The interesting Dave Meltzer posts thread

[Loss]

Which Hall matches have you liked better?

[tomk]

Singles or tag?

 

There may not be a better singles match with him in it.

 

Just watched Hoshino, Choshu, Inoki v Hall, Orton, and Murdoch which I think is a better gimmick match with Hall then the ladder match.

[Bix]

I haven't watched it in awhile but the best Hall non-gimmick singles match is probably the match with Michaels from the 8/1/94 Raw. Great match and posting about it now gave me the idea to make a Clique vs Clique WWF matches comp because most of what they did against each other from '93-'96 is a lot of fun:

 

- That Michaels-Razor match (they had another match from earlier in the year on the Wrestlefest '94 tape that I remember being pretty good).

- The Kid-Razor matches in '93 and '95-'96

- The Kid-Michaels matches from '93 and '96.

- Diesel-Razor from Summerslam (don't remember much about the Diesel title win).

- The ladder matches (By the way, for those who have watched the San Jose trial run handheld, how was it?).

- The Action Zone tag.

- The Michaels-Diesel matches (moreso the '96 ones than WM11).

- Michaels-HHH from Raw in '96 which was one of the first really good HHH matches.

[Sean Liska]

There was a Razor-HHH match from a 1/96 RAW that I remember being a lot better than most HHH matches from the time. It was the show where Monsoon was destroyed by Vader.

[Guest BNewt14]

I haven't watched it in awhile but the best Hall non-gimmick singles match is probably the match with Michaels from the 8/1/94 Raw. Great match and posting about it now gave me the idea to make a Clique vs Clique WWF matches comp because most of what they did against each other from '93-'96 is a lot of fun:

 

- That Michaels-Razor match (they had another match from earlier in the year on the Wrestlefest '94 tape that I remember being pretty good).

- The Kid-Razor matches in '93 and '95-'96

- The Kid-Michaels matches from '93 and '96.

- Diesel-Razor from Summerslam (don't remember much about the Diesel title win).

- The ladder matches (By the way, for those who have watched the San Jose trial run handheld, how was it?).

- The Action Zone tag.

- The Michaels-Diesel matches (moreso the '96 ones than WM11).

- Michaels-HHH from Raw in '96 which was one of the first really good HHH matches.

It actually already exists

 

Somehow, I blew the Razor/HHH 1/22/96 RAW match mentioned in the post above.

 

There's just a ton of good stuff by these guys because they always turned it up against each other.

 

The San Jose ladder match (I think I saw an LA one in Firedlander's list when I had it, too) looks kind of odd because they use a small ladder, but other than that it's pretty solid from what I remember.

[S.L.L.]

Neither Watchemn or Dark Night are particularly great stories. The gimmick worked for Watchmen and Dark Knight. And demonstrated to generations to come that gimmick will appeal to adolescent boys and get you farther quicker.

 

Both Hall and Michaels have been in better matches than the Mania ladder match, matches that told better stories. But gimmick is memorable. Jeff Hardy and Edge are both multi time world champs. People still regularly talk about Shelton Benjamin’s huge upside.

 

People took the correct lessons from both Watchmen and the Mania ladder match. The gimmick will get you far.

Admittedly, probably used the wrong combination of points and examples there. Been a long time since I watched the Michaels/Ramon ladder matches, don't really remember how compelling the stories in them were. Matches being memorable was probably more about the novelty of the gimmick at the time. I think - and don't quote me on this - that ladder matches were still happening infrequently enough by 1999 that Hardys vs. Edge & Christian could still make an impact on people, and then after that, there was a period where there was a pretty big glut of ladder matches, and I don't know that anyone really became a star out of that period. Nice thing about making the Money in the Bank match a yearly event was that it forced them to end that period in order to protect the match, so Benjamin could get noticed for standout performances there, although he was getting talked up plenty years before the first MITB match even happened through the whole "great technician" thing, the initial World's Greatest Tag Team run, and the HHH matches. But I think nowadays it probably is possible for the gimmick to get a guy over now.

 

Still, wasn't really talking about commercial success of the gimmick, just aesthetic. Again, haven't revisited the Michaels/Ramon matches in a while. Maybe the "right lesson" wasn't actually there to be learned. People still learned the wrong lesson from it on an aesthetic level. Really only a casual comic fan, and I don't know what the commercial viability of the Dark Age was. And I personally felt Watchmen was overrated, though Dark Knight Returns worked for me well enough. Still, get the sense from my own reading and from my experiences with more serious comic fans that guys like Rob Liefeld "learned the wrong lesson" from an aesthetic standpoint. So maybe the lesson I should've been pointing to here wasn't "great matches are built around great stories", but "novelty acts work better when they're actually novel".

