What the hell is wrong w/ Wade Keller?

[Bix]

Really...what!?!?

 

For those of you who don't have access to the original article, or those who have access but aren't foolhearty enough to read through that whole stupid thing, here's some easy to digest bullet points to sum it up.

 

-Wade asserts that TNA is in a pretty sad state. Sensible enough.

 

-Wade goes on and on and on for what feels like 80 pages with warmed over analysis of why things aren't working out to well. He also has added an extra layer of wishy-washiness to this, making frequent refernces to how their current strategy might work anyway, or not, who knows?

 

-During this, he re-establishes a theme from a recent piece about the "Fire Russo" chants, reminding us that all of the stupid stuff that TNA does is because of Jeff Jarrett and Dutch Mantel. Vince Russo is in every way flawless and faultless. He is hip and with it, as evidenced by writing a show with the first joke about a Malcom X shirt in 15 years. Although I guess that was something Jarrett or Mantel, as apparently TNA is paying Russo to do literally nothing if we're to believe any of this.

 

-Wade eventually takes his mountain of analysis and concludes that TNA is failing because they are trying to compete directly with the WWE, rather than carving out their own identity. They are trying to out-WWE the WWE, and it makes them look second-rate.

 

-Wade begins to lay out his solution: TNA must differentiate themselves from the WWE, thus avoiding being seen as a WWE knockoff.

 

-TNA must instead try to present themselves as being similar to UFC, so that viewers can see them as being a UFC knockoff. Okay, he didn't actually say that, but that is the obvious final step in the logic he presented. He never makes it, but if he was smart enough to do so, he wouldn't have written this in the first place. At no point does he mention that every single successful worked shoot promotion in the history of worked shoot promotions happened before the rise of Pride FC and the beginning of the MMA boom. At no point does he mentioned that the one promotion that tried to seriously incorporate shoot aspects into their worked promotion after this period took a major financial hit for doing so, and the guy who spearheaded it got turfed out after heading up the promotion for the better part of 30 years. At no point during any of this is any compelling evidence put forward that this anything but the smarkiest of smark pipe dreams, a desperate grasp for credibility for something that was never meant to have it. On the plus side, stupid people on the internet are really, really funny.

 

-"That means presenting each wrestling match with state-of-the-art moves that look like two people engaged in an actual, realistic fight". It should be noted that Wade first coined the term "state-of-the-art wrestling" in reference to the big Dragon's Gate six-man from ROH Supercard of Honor last year. That's his idea of an "actual, realistic fight" apparently.

 

-"That means dropping all crazy and outlandish cartoonish gimmicks and building around personalities real people can relate to instantly (as UFC does," due in no small part to UFC being real.

 

-"which is one of the reasons more 18-34 years olds watched a bunch of relative MMA nobodies on Spike TV last Thursday night in the Octagon than Labron James vs. Shaq on TNT)." Notice the rather direct implication that Shaq and LeBron are not real people and/or are outlandish cartoon gimmicks. Again, this sails clear over Wade's head.

 

-"No unrealistic three-way matches or even three-on-three tag matches." Wait, wait, wait...I thought those were state-of-the-art? I guess Wade is way ahead of the curve on these things, but does TNA need to completely overhaul their promotion yearly to keep up with the bleeding edge of wrestling style?

 

-As has previously been mentioned, SH00T~! refs!

 

-All mat wrestling should basically be a SH00T~! to establish the legitimacey of TNA's new fake real sport, unless a hold looks really cool or gets over, in which case it's totally okay to smash that legitimacy into itty-bitty pieces. Again, if this is the case, one kind of wonders why they're going out of their way to make it so damned realistic in the first place when, by Wade's own admission, fakey stuff is okay so long as it's...you know...good. Again, Wade is completely unable to connect the dots that he made himself.

 

-"How about highspots? They're still okay. In fact, that's one of the keys to the new formula. But like the mat holds, a lot of attention must be paid to making them more realistic. More liberty can be taken here, because fans will accept a move looking contrived if it's exciting." Whoosh.

 

-"The key is for TNA to differentiate itself enough from WWE in terms of the fakery, lame ref bumps, convoluted finishes, and cartoony characters, that TNA fans could proclaim that they love both UFC and TNA. They love UFC because it's totally real, and they love TNA because it's not embarrassing to be caught watching, but it's generally more athletic and crazy than UFC." I think we've found the source of the problem.

