Bryan Alvarez

[jdw]

Wait... just looked, stand corrected.

 

John

[jdw]

Since it stopped at the second Tokyo Dome, I assume there will be a "part III" covering NOAH?

 

John

[tomk]

I'm disappointed in Part 2 of Dave's Misawa bio.

More dissapointed in:

 

The hope was that his opponents, some of whom were among the most talented wrestlers in the business, could carry him enough to where the matches would be decent. Business wasn’t good, but due to usually great undercard matches, the big shows were still well received.

 

Than all the foolishness in Bryan's obit. As don't expect anything out of Bryan and that is real odd read of those 2007 shows by Meltzer.

Unless he thinks 2007 Morishima, Suguira, Bison Smith, Sano, Taue, and Samoa Joe were among the most talented wrestlers in the biz. Or that SUWA's retirement or Bull Buchanon or that Arai/Iwisa tag team equaled stacked undercards.

 

And yeah I was hoping for more out of part II.

[Childs]

Yeah, it wasn't very well organized (even by Dave standards) and just kind of petered out. I wonder if he felt he covered NOAH sufficiently in part one? I respect Dave's reporting output enormously, but I often wish he had someone around to help him organize these bigger pieces.

[kjh]

tomk, I'm not surprised Dave's opinion of NOAH's major shows in 2007 is odd, given that at the time it sounded like he skipped the first half of the cards before losing interest altogether. I mean in 2007 Dave did think Takeshi "best heavyweight wrestler in the world" Morishima, Suguira, Marufuji, KENTA (who had to quote Dave himself "his (Misawa) last singles match that was in the **** range") and Joe were some of the most talented wrestlers in the business. There also tended to be at least one workrate match on each show (whether it be for the tag titles, jnr title, jnr tag titles, ROH title, NTV cup or future heavyweight title shot) that was much more Dave's cup of tea than Misawa sluggishly playing the ace again. It was pretty clear at the time that Dave saw things differently than you or Phil (remember him being really high on Misawa's matches with Sano and Smith, while Dave was pretty dismissive of them) were seeing them, so your disappointment is to be expected.

[tomk]

Yeah from an aesthetic point, I expected him to see thigns differently than me and Phil.

 

That said "his opponents, some of whom were among the most talented wrestlers in the business"=2007 Morishima, Suguira, Bison Smith, Sano, Taue, and Samoa Joe (the Kenta defense not being in Japan) is not something I thought Meltzer would say.

There was a workrate juniors match on every NOah show if the GHC title was defended or not.

 

Even if you were dissapointed/dismissive of the GHC defenses...the general point about 2007 was that there was no one there credible to be on top, and rest of card was built on guys who weren't ready yet getting built up which is why Misawa was stuck with the belt.

 

While he teases at that:

The hope was that his opponents, some of whom were among the most talented wrestlers in the business, could carry him enough to where the matches would be decent. Business wasn’t good, but due to usually great undercard matches, the big shows were still well received.

is a set of sentences that really misses by a big degree exactly how dire the situation was if it weren't for Misawa.

[soup23]

The only thing I kind of get aggravated with Alvarez is how limited his knowledge of wrestling history is. I know he doesn't have all day to sit back and watch old tapes but I wouldn't be suprised if he has never seen matches like Dibiase/Duggan All stips match or Dundee/Lawler 12/30/85.

[BruiserBrody]

My favorite recent blunder by Bryan was the recent Tim Sylvia vs Ray Mercer fight.

 

Bryan bitched after the fight: "When did this become an MMA match? It was supposed to be a boxing match in a cage!"

 

Someone then linked to f4w's front page update Dave wrote detailing the change.

 

Bryan's excuse was then : "Well that is alot of words"

 

AWESOME

[ohtani's jacket]

I glanced over the second part of his obit and it seemed OK to me. I wasn't really following whether he told Misawa's early career accurately or not. There were a few parts where he got his wires crossed or assumed a few things that weren't exactly true, but I can't imagine anybody doing a better job in a week's turnaround.

[kjh]

By the way, Dave doesn't seem to be taking Bix's suggestion that he has a blind spot regarding his coverage of Mike Tenay very well.

[Eduardo]

By the way, Dave doesn't seem to be taking Bix's suggestion that he has a blind spot regarding his coverage of Mike Tenay very well.

I was shocked at how nasty Dave got when he was faced with the suggestion that he has a lack of criticism towards some of his buddy's in the business. Why would he get so worked up over it?

 

Also, it seemed really odd of him to still be taking shots at MRV. I love Dave Meltzer, but he has this "living in a bubble" thing where he uses his Observer's "Year End Polls/WON HOF/PPV Polls/Readers's Response Letters" as facts to end every argument and anything that exists outside of the Observer universe doesn't matter.

[Loss]

I love Dave's response being that he never really has criticized announcers all that much.

[Bix]

And now Bryan seems to think that everyone acts exactly like they do on the internet like they do in real life and thus I am "a bit unbalanced" based on a joke post.

[sek69]

It's also really telling how strong the pack mentality is on the internet seeing everyone dogpile on Bix over there. I hope this is remembered the next time someone tries to dismiss the "half the internet bases their opinion on what Meltzer says" talking point.

