Matt D

I need to crash and I do think your response is interesting and probably true in other cases absolutely but my first thought was. "Wait, what about the story of Foley going to see Snuka jump off the cage?" Caveat number two is how it's interesting that they used to talk about how dangerous battle royals or cage matches were for the people's bodies all the time, but then it was about either money or hate, not about the fans. In the end, until we hear from some people who were watching at a fairly advanced age in the 70s, I'm a lot more comfortable with "played a part" than I am with even "popularized." I think it's the second generation of people after Meltzer that are more important in it spreading. And Meltzer's most important contribution in this specific thought (that matches can be good or bad due to quality) was in creating and maintaining a centralized place for it to exist during the years in the wilderness before the internet, if that makes sense, like monasteries in the dark ages or an incubator.

That shift happened after 1998 though. Does Meltzer have more direct influence before or after 1998? I'd also counter it with the NXT crowd's reaction after the first time Aiden English sang. I swear there was a This is Awesome chant there too. That wouldn't have happened if the gimmick happened in ECW in 1998. Would it have happened in 2008? That's the sort of thing I don't think Meltzer goes for at all, which is extraneous but I find it interesting.

And I think that it had to be out there in the people who would eventually become his readership and he brought them together and then, as the internet came together, they spread it out to the next generation, that he's more the unifying force in movement. That's when it comes to match quality and thinking about it. When it comes to exactly what a good match looked like, the workrate ideal, I'm okay with the idea that he really defined that. But the idea of "A match can be good or bad?" I'm less comfortable with that, even if he could be the leader of the cultural movement that put that forward. But I think it was probably an underlying thought he tapped into and that his initial reader base had before they ever picked up a WON. Frankly though I think we need some old people to chime in here.

I don't know a real answer to a lot of this. I'm 32. My experience was that I got into wrestling at 9. I got into it again at 16 or so and by that point the internet was out there and I was sort of reared and raised in pro wrestling culture by the disciples, by the people who had subscribed to the observer. And you get the ECW fans which is early internet stuff, and now everyone over the age of thirteen who gets into wrestling in any meaningful way is so socially active that they're tapped into this, and I'm glad that you're trying to draw a line through it in the book to come, because I'm not entirely sure how it works. I just think that the people who talked about quality and thought about it existed and he just unified them and it built momentum that way, especially in an age before the internet when the only real history and discussion between these forces spread around the country would be a newsletter. When you read old WONs, there's a very big collaborative element to it. Edit: I think quality mattered to certain people within the business too. You hear stories like the JJ Dillon one about wanting to impress the boys in the back with a great match when he was supposed to wrestle chickenshit or the way Savage would plan out his matches.

I don't want to break down your paragraph since I think you were trying to get across a general thought and not a specific one. I do think what you're suggesting is that he turned a specific percentage of the audience from "common wrestling fan" to "uncommon wrestling fan," or maybe that he united an even smaller percentage that he DID create with another percentage of already existing "uncommon wrestling fans" under one flag by giving them a central resource to tap into and then feed back into. The question I guess I'm curious about is when the common wrestling fan stopped thinking about wins and losses and about whether a match was good or not and how much of that had to do with Meltzer? I think most of the people who he initially had as subscribers already felt that way, but that's just a guess.

He "defined." So he codified what was already there? Something people were thinking but they didn't realize? I'm sorry for the semantics but I'm not 100% understanding.

Went back and read. 1. You always no-sell my best stuff. It was Foucault there. 2. It was pretty definitive the influence Keith had, but I didn't see the link to Meltzer necessarily. In fact, you suggest that Keith was actually more important than Meltzer. I'm still shaky on this. Was it that he invented the "not-common wrestling fan" or that he made the common wrestling fan think differently?

Thanks, I will read; now go and run with the Russian Revolution thing.