 

-"And more consistently good, because there won't be any dud fights written into the scripts like UFC fans suffered through with Saturday's Diego Sanchez vs. Josh Koscheck grudge match." Book exciting matches? GENIUS!

 

-"The key for TNA would be to find as many ways to be both realistic and exciting, then default to 70/30 ratios of exciting to realistic or realistic to exciting, but never less than that." He still hasn't explained why his fake real sport needs it's realness protected while everyone watching knows it's fake, and reminds us with things he finds suitably cool. I mean, he's pretty directly stating that realism isn't exciting, but he needs it to protect the credibility of something that everyone knows is fake, including him, which he would acknowledge while pushing the realness of it, except when it's cool to be fake, which is more common than when it's real, but they still need to protect the realness of the fake real sport by presenting it as real while presenting it as fake, only real, except when it's fake....wait, what was I talking about again.

 

-"And anything that is either 95 percent exciting but 5 percent realistic or 95 percent realistic but only 5 percent exciting would be scratched off the list of moves or holds ever displayed in a TNA match." Oh, man. I can't imagine God loves me enough to give me this AND Pee Wee Moore's Competitive Wrestling Report in the same week....but please, please, please somebody tell me that Wade has a chart documenting this list. He must. I must have it. I bet it has saving throws and everything.

 

-"Weight divisions would be an option worth seriously considering." Absolutely not. TNA isn't about weight divisions. It's about NO DIVISIONS!

 

-"Wins and losses would begin to mean 1,000 times more than they do now. Matches would be precious commodities." That's a great idea! You know what else would do that? COMPETENT BOOKING! When I was in high school, I was taught that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. It seems pretty appropriate to call Wade's glorious new idea "booking suicide".

 

-"Wrestlers on the roster would only perform once a month on TV at most." Well, I'm not opposed to cutting down TV time for Lance Hoyt or Abyss or Petey Williams, but I'm sure there are less drastic ways to do it.

 

-"To drive home the point that wins and losses mean everything, certain indy wrestlers could be brought in to work a two month program where they score a couple upset wins, but then lose three and a row and are never seen again." Paying people to make unnecessary TV appearances on an already overcrowded show? I could swear I've seen this somewhere before. I mean, I know Russo is in Wade's ear, but this is ridiculous.

 

-"To spread out the star power, even if top stars performed in the ring less frequently, wrestlers, like in UFC and Pride, would form factions. They'd train together (sometimes in real life, sometimes because it made the most sense for marketing the wrestlers). If a wrestler wasn't on the show, he'd be at ringside for one his faction members (just as Tito Ortiz was cheering on Kendall Grove and giving him advice on Saturday night)." Stables? How come no one in wrestling has ever thought of this one before?

 

-"By taking this approach, PPVs would begin to mean something, and thus, from the fans' perspective, would be worth purchasing. If you listed the last 100 matches from Impact and TNA PPVs, how accurate would you be if you had to put check marks next to only PPV matches? They're more often than not interchangeable, which is why TNA, in its current state, doesn't draw well on PPV. Even most TNA Impact fans can live without seeing the PPV matches because it's the fourth brand, and Impact gives them their fourth brand fix each week." You know what would also fix this? COMPETENT BOOKING! But no, we need to make our fake sport into a fake real sport, except when it's fake, to make it cooler than when it's real, which, itself, is fake, but is fake-real, as opposed to fake-fake, but will be presented as real-real, though it will be acknowledged as fake-real, and by proxy, fake-fake, which actaully means it will be presented as fake-fake-real-real-fake-real, except when it's fake-fake-real-real-fake-fake....man, why do I have this sudden urge to hurt something?

 

-At this point, Wade is in full-on blathering idiot mode, and remains that way for the remainder of the piece. There's no real individual points to take away that haven't been made already, he just throws them into a blender and comes up with something that reads like a card for Smark Bingo. He asserts that this is all a great idea, that it would be hugely successful, and does not seem to notice any really glaring flaws in his logic whatsoever. He has no basis for any of these claims other than saying that he's really really sure it will work.

 

-For those of you reading this, I'm sorry I brought this upon you. I'm sure you will heal. I don't know if I can say the same for myself.

[kjh]

From Keller's blog:

 

I'm on the MVP bandwagon. He's worth investing in, protecting, and being groomed for top tier star spot. At first, the silly outfit, county fair entrance set, bling-bling cartoonish gimmick, and just an overall amateurish look threw me off. Not to mention, so many bad talent hires on the Smackdown side in recent years that came and went, the worst of which was still Kenzo Suzuki. But his match on Friday's Smackdown sold me on him once and for all.