[kjh]

An amusing analogy by Dave:

 

If you covered pro wrestling in Japan from 1993-the present and didn't include MMA, it would be like covering pro wrestling in the U.S. and deciding not to cover WWE since WWE claims they aren't pro wrestling.

 

I was covering pro wrestling in Japan from 1993.

 

Also, something like 85 UFC fighters were also pro wrestlers, and covering the business of pro wrestling, if you ignore UFC 1994-96 or 2005-present in particular, it's like you are burying your head in the sand real deep.

 

So in other words, I didn't want to suffocate to death.

[sek69]

Man, even by Dave's standards that's a pretty tenuous analogy. WWE is still pro wrestling despite their attempts to be "sports entertainment", MMA is going to be MMA no matter what. Unless you're claiming that they're all worked (and I know there were worked groups in Japan, that's the only thread Dave can hang on to here) then for the millionth time pro wrestling =/= MMA no matter how bad Dave wants it to.

 

To further his analogy, that's like saying if you started covering pro wrestling in the US in 1993 you have to include MMA because a lot of the early UFC guys went into wrestling at one point or another. I mean, yeah you can mention it in order to add depth and context to the wrestling scene of the 90s, but it's not like you would NEED to include it in any discussion.

[Jingus]

There are way, way more college football players and amateur wrestlers in professional wrestling than there ever were UFC fighters. Should Dave cover those sports too? Hell, the greco-roman stuff has "wrestling" right there in the name!

[Beast]

Ok forgetting about the 85 MMA/Pro wrestlers, he's saying that pro wrestling and MMA in Japan overlapped big time in the early 90's. Which is a fair point.

[Tawren]

MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't fake. MMA has many (though not all) of its roots in pro wrestling. Dave Meltzer covers MMA in his pro wrestling newsletter, and has for many years now and isn't going to stop. Subscribers are aware of this when they subscribe.

 

These are all facts. I really wish we could move on.

 

Though admittedly, Bryan Alvarez and Meltzer going on about "UFC does wrestling better than wrestling" is annoying too

[Indikator]

"MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't fake. "

 

I hate this sentence. I will just say two names, Takada and Maeda.

 

The correct sentence should be "MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't always fake. "

[kjh]

Ok forgetting about the 85 MMA/Pro wrestlers, he's saying that pro wrestling and MMA in Japan overlapped big time in the early 90's. Which is a fair point.

I found the analogy amusing because he started covering Japanese MMA because they promoted it as professional wrestling even though it really wasn't. That isn't the same as deciding to stop covering WWE because they pretend it isn't professional wrestling when it really is.

 

Speaking of Dave and his talking point of "UFC does wrestling better than wrestling", he went on an interesting rant about the reaction to UFC 100 (see below), particularly Brock Lesnar's post match promo after defeating Frank Mir. Not that I disagreed with most of it, but man did it come across as a bit overly defensive, because he's friends with Brock and Dana. I mean Vince McMahon was once thought of as a marketing genius with a Midas touch by the mainstream media and we all know how that story ended up.

 

--A ton of interesting reaction to last night. I'm going to give my old boxing speech with a little bit of a twist. Anyone who has ripped on every athlete who at times shows unsportsmanlike like behavior can say anything they want about Brock Lesnar and that's fine. For those who think that it is going to mean more people will tune out UFC than people he has hooked as fans who want to see him get beat, you are probably as dead wrong as the people who said the same thing about Ali. For those who think Lesnar was a disgrace to the UFC for doing WWE antics, read a real history lesson of how the sport got popular. Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie doing WWE interviews, and the funny thing is nobody was more arrogant on his interviews than Gracie, but he was small and beat big guys at first so he backed it up and became the first legend. Shamrock and Tito in 2002 saved UFC when it was one step from death. Did they save it because they were the top two fighters in the world on that night and all these sports fans wanted to pay to find out who was really No. 1?

 

No. They saved it because they went on "Best Damn Sports Show Period" and cut pro wrestling promos on each other and with no television at all, 150,000 people bought their PPV match, and the UFC owners realized that there was potential in this money losing outfit.

