Dave Meltzer stuff

[Bix]

What was the single biggest lesson this year that came out of WrestleMania? The fact one is sport and one is entertainment is the major difference, but at the end of the day, both draw and survive based on their ability to provide an entertaining product to the audience and sell the personalities and fights to the audience.

Wait, what? WM was promoted tremendously well this year and looked like a great show on paper.

 

But considering pro wrestling is most effective when it’s able to cause its spectators to suspend disbelief, while the moves are different, the goal of pro wrestling is create the illusion of and MMA fight and the goal of MMA promotion is to use hype tactics learned from a century of boxing and wrestling and use it to create the illusion of heated conflict before the fight.

Oh dear.

 

Pro wrestling may be the only major athletic entertainment endeavor where there are more fans that no longer watch the product than do, and more fans who will regularly buy PPVs of another product than of the product. While aspects of change are necessary in all entertainment, at the end of the day, baseball, football, basketball, etc. are more entertaining to attend today then 25 years ago, but at their core, the product is the same. The wrestling product is not the same, and the emotion of that old wrestling product is captured more in MMA than wrestling, and it’s because wrestling changed to a product the majority of its fan base isn’t interested in, and somebody else picked up the slack.

Pro wrestling may be the only major athletic entertainment endeavor THAT ISN'T A FUCKING SPORT.

 

And a guy who was put in charge of the brain trust of a company is so out of touch he doesn’t recognize any of this.

YOU THINK A GENRE OF FICTION IS THE SAME THING AS A COMBAT SPORT.

[sek69]

Maybe I'm just dense, but I still don't understand why he seems to think the only two things in the world that operate that way are MMA and wrestling. Every sport that ever got popular on any level did so based on the personalities of their athletes. Football became huge in the 70s when the AFL made games more exciting by opening up the passing game and by introducing guys with personality to the audience. Wrestling sure seemed to notice since a lot of those guys either moonlighted as wrestlers or made the full transition like Wahoo or Ernie Ladd.

 

I guess if the Observer existed back then, we'd be hearing about how football is the new pro wrestling and the NWA better start changing it's business to be like the NFL.

 

 

In all, this is what is so infuriating about the whole argument as he plainly states MMA took what boxing did for a hundred years and did it better. MMA doesn't have a guy like Don King keeping all the good fighters apart, when someone tries to play hardball with UFC, Dana tells them (sometimes literally) to go fuck themselves. I guess that makes him more Vince McMahon than Vince? Also another huge part of the discussion that gets glossed over is that when UFC started really gaining, there was no more Monday Night War going on. How many of those lapsed wrestling fans would have started watching UFC in 2005 if they still had Raw and Nitro to choose from? If you really want to make the MMA = wrestling argument, you have to as well admit that the conditions were ripe for them to strike when they did since WWE was getting stagnant from no real competition which bored a lot of the longtime fans.

[Bix]

Hell, people like Bob Barnett have talked about how great Ladd's football interviews were. PRO FOOTBALL AND PRO WRESTLING ARE EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME, FUCKERS!

[KrisZ]

Do I need to say anything more after that diatribe.

[Al]

Other Dave notes, from the Kiniski bio:

 

Kiniski was completely different than any NWA champion before him. He was the biggest, and a heel, as compared to Thesz, Watson and O’Connor who were babyfaces who would play subtle heel when needed.

Thesz was a heel as champ in the majority of matches that exist on him from Chicago, which was the national TV mecca of the country. If he was in with a heel like Buddy or Hans, he was a heel. Against faces, he was that face. I suspect if we had footage of the famous matches with Lou and Leo in San Fran, we'd see Leo as the local babyface and Lou as the heel champ. In the match with Gagne, there is *nothing* "subtle" about Lou's heeling. It's pure NWA Heel Champion stuff, while Verne played ultimate babyface. I tend to think anyone who watches it would come away with the understanding that NWA Heel Champion style work goes right back to the very start: Lou.

 

John

 

It dates back further I'd say. Bill Longson is often listed as one of the all time great heels. Certainly he worked heel as champion.

[Ditch]

Hell, people like Bob Barnett have talked about how great Ladd's football interviews were.

Someone's gotta put some of this footage online...

[Bix]

Hell, people like Bob Barnett have talked about how great Ladd's football interviews were.

Someone's gotta put some of this footage online...

 

There are some short NFL Films team videos that might have him, but I ain't paying for them.

[jdw]

It dates back further I'd say. Bill Longson is often listed as one of the all time great heels. Certainly he worked heel as champion.

Longson wasn't NWA Champ.

 

John

[jdw]

MLB is more entertaining to attend in 2010 than it was in 1985? Seriously?

 

As far as the NBA being more entertaining now than it was in 1985, I'm not entirely sure that most people who were actively following it then as well as now would agree with that. Nor people who've watched a fair share of 80s stuff on NBA TV and/or ESPN and/or DVD. One could ask Bill Simmons if he thought 1984 & 1985 were more entertaining than 2009 & 2010, and I'm pretty sure he's say '84 and '85.

 

To me, it's not even close.

 

I used the word "entertaining" since it's the one Dave chose. I'll avoid going down the rabbit hole of whether the "business" aspect of MLB and the NBA are better in 2010 than 1985. The business models are so radically different that they're not comperable, and they don't really have anything to do one whether Lebron, Kobe and D-Wade are more "over" with US sports fans in 2010 than Magic, Bird and Mike were with them in 1985 (the 2010 crew *isn't*). And the Lakers-Celtics storyline in the Final this year was *nothing* compared to what it was in 1984 and 1985.