 

First, he showed he belongs in the ring with Chris Benoit at WrestleMania. Then, on Friday, he topped that with a very, very good 21 minute TV rematch against Benoit. Not only does he have a ring presence and carry himself with confidence, but once the bell rings, he backs it up with more than the standard approach to working. He's doing little things that the Carlito types don't. He conveys the impression that he's really in a fight and trying to win. He's not "performing" and "going through the motions" of a wrestling exhibition. He looks like he's in a fight for his life. Granted, it helps to be in there against Benoit, but I'd venture to say he's responsible for taking Benoit to the next level. Benoit seemed more motivated and energized than usual against MVP.

 

The highlight of the match for me was a headlock mid-match. If you've got it on tape or DVR, go back and watch it. It was the most realistic headlock I've ever seen in a pro wrestling match. MVP had Benoit locked in it, and Benoit was legitimately scrambling to get out of. MVP kept shifting his weight and his free hand and legs to try to limit Benoit's movement. And he appeared to be squeezing his head hard. Watch almost every other wrestler apply a headlock or chinlock and you can see light between their arm and chest and the head they're supposedly squeezing. And there's usually no attempt to get out. It's like they're just both resting or filling time, and posing for cameras or something.

 

MVP does a lot of little things right. And he does them better than almost everyone else, who are stuck in a 1990s pre-MMA world style where it's okay to have fake-looking mat holds. Whether WWE fans are MMA fans or not, most have been exposed to it. And now they have a higher standard for how two people fighting on the mat look and what a mat hold looks like. MVP is setting the pace for a new style that inevitably will become the standard style - because the wrestlers who go to the effort to adopt it will have an advantage getting over because fans are going to get more into their matches. And it will catch on. Who would have thought MVP would be leading the charge?

[Loss]

Wade Keller is just clearly a case of a guy being in the right place at the right time, which allowed him to have a successful newsletter for 20 years. I was shocked recently when he had his meltdown where he talked about his future and went on a nonsensical tirade reminiscent of a Ric Flair promo on Nitro when he was put in the mental institution. I wasn't shocked because of his meltdown, but I was shocked because he's a young guy -- 34 or 35 years old, IIRC, which means when he started the Torch in 1987, he was still in high school. He's given his entire life to this, so his delusion and insanity makes a bit more sense.

 

MMA getting over strongly in the US has really made the newsletter crowd collectively insane. Randy Orton was sent home from a tour of Europe last week. In the past, Meltzer may have probed to get more information, but acted as if he couldn't be bothered to care in recent daily updates on his site, choosing to focus instead on obscure UFC and Pride stories that have no importance, and better yet, have nothing to do with pro wrestling. He's obviously falling out of love with the worked stuff. Keller has taken Meltzer's famed Lessons of 2006 and LSD to create his current views on wrestling. MVP's ability to work a headlock properly has caused him to fall off the deep end. I know it's not often you see matwork sold properly anymore, but is it really that foreign a concept in modern wrestling?

 

I really think Keller (and to a lesser degree, Meltzer) need to get some air. I've always been impressed by Meltzer's ability to somewhat maintain his sanity considering that he covers an industry that tends to destroy people, but obviously, Keller doesn't have quite that strength.

 

We're at the point where a new generation of wrestling reporters is really needed. Right now, we basically have the equivalent of WWE building around Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan.

[jdw]

Wade Keller is just clearly a case of a guy being in the right place at the right time, which allowed him to have a successful newsletter for 20 years. I was shocked recently when he had his meltdown where he talked about his future and went on a nonsensical tirade reminiscent of a Ric Flair promo on Nitro when he was put in the mental institution. I wasn't shocked because of his meltdown, but I was shocked because he's a young guy -- 34 or 35 years old, IIRC, which means when he started the Torch in 1987, he was still in high school. He's given his entire life to this, so his delusion and insanity makes a bit more sense.

I missed that. What can that be found?

 

 

John

[Bix]

I think it was this:

 

Well, yes, something important, time-consuming, expected but unpredictable, slightly stressful, and short-term (as in it's been taken care of for the most part) has been going on in my life non-wrestling related that had to be tended to the last 48 hours. I haven't been around much because of it. It's important, but not something I'm going to get into in detail for a variety of reasons - but nothing for anyone to be concerned about.

