Nitro recap from 1999.

There's a Brody shoot interview on YouTube floating around from when that type of thing was really rare. Pretty good stuff and I'd say it showed that he knew what he was talking about. When Meltzer was feuding with Vince over the Gulf War angle, he included some stories about how Brody helped him to understnd what his job was and how it wasn't to cover for wrestlers but to be a source of the truth. I think part of what people admired about Brody was that he understood that wrestling promoters are all going to try and screw you, so he would beat them to the punch and screw them first. That's why he was in and out of so many territories. You wouldn't be wrong if you called that selfish, but that's territorial wrestling. Kind of like a Kevin Nash kind of smart, but less harmful. Brody didn't have much of a mind for getting other guys over in the ring. Maybe he was better at that as a booker.

Just unbelievably sad and shocking. I also don't know what else there is to say.

Like most of life, he was complicated. Obviously there are the ugly stories out there and I'm not going to defend him as a person. But his actions were tough for a lot of wrestlers to deal with because he did do some genuinely good things as well. Shad of Cryme Time told a story about how he was having a tough time after his wife had a miscarriage, and Benoit was the guy that would sit with him and talk about it and give him encouragement. So he was having a hard time dealing with it. There are some nice stories about him and Brian Hildebrand. I'm drawing a blank right now, but I know there are other stories about him going out of his way to help people. That's where the "great guy" stuff comes from.

Joey was perfect for ECW. With the whole "us vs. them" thing the company based itself on, it was important that the people that represented the ECW establishment be liked and respected by the fans. If the fans didn't identify with guys like Heyman and Joey, the whole premise the company was built on wouldn't have worked. His smart-ass remarks towards WCW and WWF endeared him to the fans and furthered ECW's marketing campaign. It was especially important that the fans respected Joey in his role as straight man because he was such a big part of the TV show during the earlier years. In 95 and 96, it seemed like he got more face time than anyone in the company. He was always on camera explaining angles, narrating recaps, expressing disgust for the heels, previewing upcoming segments, and so forth because of the way the show was produced. In this age of indy wrestling and nerdy announcers that grew up trading tapes, it's easy to forget that it was a big deal back in 94-95 when Joey was calling Malenko-Guerrero or Mysterio-Psicosis matches and took the time to learn most of the moves and show the guys respect. Nobody else in America was doing it back then (outside of Tenay and Cruise with When World's Collide). I don't get the complaint that he tried to get himself over at the expense of the wrestlers. Part of his appeal was that he put so much work into properly getting over the guys. I thought he was pretty good at conveying emotion. He could give a two minute speech about how repulsed he was by Raven stealing Sandman's son, or the Dudleys taking out Beulah, and he'd have me sucked in by the end of it. His best work, IMO, was when he did PPV's with Cyrus. They played off each other really well and he seemed more relaxed once he knew he didn't have to fill three hours of PPV by himself. I liked his first night in WWE at Taboo Tuesday 05. One of the other great things about Joey was that you could tell he was a huge fan just like his viewers. And one of my favorite Joey calls was from that Taboo Tuesday show after the HHH-Flair cage match. Flair looked really good in that match and you could tell Joey was marking out over calling it, and after the match he yelled, "Still the IC champion, still the man, still, in my opinion, the greatest wrestler ever to lace up a pair of damn boots!" That was classic Joey. Every big wrestling fan could identify and feed off of the emotion behind that call.

If fans didn't want to watch her, wouldn't they just head to the concession stands when she came out rather than make the most noise of the night? If I'm apathetic about something, I stop paying attention. Jillian Hall has a super-annoying gimmick, but you don't see her getting Vickie-type heat.

I always thought Vickie's role on WWE TV was sort of a feel-good story. Yeah, she started out as a charity case that wasn't comfortable on TV, but she turned into a pretty entertaining character that was important to her show. And you can't underestimate the heat she got. It wasn't just go-away heat. It wasn't just heat that anyone in her position would have gotten. She got more heat than anyone since the heyday of the Mr. McMahon character has gotten, and there has to be a reason for it. When she would come out on the ramp and make a few announcements, the level of sustained noise from the fans that she would generate was unbelievable. You almost never see that type of heel heat anymore. I think she helped Edge. And the fans loved seeing her get what was coming to her. They went nuts last night when she announced she was quitting. I thought it was nice that, four years after Eddie died, she still had to be making some really good money while only working a few days a month. She was a major part of the TV, so I'd figure she was making into six figures. She got to get the enjoyment of eliciting passionate reactions from major arenas of fans, which is something so enjoyable that most wrestlers are never able stop chasing it. Hopefully she made a bunch of money over the last few years and has the financial security to be able to sit at home with her kids for a while. That's a nice story by pro wrestling standards.