I'm not entirely comfortable with that. For one thing, Dave came out of a broader tradition of that sort of thing going back into the 70s, no? I mean, I know we have some older posters. I know there were fanzines and what not, things like Bockwinkel's Brigade. i'm okay with the idea that Dave helped defined certain views about, let's say, the importance of workrate, that we're only getting away from now. Maybe that he brought it to the masses on some level? But it's not the masses. It's more like the Russian Revolution and it's taken a while but it's finally come to a head with the fans taking over the booking from the WWE with Daniel Bryan 30 years later? I don't know who that makes Trotsky though.

Give me quick takeaways?

This is the message board equivalent of this:

Question: Do we consider Meltzer an influence on Scott Keith? See, my problem with the Ebert comparison is that I think he shaped the entire IWC and what was considered accepted taste for years and years. Even Ebert had Siskel (not to mention others and also that there isn't a direct comparison to film geeks, I think).

Tweens like awful acting.

Part of me really thinks that AJ/Paige/Emma/Bayley/Becky vs. the BFFs could have been marketed to tween girls and it might have caught on.

What about Bart Gunn?

That wasn't in Part One and I hadn't gotten to part two yet. It wasn't about that at all. It was about the booking and the fact that Axel was clearly there to build up Hunter's feud with Brock. He was a sacrificial lamb. Later on, he was there as a stooge for Heyman vs Punk, and not even the main one, which was Ryback. Axel was positioned to get beaten over and over again. That has nothing to do with being a good fit or not. From his first moment on TV, he was there to fail. Hunter emasculated him and instead of beating the crap out of him, he just took it and tried to look tough. It's one of the worst three debuts of the century.

He's the manifestation of a curse that Kevin Sullivan cast against the Mulligans in 1984.

My feeling on Reed is that he was really made for the territories. He seemed like a guy who wanted to have the luxury to up and leave when he wanted to up and leave and that made him a bit less desirable for the bigger companies at that point, where he would have been ideal for a group that wanted to bring him in short term. He reminds me a bit of Condrey in that way. Wouldn't that have been a great team?

I wish someone would ask Heyman about Axel on one of these podcasts.

Current Favorite Wrestler To Watch: This is sort of tricky. I've been watching a lot of lucha so I want to say Negro Casas but I've been seeing older tecnico Casas which isn't as fun. I'll go with Dr. Wagner, Jr., I guess, though he has his flaws, or Goldust and Stardust. Last Fun Match You Saw: Fun? Atlantis, Ultimo Dragon,Great Muta vs Wagner, Jr., Perro Aguayo Jr., and Ultimo Guerrero. It was sure as hell fun. It wasn't actually good though. I saw a Blue Panther vs El Hijo Del Santo match that WAS actively good and quite fun. Wrestler You Want To See More Of: I saw this match the other night with some guys I've barely ever seen any of. Misawa and Kawada and Kobashi and one other guy. Out of those four, the only one I actively want to see more of is Taue. I'm not even kidding. By leaps and bounds. I've got more of all of them ahead of me though. Last Live Show Attended: 2004 maybe? Match You Are Looking Forward To Watching Soon The Most: I've got a Ultimo Guerrero vs Rey Bucanero title match ahead of me that I'm looking forward to right after Rey's tecnico turn. I have no idea if it's any good or not but I'm hoping. Also another Panther vs Santo match from a month later. Last Fun Interview/Promo You Saw: Ambrose last night, though Zeb was fun too. I caught both this morning. Steph's dancing was the very best though. Last Interesting Thing You Read About Wrestling: Let's go with OJ's Lucha History Lessons which have started back up. Last Worthwhile Wrestling Podcast You Heard: I heard Jericho/Heyman/Edge Part 1 the other day and that was fun. Most Fun You've Had Watching Wrestling Lately: Probably the first fall of Rush/Mascara vs Casas/Shocker since Rush and Mascara put in such a consistently dickish performance. Wagner reacting to Muta was up there too though.