 

The real history that all the UFC historical retrospectives left out, was that it was the TV shows the two weeks before the Leben vs. Koscheck fight on Ultimate Fighter that was the real building blocks for the success of the sport, not the Griffin and Bonnar fight as has been reported in many places over the past week. Leben vs. Koscheck in a taped match in front of a dozen people in a warehouse like gym drew a higher rating than Griffin and Bonnar did.

 

In no way do I want to diminish that Griffin-Bonnar was the perfect fight on the perfect night and in the long-term helped more, because they delivered the great fight as opposed to just the great hype that delivered television ratings, but disappointed in the end. What was Matt Serra before Montreal? What was Frank Mir and Michael Bisping this past week? Play some tapes of Ali's promos for Frazier.

 

There are a lot of very good reasons not to like Brock Lesnar. But whatever media and Hardcore backlash there is against him, which admittedly is some of the most entertaining stuff in a long time, is because he's a former WWE wrestler, not for anything he did. Tank Abbott flipped off fans, and said he was sexually aroused when watching a replay of his match with Paul Varelans. Was Lesnar doing it anymore than Tito Ortiz and his Gay Mezger is my bitch T-shirt, or his grave digging, and take Ortiz out of the history of this sport (and some people are attempting to do that as we speak), and 2006's records never exist. Take 2006 out of the sport's history and you're at a completely different level of interest, media acceptance and CBS, Showtime, and others never get into this game in the first place. The most important fight in getting mainstream interest was a crap third fight with Ortiz and Shamrock. Buy rates mean something to company profitability, but in the media world, ratings are king, because it's a world they understand. What very slowly got the mainstream media into MMA, and as Dana White likes to remind me, took me from one place in life to another, is the media couldn't deny the ratings of the Ortiz-Shamrock match in 2006 on Spike when in 18-34 males it beat several games of that year's World Series. Was that the two best fighters in the world vying to see who was really No. 1? No, it was just a match that the two combatants and the promotion made people want to see more than any other match up to that point in history. And those viewers seeing that crap fight were so turned off by it, that a few months later, when the natural build led to Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell, the company's bank account grew like never before.

 

We watched people piss in beds and piss in fruit and jack off on sushi, and guess what, more people still watched last night's PPV than any non-boxing event in history most likely. But some guy cutting a WWE-style promo, which Frank Mir and Michael Bisping both did better than he did on television over the past week, is going to turn off more people than he turns on. Hell, if guys in WWE were cutting WWE style promos as good as Mir, Bisping and Lesnar, WWE would be the one whose business would be turning around. When you actually think about the argument, it's almost absurd.

 

Could it hurt sanctioning in New York and Massachusetts? It's a weird world we live in and anything is possible. In a logical world, that punch Dan Henderson threw was 100 times worse, but you never know how things can mushroom. But I'm guessing it will have no effect. But you never know.

 

If you are consistent in your beliefs, that's cool. If you're a reactionary fool on this one, calm down and look at the world, and sports in general. When boxing people say what Lesnar did was worse than anything Mike Tyson did, I'm baffled. Did he bite a man's ear off? Did he threaten to eat any children? He cut the best and most talked about promo of his life and what will be the single most talked about promo of the year. And that's bad? Why, because he came from WWE? Why don't they blame the University of Minnesota while we're at it. Is anyone aware of how Lesnar acted as the U of M wrestling matches during his junior and senior year when they had dual meets against the other powers and fans booed him out of the small gyms? Dana White can say Lesnar was acting, and he has to, but he was just being himself, ratcheted up a few notches, because he is in the sports business, which is why he trained his ass off. But he's in the entertainment business, which is why 1 million or more people plucked down $45 last night.

 

Why is he now the biggest PPV draw in the world since Oscar De La Hoya is now retired? And by the way, when Oscar De La Hoya set his record two years ago, answer this question: Was the reason he set the record because he had an adversary who was or wasn't playing a villain role on purpose to drum up interest in his match?

 

Because Lesnar became a celebrity from WWE, and because of that, a lot of people like paying to see him fight, either to beat people up, or to get beat up. Who drew more new fans to the sport this past year, St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, Fedor or Lesnar?