He said it would happen with UFC, which means two of their top guys would promote an independent show and agree to work it. Definitely hard to see that happening in this day and age with the internet around and someone like Meltzer actually having some mainstream exposure reporting on MMA.

When was Dave a cheerleader for Vince?

Joey's always been a really conservative guy. I always thought the fact that he was a boring Republican family guy made his role as straight man in ECW all the better. This definitely isn't a work. There are a few of us conservative dudes left in the world (although some of this stuff is more to the right than me). He did a blog a few months ago about something that was bugging him involving government interference with his local church, but I forget what it was about. He's also mentioned meeting his wife at a church function.

You could probably make the argument that no pro wrestling match is all that special without context, I guess. I don't see how 6/3/94 is different from any other great match in that way.

In 1997, DX was in the ring doing a promo and then THE FOOTAGE started playing on the Raw screen. That was what I remember watching. Not the actual MSG stuff going down as it happened, but DX playing footage of it on Raw and making comments about it. Where 'we' are today, as far as wrestling fans who have smartened up, is not accepting guys like Masters,Luger,Batista, and their poor work being. I think fans always had an idea of what an amazing wrestling match should be rather then the WWF roid monsters and in 1994-1995 it was available to the mainstream public in the united states. When I was 8 I knew I didn't enjoy Hogan matches and I loved seeing guys like Savage,Steamboat,The Rockers, Koko B Ware, and Tito Santana and always thought they should be in the mainevents of the shows and should be champions. Because these guys were working the 'WWE style" they didn't break out the stuff 1994-1997 ECW did that later became so heavily pimped. 06/03/04 kicked the smark stuff into overdrive, I believe, as it provided a template for what classic wrestling and GOOD WRESTLING can be. It made wrestling into an art form. But I honestly believe if WCW hadn't done its Japan shows and had the NJPW relationship then a lot of fans would have never come to discover 6/03/94 and amazing overseas workers, perhaps leading to Heyman never really booking them as there would essentially be no real buzz. Wrestling fans don't accept Batista? I guess WWE fans are a bit more cynical than they were in the 80s, as back then we never would have seen a top face treated like Cena has been at times, or a scene like Goldberg-Lesnar, or fans loudly chanting "You Screwed Matt" at Lita and Edge after Matt Hardy was fired. Those fans are still in the minority when compared with most WWE fans, but it is somewhat different now than it was before 96-97ish. We could discuss when that change happened. I'd say the combination of the Monday Night Wars and the growth of the internet. I don't think 6/3/94 really changed anything, fan-wise. To the people reading the Observer and trading Japanese tapes back then, it was awesome, but those people were all watching Japanese wrestling to begin with. No casual fans saw it. I'm not really seeing the connection with the WCW or ECW. Not sure about WCW smartening people up, although Muta's exposure in WCW and the WCW/NJPW SuperShows may have encouraged more Observer/Torch readers to pursue Japanese wrestling. There was a time when people complained about Dave covering too much Japanese stuff in the Observer back before the tapes became more widely available with Japanese supermarkets popping up around the country.

Yeah, Gordon Solie's greatness isn't a myth as far as I can tell. My dad grew up in Florida during the 60's and early 70's as a big wrestling fan. And he's always remembered Solie with the same reverence that a Phillies fan would hold Harry Kalas, or a Cubs fan would hold Harry Caray. He will always maintain that Solie is the greatest announcer of all time. And it's not just him. When Solie died, one of my dad's high school buddies mailed us the obituary from the local Tampa newspaper and wrote a short note about what a sad day it was. Jim Ross has always maintained that Solie was the best announcer of all-time and he's just fighting for second. There's got to be a reason he's still so revered decades after his peak. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of vintage Florida footage available for us to see, but you can get a feel for it from the Film Room specials they've put out on 24/7.