That's actually the most disappointing thing about Hero. Once upon a time, WWE would have properly punished him before showing him the door.

re: Austin. This is a little bit silly I guess, but I think he'd have to change his act a little. I've heard too many podcasts with the guy.

I agree with a chunk of that. The key point there is that it matters because he was such a trendsetter and in some ways even still is. That's why there's criticism. On the other hand, now I'm thinking I oversold how big a heel act Dibiase was in 92-93 just by looking at cards. Sorry, Parv.

He sure didn't care about the Duggan match at the time. The only mention of it in 93 was: "Duggan juiced from the mouth in that match and it was heavily pushed as U.S. vs. Japan and they are pushing that theme for the Wrestlemania main event with Bret Hart, which is ironic because Yokozuna and Fuji are both more American than Bret Hart." He was much more interested in the publicity of people protesting against it. I guess it's good that he's been able to put it in context retroactively though. He's forgetting the fact that Macho had knocked him down just the week before on the Royal Rumble as the finish of the damn match, but that was more WWF's fault than his. That led to a hilarious moment where Macho tried to point it out on TV only to get hushed. Savage is sort of hilarious announcing in 94 when he was frustrated about not being used and used a lot of his time as a pulpit to talk himself up. He wasn't quite so bad in 93. EDIT: Sorry about all the edits in the last post. I was researching as I went.

I haven't had a chance to listen yet but I don't think anyone thinks he doesn't care about booking or how wrestlers are presented. That has nothing to do with his tastes in what excites him in a wrestling match and what makes him dole out star ratings. I get what you're saying, I think, but usually that specific critique on Meltzer is primarily about tastes in wrestling matches. For instance, and again, i'm asking this because I haven't had a chance to hear it, did he talk about how good the European Tour Yoko/Duggan matches were from 93, with Yoko's cutoff timing being so great and Duggan very solid working from underneath, especially in front of crowds where the jingoistic thing was naturally nullified? The knockdown challenge was also expertly worked and it's a bit more memorable, but it had great build and emotion and crescendoed to a really nasty beat heel beatdown to garner heat for Yoko. How deeply did he go into that? EDIT: Looking through the 93 WONs, the only thing that interested him at the time was that the segment wasn't shown in parts of CA and Chicago due to protests from Asian Associations. Also: "Yokozuna and Jim Duggan are having horrible matches in the negative star range, although with all the TV behind Duggan's comeback, he's getting as big crowd reactions as ever. Mr. Fuji throws salt leading to Duggan getting counted out. " He was getting between -** to **1/2 from correspondents. EDIT 2: here's what he said when they came to the cow palace on 5/15: "Yokozuna pinned Jim Duggan in 6:56. Of that, two minutes was cheerleading and three minutes was a bearhug, but with Duggan, you don't go in with high expectations. This was the only match on the show with any heat and there was a huge pop when Duggan knocked Yokozuna off his feet. Even with a $3 kids discount, this was more of an old-time wrestling crowd that seemed to be there more out of habit than inspired by any of the angles as there was only one moment during Duggan-Yokozuna during the entire show with any real crowd intensity and the "Pavlovian" reactions to the babyface entrance music was way down." Which is sort of fair. I wish there was an Owen Hart match on the show or something, but the only thing he liked was Luger vs Hart which he felt was heatless. Here's what he said about the main: "8. Steiners beat Money Inc. via DQ in 15:40. The place emptied out big-time right after the ring introductions which tells you how much interest the tag title has right now. The wrestlers sensed it as they worked a sound storyline but it was pretty much lacking in action. Before the match they ordered the briefcase to be sent back to the dressing room. Finish saw Scott hit DiBiase with the Frankensteiner when Brooklyn Brawler ran to ringside with the briefcase and handed it to IRS who hit Scott with it. They simply announced Steiners as the winners to tease that the title had changed, but people have seen this too many times and the "fake" title change got no pop. Finally they announced it was a DQ and the titles didn't change. Disappointing match. *1/2."