 

I don't want anyone's sympathy for anyone expressing any issues with a drop in quality of certain areas of the Torch. I do want people to know, whether they are satisifed or dissatisified or somewhere in between - that business is good. We have more paid readers today than a year ago and have spent almost no money or time on marketing. That's a good sign for me, because in the early 2000s, after the Monday Night War, that wasn't always the case as we lost some die-hard WCW and ECW fans who just moved on in life.

 

I am always changing the Torch and what it offers. Every time something new is added, it doesn't necessarily mean time will be shifted away from another area, but it can mean that's the case - and that something will get less time and attention than something else. Obvously, it's a different media world now than ten years ago. I could have stuck with just producing a print newsletter once a week and thrown together a one page news update on a website once a day, and stuck with that as my formula. That would have definitely left more time for phone calls and cultivating sources and gathering news.

 

I have, for better or for worse, gotten swept up in the technological advancements that have led to 60-plus audio updates a month (triple what we originally started with when the VIP site launched), a wide variety of free-web features, a growing library of hundreds of back issues and archive collections by subject (Mick Foley Special Section, WrestleMania Special Section) etc. But as the focus of the product has shifted and expanded into different media and formats, there are still just 24 hours in a day.

 

I promise you that my average hours at work have never, even in the week you thought I did the least, dropped below 40 hours. The vast number of weeks, I clock in over 60 hours of business-related hours. Subtract about 8-12 hours of wrestling watching, which counts as work when you're writing reports and such while watching but some might think shouldn't count as work, it's still around 50 hours a week on average. Some weeks more.

 

Just over a month ago, I changed my schedule. I've always been a night person by nature, or so I thought, but I realized that I would prefer at this stage of my life to get up early around 7-7:30 a.m. and put in a more traditional work schedule for the first time in my life. I weighed the pros and cons - and there were both - and decided to give it a shot for two months, with WrestleMania being the end point of the expiriment, at which point I'd reevaluate things.

 

I've been working - until last week's double issue threw off my schedule - a pretty solid, steady work schedule of 8 a.m. through 5:30 p.m. M-F, with a half hour lunch. I usually worked to closer to six, sometimes past it, but not much. That added up to 9 hours a day, five days a week, of distraction-free, sit in my office and work stretches adding up to 45 hours. In order to realistically stick to that schedule, I had to eliminate the 18 and 20 hour days that had become the norm on Mondays and Tuesdays. I found in the past when I tried to get up early M-F, it was unrealistic if I had worked 18 hours the day before - and often I would work every waking moment from Sunday night around 6 p.m. for a PPV through 4 a.m. or so on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning on deadline. It was those long marathons that were leading to a stretch of days where I didn't put in a lot of work - out of sheer physical and mental fatigue (after nearly two decades, mind you) - late in the week. I wanted more consistency and franky, a healthier schedule, as I'm not as young as I used to be.

 

I am also not the type who will look back at my life in satisifaction if I dedicate almost my entire waking life to pro wrestling. I really enjoy pro wrestling, but I have a lot of diverse interests, and I learn from my other interests and find them helpful in keeping my perspective on things in pro wrestling. So, having done this for 19-plus years, including full-time throughout college (and I completed a four-year degree in four years, so it wasn't a part-time schooling situation), it just wasn't healthy for me to be jerking my body around anymore with marathon three day stretches followed by guilt-filled stretches of sporadic work leading to dred that I was approaching the start of the week again which, if it contained reasonable hours would be awesome, but because of the marathon hours, became a negative it didn't need to be.

 

So I decided to expiriment and try to spread the hours out and work days. The "working days" aspect has been great. I enjoy sunlight. I enjoy knowing that my work sessions, as a general rule, won't go beyond 10 hours. I have been getting up with energy to work, which I didn't have if I tried to get up Wednesday mornings after working non-stop for the previous two or three days without any off-time.

 

This has led to some positives. Back issues are being posted every Thursday and Friday. No stretches of three weeks without, then a mad-rush of postings after I spent a whole day catching up. The Main Site has featured more consistent news updates M-F during business hours, the peak time for web traffic. My Daily Hotlines (which were never meant to be news-based every single day - and have featured a variety of guest analysts, interviews, Ask the Torch, TV analysis, and news) have been posted at a pretty regular timeframe on afternoons.