The guy grew up in wrestling locker rooms. His heroes were pro wrestlers. I'm sure he was "into it." Rock is one of the all-time most admirable guys I've seen in wrestling. He was doing clean jobs on RAW for the Big Bossman and Al Snow while he was super-popular and didn't say a word. He probably did more clean jobs than any top face ever. He put Lesnar over clean at SummerSlam when it was time to make a new star and had a great match. Despite being at the top of the industry and making tons of money, he clearly improved every year he was in the business. Look at how much he grew from 98 to 2000. It's incredible. He was never complacent. He was well-liked backstage and by all accounts never developed an ego despite his enormous success. I mean, the guy even gave Dave quotes about his Observer HOF induction talking about how grateful he was. What more could you ever ask for from a guy? The Rock was one of the wrestlers who weren't afraid to job. Kudos to him for that but I don't think he did more clean jobs than any face ever. He was very protected and rightfully so as a face during the year 2000. I dunno. Like I noted, he was doing jobs for everybody in '99, including guys like Davey Boy, Snow, Bossman, a not-yet-over HHH, and surely other people I'm forgetting. It's like Vince was testing him that year. He was more protected in 2000, but he was still the first babyface to ever lose a WrestleMania main event. He lost the title to Angle relatively cleanly. In his feud with Jericho in 2001, he put Jericho over a few times when no one else was doing it. I remember him tapping out to a Benoit crossface cleanly with no interference during the build to the Lesnar match. What other super-over top babyface has ever lost as much? Of course the great thing is that none of those losses damaged him in the slightest because of how good he was.

The guy grew up in wrestling locker rooms. His heroes were pro wrestlers. I'm sure he was "into it." Rock is one of the all-time most admirable guys I've seen in wrestling. He was doing clean jobs on RAW for the Big Bossman and Al Snow while he was super-popular and didn't say a word. He probably did more clean jobs than any top face ever. He put Lesnar over clean at SummerSlam when it was time to make a new star and had a great match. Despite being at the top of the industry and making tons of money, he clearly improved every year he was in the business. Look at how much he grew from 98 to 2000. It's incredible. He was never complacent. He was well-liked backstage and by all accounts never developed an ego despite his enormous success. I mean, the guy even gave Dave quotes about his Observer HOF induction talking about how grateful he was. What more could you ever ask for from a guy?

I don't know about that. The Malenko-Guerrero series got over huge in Philly. Their final match had people crying at ringside as Guerrero circled the ring and said goodbye. They made a whole TV show out of it because it got over so strongly.

I actually randomly watched the Martel-Jumbo title change on YouTube last night before any of this came up and thought the match was really good. I guess I can see how it didn't play well for the AWA fans, though, since they didn't know Jumbo too well.

Meltzer had a little tweak in today's update that I'm assuming is aimed at jdw and the rest of the "Jumbo wasn't lazy" fans (of which I am one). "--There is an interview with Rick Martel as yesterday was the 25th anniversary of his AWA title win over Jumbo Tsuruta at http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2009/05/11/9427566.html He wasn't that high on his title win match over Tsuruta which no doubt will cause some people's brains to short circuit."

I know it's fun to think that in far-off lands, wrestling is respected and our fandom is justified, but at far as Canada goes it just isn't true. Wrestling results aren't reported in the paper, it's not some venered cultural institution, and Bret Hart isn't our Michael Jordan. Dude, I've been reading the Observer for 17 years. I know the deal. I'm not searching for fandom validation. But Meltzer has offered plenty of anecdotal stories about how wrestling is more accepted in Canada and how he is much busier doing media stuff when he goes there than he ever is here unless someone just killed their kid. That's all I'm going off of. Wasn't Bret Hart on a list of most repsected Canadians or something? That would certainly never happen here. Edit: I see the Canadian list thing was mentioned above.

Wrestling in Canada does seem to be a more respected cultural thing than here. It can be covered in the mainstream media without anchors making it known that its beneath them. Wrestlers can regularly appear on something like Off the Record and be treated seriously.

WCW was a pretty hugely succesful company in every way during 97 and 98. Buyrates were way up from where they were in the mid 90's, and they sold a ton of tickets. I remember them having something like a 15-show sellout streak in 98. I don't think Bischoff gets enough credit for where WCW was in 93 and where it was in 98. WCW had a hard time selling 1,000 tickets to Omni shows when he took over. By 98-99 they were selling 40,000 tickets to the Georgia Dome just for Nitro. But, of course, you can't ignore what happened after that and how terribly he ran the place for most of 98 and 99. He's defintely a unique figure in wrestling history.