 

Some great athletes really aren't nice guys. But that doesn't diminish them as athletes, nor hurt their sport one iota. In the plethora of stories, how many people mentioned how many new fans Lesnar has made for UFC with his fight with Mir and fight with Couture getting hundreds of thousands of first-time buyers? One of the key reasons UFC 100 is going to set records and has already started setting them even before the first PPV returns have come in, is because Brock Lesnar came from WWE and he can really fight. Guess what? The fact that some people look their noses up or have nervous breakdowns about the latter part of the statement is exactly the emotional reaction that makes him so valuable to the sport in the first place. No, it's not the WWE. You have to really be able to fight.

 

What Lesnar did by ripping on Bud Lite, particularly come so soon after the Dana White/Loretta Hunt deal, was absolutely bad for the company. That's the company'ss leading sponsor, and if I was Dana White, I'd be furious over that one. That was stupid, but I doubt Lesnar was aware of the White/Hunt thing and how everything went down from that. He was just trying to be funny, and actually, if it wasn't the lead sponsor and the timing wasn't absolutely horrible, it would have been funny. Hell, that was the one thing he said that almost the entire crowd cheered and laughed at live. But that line also had zero impact on fans paying money to see him beaten the next time he fights.

 

But for every MMA fan who criticizes Lesnar's behavior as bad for the sport, it was not even within an earshot of the two worst things of this past week. Just in the last few days, what did Quinton Jackson do a reporter? And then the professional fighter as opposed to a blowhard pro wrestler nearly got into a fight with another fighter at the show last night? Has Lesnar ever got in a situation while at ringside at a UFC show that he ever nearly came to blows with someone? And it's not like Jackson had a spotless track record over the last year. Or what if Lesnar did what Dan Henderson did, which was something a whole lot more significant?

 

But it got nowhere near the reaction. It's all about emotion and frame of reference. GSP is a babyface that people wanted to see win, and they were happy to see him do the right game plan to achieve his victory. Dan Henderson was there to shut up a loudmouth Brit who was obviously playing a role. And he shut him up, and then shut him up once time extra for bad measure. Lesnar was a heel people wanted to see lose, and were furious to see him succeeding with a game plan that was working. All of those elements were part of the emotions of the night. The goal, in the end, is to make people care.

 

The history of what has drawn the biggest PPV numbers, what made the sport and saved the sport is a lesson very much worth examining for anyone arguing about what is good or bad for the future of the sport. That duality of the reaction of the crowd live, and a large percentage of those who complained about Lesnar's tactics (but not all), says something pretty significant about MMA and its fan base.

 

That's not even a bad thing. But it's simply accepting the truth of what all of this is, as opposed to people who live in the world of pretend. And then somehow complain about pro wrestling.

 

--In the top 100 things being searched for on the Internet on Google as of a few hours ago:

2. Lesnar vs. Mir

4. UFC 100

7. Rena Mero

9. Lesnar interview

11. Fedor

13. Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping

16. Georges St. Pierre vs. Thiago Alves

18. Henderson knockout

20. Jonny Jones vs. Jake O'Brien

39. UFC post fight press conference

41. Mark Coleman vs. Stephan Bonnar

59. UFC results

68. Shane Carwin

95. UFC 101

99. Brock Lesnar UFC 100

That's not a sports list. That's everything in the world. Gatti's wife is No. 1. Aside from stuff related to Gatti and UFC 100, there is nothing else in the top 100 related to sports.

 

--UFC 100 was also the No. 1 topic talked about yesterday on Twitter

 

--Coverage of Lesnar was also the No. 1 news item of the day on Yahoo! at one point today

[khawk20]

We watched people piss in beds and piss in fruit and jack off on sushi, and guess what, more people still watched last night's PPV than any non-boxing event in history most likely.

Can anyone make this part of that diatribe less "WTF?" for me?

[sek69]

MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't fake. MMA has many (though not all) of its roots in pro wrestling. Dave Meltzer covers MMA in his pro wrestling newsletter, and has for many years now and isn't going to stop. Subscribers are aware of this when they subscribe.

 

These are all facts. I really wish we could move on.

 

Though admittedly, Bryan Alvarez and Meltzer going on about "UFC does wrestling better than wrestling" is annoying too

 

I think we can all move on whenever Dave comes to terms with the fact that MMA is not pro wrestling despite any common histories the two may share. Soccer, rugby, aussie rules, and good old american football all can trace their roots back to the same point too but people who cover those sports never attempt to link them. MMA is the new hotness and as its popularity grows, he's hitching his star to it in an attempt to get out of the ghetto that is pro wrestling. I don't fault him for that, brother gots to get paid and all that (and MMA is certainly allowing him to do that), but it's like he's afraid to make the commitment to just cover MMA and forget about wrestling. It seems that his interest is waning almost daily, but he straddles both like some kind of Colossus of Rhodes.