 

I have been better about posting reports the next morning or early afternoon on Raw, ECW, Impact, and sometimes Smackdown (although sometimes that doesn't get done until Sunday morning due to weekend activities). With very rare exception, we have had one report, and usually two, on Raw and Smackdown (including early-TV reviews from Australia before it airs in the U.S.). I have been keeping up on ECW and Impact most of the time, whereas under the old schedule, I had clocked in 40-plus hours between Sunday and Wednesday and was physically and mentally shot by the time those other shows aired.

 

While I've been working M-F day hours, that has not excluded me working almost every single night for 30 minutes to two hours, and a minimum of five hours on weekends (to check email, post audio, just check in, email other TV reports, etc.). In total, with this new "more sensible schedule,' there's almost no way it will add up to less than 55 hours in any given week. I don't know that any of you are asking for more; you're making a case for shifting priorities. I understand that, and I'm always considering that and I do welcome your feedback in that regard, but it must be realistic for me as a human being and for what I'm charging.

 

(Let me add that none of this is meant to be a call for any sympathy. Some of you asked for an explanation, and I'm giving it. There are people working two jobs just to make ends meet and support their family, and troops overseas going through much more trying times than anything above. The Torch has been great to me, and fulfilling. But I'm a human being who wants to have a life outside of the Torch in addition to being proud of the Torch, and striking that balance at age 35 is more important to me than it was at 25, to be honest. I also think it's possible to put out a really strong product in ways that will satisfy enough people to keep me in business and paying a strong support staff something for their efforts. If it's not - meaning if I can't have a life outside of the Torch while still staying in business with the Torch, I'll move on. No complaints. No hard feelings. A lot of people lose their jobs. I'd be losing mine. But I don't want to voluntarily lose my non-Torch life just for fear of the Torch going out of business. I don't want to look back and regret that I never went on vacations - which in 19 years I've gone on a total of one vacation that lasted more than four days, and the 3-4 day vacations do not add up to three weeks, which would be the bare minimum anyone with 19 years tenure in a job would consider acceptable, esp. with the hours I put in typically. But again, just to stress, I'm explaining this because some of you asked, not because I want approval. Just pay for the Torch if it's worth it, don't if it's not, and I will accept the consequences. I welcome suggestions on how to shift attention and time from one thing you might find less important to other areas that you find more important. If I do it, and it might not be instant but you are always heard, great! If not, I decided not to for what could be a wide variety of reasons, and explaining them every time to every person who had a suggestion would be too much, obviously.)

 

There are three premium web-based sites. There are three newsletters. And there are three websites that feature breaking news/interviews/TV and DVD reviews/editorials that are considered full-time non-cut-and-paste leech sites. No one other than the Torch does all three. The Observer has a newsletter and a free site, but no premium site with audio/archives/etc. Figure Four has a VIP site and newsletter, but not as much of a stress on a free site that is ad-driven. PWInsider have a free site and a VIP site with audio and such, but not a print newsletter. The Torch does all three. Does it spread us thinner than the others? Of course. Does that mean that each of the three primary focuses aren't pretty good most of the time? No. Think they are (and they are good enough to enough readers to keep them customers). Collectively it's pretty good value and successful business plan for me. We are in business and doing just fine in each of the three major areas of focus. I have little doubt I could have a kick-ass newsletter that would satisfy most everyone's complaints if that's all I did, and I stopped the VIP site management and the free-site content production. I have little doubt I could produce the best free site pro wrestling has ever seen if I went 100 percent toward that ad-based revenue approach. I also believe I could produce a better VIP site overall if I didn't have the 16 pages every week to fill with content that serves both the minority who also visit the VIP site and the majority who rely on the paper copy to get a solid overview of the big stories and analysis and interviews in the mix. But I do all three. That's my choice. It might not always be that way.

 

I'm not going to do a laundry list of stories we broke or didn't break, and frankly I might think we broke a story, only to find out later PWInsider had it on an audio update first or Meltzer had it in the Observer that I hadn't unsealed and read yet. But I believe we have been first with TV ratings often lately, we're consistently featuring real time reports on all PPVs and most TV shows (more consistentlly and in more detail than anyone else), we were first to have the news of Hogan's fallout with WWE (which came from a well-placed WWE source and was in our cover story on a week when the Observer was still analyzing Hogan's place in WM), we haven't been first on some stories others got wrong (such as jumping the gun on WSX being officially cancelled).