[rovert]

It's also really telling how strong the pack mentality is on the internet seeing everyone dogpile on Bix over there. I hope this is remembered the next time someone tries to dismiss the "half the internet bases their opinion on what Meltzer says" talking point.

Not really, someone who is making some badly thought out points/accusations and who makes numerous crazed posts (some for effect some not) is a bit hard to support. My original point about Bix was made with all due respect and wasn’t meant to be part of a pile on merely what I thought of Bix's obsession with Dave which this forum has a fair amount of evidence of.

[sek69]

I think we all know Bix can be a bit relentless when he gets a hold of something, but for Dave to respond like he did was a bit embarrassing. It comes off as both guys are still sore from the whole Ring of Hell fiasco and are looking for a reason to have another slap fight.

[Bix]

Maybe Dave is losing his eyesight and thought my F4W name was JDW Express.

[jdw]

Maybe Dave is losing his eyesight and thought my F4W name was JDW Express.

I tend to think Dave knows who you are and who I am. The Ring of Hell comment would support that. He probably would toss something else at me.

 

John

[Bix]

Maybe Dave is losing his eyesight and thought my F4W name was JDW Express.

I tend to think Dave knows who you are and who I am. The Ring of Hell comment would support that. He probably would toss something else at me.

 

John

 

I know, I was kidding, especially in light of the Ring of Hell comment which almost led me to decide against posting that stupid joke here.

 

And while you're here...

 

You've known Dave for years, both as a friend and OMG INTERNET ENEMY. Even at your "worst" at WC and the like, his most heated rebuttals were incredibly tame compared to what he said to me. What the hell happened?

[jdw]

Beats me.

 

We didn't have many posts where we disagred back-and-forth with each other a ton. When we did, he wasn't too happy in response. The two that come to mind are discussing (i) Hash-Ogawa and (ii) the WOTY thread with the "intolerance" quote. I think in both of them Dave wandered off, probably feeling like he was banging his head against a brick wall. The WOTY went on for a while longer, with some decent discussion... it was good enough that AL's attempts to troll the thread to death got ignored and the discussion kept moving forward.

 

There was another thread about how current HOF voters would rate Maeda that was pretty funny. I don't recall Dave getting terribly upset in the thread, but I think at a point he wandered off as well.

 

Let's take a look:

 

http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimate...=7;t=000257;p=1

 

My response to him on Maeda was really hard. Much harder than I recall.

 

Dave just wandered off, not feeling it was worth it I suspect (and probably thinking I was being a nutter).

 

Glove/Scott stepped into the breach, and it goes from there.

 

That's more common of threads with Dave. He reaches a point and wanders off.

 

The one thread he stayed around in for a long time was the Ole Anderson thread. My recollections is that I was a "tweener" between the Pro-Ole Gang and the Anti-Ole Gang, pointing out errors on each side.

 

John

[Isaacduke]

Do you have a link to the Ole thread? Sounds interesting...

[Loss]

Just finished reading everything. I still think the big problem is that, even if they had disagreed about something in the end, it's incredibly frustrating that Bryan -- not quite willing to put Dave in this category just yet -- can never admit being wrong about anything, and has a laundry list of excuses ready if it's not something he can counter. Even more that, his opinions are fact, and if you disagree, you are the one presenting your opinion as fact and trying to "force" everyone to see things your way, despite what the vast majority of people think. Because if the majority thinks something, it is always without question right.

 

You can basically apply that logic to every single thread Bryan is ever a part of.

 

Dave is starting to get a little snippy, which is fine at times, but it's bleeding over into the "be dismissive of those who challenge you on anything" mindset Bryan has. Bix is hardly the first person, and likely won't be the last person, to criticize Dave for being soft on his sources. It's a criticism I know he's heard many times before, and reacting the way he did to it ... I don't even know that it was all that outrageous, but it was really out of character.

[sek69]

Am I alone in picturing Bryan as that kid in high school who was friends with the cool kids knowing he'd probably be stuffed in lockers on the regular otherwise?

 

 

Like, he makes you want to take a swing at him but you know if you did, Dave would be in your face all "WHATS YOUR DEAL, BRO?"

[Beast]

So you are the faction of guys who've read dirtsheets for so long that you think you know more than Dave and Bryan? Therefore, you need to have a little corner of the wrestling internet all to yourselves to laugh about how much cooler you are then them. Ok then.

 

I'm just saying that if Dave makes so many mistakes and has such obvious biases, and if Bryan's only ability as a wrestling writer is that he's "Dave-Approved", just ignore both of them. You all obviously have enough knowledge and connections between the lot of you that you don't need to have anything to do with any of them.

[goodhelmet]

That's going from one extreme to the other. Taking everything that Dave says as gospel (and those people are out there) is just as bad as criticizing Dave for every detail. Dave Meltzer has been a valuable resource of wrestling for a long time. No one disputes that. However, when he is factually wrong or lets his bias interfere with his "reporting" then there is no wrong in calling him out on it. And there is definitely nothing wrong in disagreeing with Dave's opinions and voicing your matter on that either. As for Alvarez, I don't read him and have no idea what makes him a wrestling expert.