 

As far as subscribers knowing he covers MMA, that doesn't excuse putting out something called the Wrestling Observer that sometimes is half if not three-quarters MMA coverage. Yeah, when UFC has a big show you expect lots of space devoted to it, but he gives half the issue these days to the latest episode of TUF that I personally don't give a fuck about. That's one of the big reasons I switched to an online only sub, I didn't feel the need to devote space to actual hard copies anymore if it was going to be the "MMA/TUF and if we have some time maybe a little bit of Wrestling Observer".

[Cox]

We watched people piss in beds and piss in fruit and jack off on sushi, and guess what, more people still watched last night's PPV than any non-boxing event in history most likely.

Can anyone make this part of that diatribe less "WTF?" for me?

 

Two seasons ago on The Ultimate Fighter, these were some of the pranks the contestants pulled on one another in the house.

[khawk20]

Thanks.

 

(also "Ewwwwww"....)

[tomk]

He cut the best and most talked about promo of his life and what will be the single most talked about promo of the year. And that's bad?

Did anyone think that this "promo" was that good?

I watch boxing hype interviews and there are guys who come off natural and guys who come off forced and this felt cheesy, like the wrestling promo that a local sports commentator would play and laugh at with the weather man. It may have been too blue for that but still.

[Bob Morris]

"MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't fake. "

 

I hate this sentence. I will just say two names, Takada and Maeda.

 

The correct sentence should be "MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't always fake. "

It would actually be more correct to say "MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that outcomes are not predetermined before the match begins."

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

We watched people piss in beds and piss in fruit and jack off on sushi, and guess what, more people still watched last night's PPV than any non-boxing event in history most likely.

Can anyone make this part of that diatribe less "WTF?" for me?

 

Dave's last trip to Japan was pretty R-rated.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

The wrestling smarks who link wrestling with MMA are people who have never had anything going on in life other than obsessing over WWE going down. Basically, they've always been wrestling fans, but fans of non-WWE feds. They've always been butthurt over the fact that WWE is still around while other feds they makred out for are no longer around. In the mean time whatever other feds exist today don't stand a chance so UFC is their great hope that they cling onto.

 

Also, as much these same people crap on WWE this connection they make shows they're still stuck in the wrestling bubble. I bet everything they see on television or in public somehow reminds them of pro wrestling.

You must have no friends.

[MikeCampbell]

"MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't fake. "

 

I hate this sentence. I will just say two names, Takada and Maeda.

 

The correct sentence should be "MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't always fake. "

I'll try to meet you halfway. How about MMA isn't pro wrestling in the sense that it isn't worked.

[Sean Liska]

The wrestling smarks who link wrestling with MMA are people who have never had anything going on in life other than obsessing over WWE going down. Basically, they've always been wrestling fans, but fans of non-WWE feds. They've always been butthurt over the fact that WWE is still around while other feds they makred out for are no longer around. In the mean time whatever other feds exist today don't stand a chance so UFC is their great hope that they cling onto.

 

Also, as much these same people crap on WWE this connection they make shows they're still stuck in the wrestling bubble. I bet everything they see on television or in public somehow reminds them of pro wrestling.

You must have no friends.

Well, the first guy was making some pretty stupid assumptions.

[Guest KyleWilder]

This is what people like Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez don't get when they try to spin things with Brock's promo by saying people have done just as bad or worse in MMA and other sports. In these other situations you didn't have people saying it was something you would see in WWE. If they did it was only a snide remark in passing. With this promo everybody seems to be making the WWE connection. Now going forward people will be thinking there are situations mimicking WWE even if they're not intending to

 

Now I don't think UFC's numbers will crumble any time soon or anything, but long term is it really a good idea to be linking UFC with pro wrestling? Wrestling has a negative stigma and by trying to convince everybody that UFC is pro wrestling the negative stigma will rub off on UFC.

 

Going forward it will be amusing to see how Meltzer and Alvarez react to any negative media criticism. Lets see, they want to label UFC as pro wrestling, yet they want the mainstream to treat it as something legit rather than a carny sideshow. You can't have it both ways.

[Guest Iron Chad]

Now's a good time for someone to reset Dave's quote from WClassics about people with differing opinions getting along.