 

There are admittedly people in wrestling who talked to me once and don't talk to be now because I've never softened my stance that I might have in a private phone call when I publish or speak publicly about an issue. I am proud of that, and have never compromised my opinion in order to try to avoid losing a source. There are sources you could probably guess, who have gone on record, and others who you'd be shocked to hear were ever sources, who have soured on me because I pulled no punches when they "did wrong." I think Meltzer has found a great formula that plays into his passions, which is getting in touch with people in wrestling for comment on dead wrestlers for his excellent obituaries, and that I'm guessing has probably really helped expand his access to insider info with some key people who "respect his respect for the history of the business and their dead colleagues." It's a winning formula, and in recent years it has taken what for him was admittedly a very deleted list of sources during a two-to-three stretch where the Observer was behind on news (esp. during the WCW buyout years, when he was relying on unreliable sources who were often wrong and intentionally feeding him bad info for their own selfish interests) to a time now where he's really doing well with "this happened at a booking meeting."

 

Part of this new schedule experiment is to get the "required stuff" out of the way early in the day, post more often on the Main Site, move my TV reports off the free site and into VIP-exclusive territory, and make time for more phone calls. There are calls from several high-level wrestlers and personnel I haven't been good about returning lately, and it has been a constant battle between my sanity, a balanced life, my health, my family and friends, watching all the TV shows and PPVs and writing good reports on them, keeping up on taxes and book keeping (another invisible time-consuming and stress-inducing aspect of the business), keeping an eye on future marketing opportunities and ideas, overseeing and leading a big collection of staff and contributors who help provide a wide array of content for the newsletter and website, and trying to make time for news gathering. It's a formula that I'm working on, and I will live with the consequences of my choices. If 60-plus audio updates, Keller TV and PPV Reports on every show (just not right away), a 16 page newsletter (up from 12 18 months ago), timely back issues, a constant stream of articles online (some VIP only, other not), and everything else isn't enough, then so be it. I accept that. No hard feelings at all. Really!

[sek69]

Wasn't that meltdown triggered by someone basically saying the Torch VIP wasn't worth the money, which caused Keller to do an entire life inventory?

 

Also, I wonder if he's mad that Meltzer wore the same outfit as him that one time too.

[kjh]

Wasn't that meltdown triggered by someone basically saying the Torch VIP wasn't worth the money, which caused Keller to do an entire life inventory?

 

Also, I wonder if he's mad that Meltzer wore the same outfit as him that one time too.

 

You're right about what prompted his meltdown. But I think Dave Meltzer being treated as the industry gold standard, while Keller is regarded as a second rate hack has really started to get to him, particularly the fact that he rarely gets credit when he has handled a story better than Meltzer. In particular, he resents how no-one remembers that he actually nailed the death of WCW story when it happened, while Meltzer relied on an unreliable source (Eric Bischoff) and fluffed the story consequently. More recently, Meltzer initially claimed the Batista / Booker backstage fight was a work and lots of people got on Keller's case when he insisted it was a shoot, but no-one apologised or gave him credit when it turned out he was right all along. I think it also irks him that Meltzer handles some sources with kid gloves who rarely get criticised even if they deserve it (Flair, Cornette, Tenay, etc), whereas he refuses to do such a thing (or at least he can rationalise in his head that he doesn't).

[Loss]

He does it all the time, mainly for Clique guys. Sean Waltman got a free pass for years. There's also the weird Jericho hate.

[sek69]

I don't know, I thought Meltzer was pretty fair in his treatment of Cornette when he got fired for slapping the Artist Currently Known As Santonio Morella. He flat out said Cornette was in the wrong and he should have known better than to do that when he was already on thin ice from his other adventures.

 

However, you are right about Flair. I'm sure when he dies, Dave will mention how he carried the casket to a ****1/4 match.

[Bix]

100% correct observations from Loss snipped...

 

We're at the point where a new generation of wrestling reporters is really needed. Right now, we basically have the equivalent of WWE building around Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan.

Ahem.

 

The big hurdle is cultivating sources. My buddy in WWE doesn't want to be "rat." Alvarez claims that sources came to him just through having a semi-known newsletter, so it's theoretically doable, but his newsletter seems to be stuff he lifted from his early WON, so who knows?

 

The horrible decline of Torch & F4W (including Alvarez either eschewing his "funny" niche or just losing his touch) along with Meltzer starting to lose his brink on reality more and more (this week's WOL was bizarre) is really creating a huge void.

[Al]

I'd love to see a wrestling newsletter or some type thing focus on the history of wrestling. That's always the most interesting thing Meltzer does and there is precious little out there.

[kjh]

With regard to Cornette (and Tenay by the way), Keller has been insinuating that they've been burying Vince Russo to Dave Meltzer because they crave his spot on TNA's booking committee.

[sek69]

With regard to Cornette (and Tenay by the way), Keller has been insinuating that they've been burying Vince Russo to Dave Meltzer because they crave his spot on TNA's booking committee.

 

 

Right, because Russo's booking has been so stellar that someone would have to bury him to make him look bad.

 

Ironically, Dave's been reporting that Russo wasn't responsible for everything he's getting blamed for and has been hammering TNA on missing the point of the "Fire Russo" chants. Instead of a "wow, our fans are hating this" reaction it's more of a "wow our fans are idiots because they don't know the booking hierarchy" reaction.

[jdw]

Bix - thanks for posting.

 

For a "meltdown", I don't think Wade's off base... or off base by much. Knowing both Wade and Dave over the years, and a fair amount of what they put into their product, I understand where he's coming from.

 

 

John

[Loss]

John, both are guilty of this, but between Meltzer and Keller, who do you think shows the most favoritism to their sources? I'm curious your opinion.

[jdw]

Beats me as far as now - haven't read the Torch in a while, and don't have a good sense of who Dave or Wade's primary sources are at the moment.

 

In the 90s and early 00s, I think the difference would be:

 

(a) Wade seemed a bit more willing to buy opinion of certain of his sources even if it didn't add up

 

( b ) Dave would sort of ignore criticism of certain of his sources

 

The classic example of the first was Wade's passionate critism of Jericho on just about everything once he hit the WWF. I'm not the biggest Jericho fan in the world, so it's not like I haven't been critical of Chris over the years. But Wade's sources in the WWF at the time were so critical of Jericho that it dripped off the pages and Wade was pretty obtuse about the positives Chris brought to the table in a promotion where the objective is to make cash.

 

In the 90s, Dave was more than willing to laugh in someone's face, or toss a "nah" at them, if they offered up tripe like what was being spooned to Wade on Jericho.

 

"Tanaka is as good as the All Japan boys."

-Terry Funk

 

*laughing*

-Dave

 

*trying to keep a straight face*

-jdw

 

The example of the second would be the pretty uncritical coverage of Ross over the years in the WON, or Dave burying his head when Corny threatened to kill Bruce, or I suspect people could point to his coverage of Tenay in TNA right now. I don't watch TNA so I can't judge Mike's work there. But I do read a fair amount of critical comments about his work there online, and I can't remember the last time Dave said anything critical of Mike in the WON. A weak doesn't go by where JBL doesn't eat a shot, and anyone who replaces Ross temporarily on RAW takes it in the shorts from Dave, and Michael Cole has been hammered over the years. You'd think Mike would screw up on occassion, or that Dave might offer up some critical analysis.

 

Wade actually has pissed off and lost sources for being critical of them. With Dave, it would seem like people in the business would read more into something than was actually there and overract. With Wade, it tended to be pretty direct criticism and the people feeling like he wasn't being loyal.

 

So...

 

It's hard to define "favortism" towards sources.

 

Mr. Schemer of course showed more favortism towards his sources than either of them, as did RYDER.

 

 

John

[Jingus]

If I had to say it in one sentence: Keller seems like he still wants to actually be part of the wrestling business someday, while Meltzer seems to think he's above it.

 

Also... in the year two thousand and fuckin' seven, someone still LIKES Russo?!

[jdw]

From dealing with both more than probably anyone who posts here, neither had the desire to be part of the business beyond the roles they played.

 

The differnce between the two on that aspect is that Wade was probably more realitic/self aware of his role in the business. Dave at times didn't see how deep in he was.

 

If a journalism major, working on a doctorate, were to do it on Wrestling Journalism and spend years studying it *and* had full disclosure from a variety of key wrestling reporters like Wade and Dave, it would be both an interesting study/thesis, but also rather enlightening in the area of standard journalistic practices where "wrestling reporters" move into the grey area or simply go past it.

 

Some are obvious, such as Scherer being a house organ for ECW or RYDER being a paid house organ for WCW while both claimed to be reporters.

 

The Meltzer and Keller areas would be interesting, though they are some of the things we also see in the real world in politics and reporting.

 

 

John