 

John

[Guest Slickster]

I think Dave meant that in-stadium entertainment (from the pop music to the T-shirt gun to the video screens showing TV and movie clips to the interactive trivia and scoreboard dot races and mascots and specialty restaurants) is up exponentially from 1985 (when all you had was what, a house organist?). You can be 100% entertained at a modern sporting event now and never even LOOK at the playing field. None of those in-house entertainment elements come through on television, which is why I think he explicitly talked about 'attending' a sporting event.

[jdw]

I attend sporting events. In stadium/arena, the other stuff isn't that entertaining. All that other stuff is largely annoying. In many arenas/stadiums that's almost a non-stop "noise" going on. It's not terribly fun. It also doesn't have anything to do with getting over the product: the players, the game. In fact, more time is spent on getting over various advertisers. Go to a game, get a movie trailer. Fun? Yeah... right.

 

Those blooper reels actually got more pops from the fans back when they were first introduced years ago because they stood out. Now they're just one of many things going on the video screen, and by the time they pop up much of the crowd has checked them out. Even the crowd shots, with people reacting when they get they're on camera, have less heat than they originally did because people are increasingly zoning out.

 

When the Dodgers first rolled out their spot of using the Journey song for a sing along, it got a ton of pop from the crowd. It frankly surprised me how over it was with the crowd, and how many of them know a song that annoyed the shit out of me when it first came out while I was in high school. The last time I was at the Stadium, the reaction was down quite a bit. This during a pretty good performance by the Dodgers where the stuff on the *field* was getting excellent pops from the crowd.

 

After a while, people start tuning out much of the noise. Movie trailers don't seem to get much pop at all these days. Even video pieces about the team have less interest.

 

It's not just the Dodgers. I've seen the same thing at Staples for Lakers games and Clippers games. All that other "entertainment" stuff gets less crowd heat than the original intro and prime of the Laker Girls, or Dancing Barry at his peak. That spot of shooting / sling shoting shirts into the crowd? Very mild pops from the crowd compared to when it was first introduced.

 

Sports are working their ass off to try to make going to a game an "entertainment event". In the end it doesn't matter what else the Clippers do, they don't get the heat the Lakers do because:

 

Clippers = Tuh Suck

Lakers = 3rd Dynasty in 30 years

 

When the Lakers have sucked, which happened for two short periods in those 30 years, fan heat went down, and it didn't really matter what else the team did to try to entertain the fans.

 

I suspect Dave gets this. Fans don't give a shit about the rest of the stuff the WWE doed if the *product* sucks. By product we mean what goes on in the ring along with the out-of-the-ring stuff that relates to the storylines. By "suck" we mean that it doesn't interest the fan base, not what interests me specifically.

 

This is the same in the UFC. Doesn't matter how great the light show is and the entrance music is. If UFC has a year's worth of shitty cards with fan destroying finishes, we'd see a decline in UFC's business even if the light show was great and all the promo pieces were great. In the end, the *product* people are paying for needs to deliver or folks wander off.

 

The Bulls don't draw on TV like they once did, and don't move merch relative to the rest of the league as the did in the 90s. Why? As "product", they were great relative to the league in the 90s, and aren't in the past decade. Why? They had the best player in the game, and they won.

 

We will see the same thing in Clevland starting *right now*. Doesn't matter what promos the Cavs cut, and how "entertaining" they make the "arena experiance". The product is going to suck relative to what it was as recently as April.

 

I think Dave gets that. I just don't think he slows down to see if all of his points in support of Pro Wrestling = MMA fly, because they don't. He'll move onto others when some point out errors in those ones, but the same thing will happen again: he'll roll out points that don't fly.

 

 

John

[kjh]

But considering pro wrestling is most effective when it’s able to cause its spectators to suspend disbelief, while the moves are different, the goal of pro wrestling is create the illusion of and MMA fight and the goal of MMA promotion is to use hype tactics learned from a century of boxing and wrestling and use it to create the illusion of heated conflict before the fight.

Oh dear.

Surely, if "the goal of pro wrestling is to create the illusion of an MMA fight", then the best way to work a pro wrestling match would be to make it look as close to an MMA fight as possible? But that style of working is dead. <_>

[S.L.L.]

But considering pro wrestling is most effective when it’s able to cause its spectators to suspend disbelief, while the moves are different, the goal of pro wrestling is create the illusion of and MMA fight and the goal of MMA promotion is to use hype tactics learned from a century of boxing and wrestling and use it to create the illusion of heated conflict before the fight.

Oh dear.

Surely, if "the goal of pro wrestling is to create the illusion of an MMA fight", then the best way to work a pro wrestling match would be to make it look as close to an MMA fight as possible? But that style of working is dead. <_>

 

That one actually goes back at least to a Cyber Sunday event when Matt Hardy and MVP were feuding. The fans were going to get to choose between a standard wrestling match, a boxing match, and an MMA match, and Dave decried the pointlessness of the MMA choice because "a worked MMA match is just a regular wrestling match, anyway". Because, you know, it's not like there's any difference at all between how your average WWE match is worked and how your average RINGS match is worked. Nope. No siree. MMA=wrestling, just like WWE=UWFi.

[Bob Morris]

Brock's MMA appeal comes from him being a scary ass legit bad dude with freakish strength and cardio for someone his size. Yes there was the segment who wanted to see a fake pro wres fighter get schooled in real fighting, but I don't think there's that many people who bought his last UFC fight based on his WWE experience.

Let's not forget that Brock Lesnar was a successful collegiate wrestler prior to going to WWE. He also made headlines when he tried out for the Minnesota Vikings, even if he was cut in training camp. So Lesnar has intrigue that has covered mutliple areas, not just WWE.

 

Just because UFC has high production value doesn't mean they copied them from WWE any more than the NFL or any other pro sport that cares about not looking cheap on TV. As far as them booking matches, they book much more similar to boxing where they build up the personalities involved since they don't have any control over the outcome. That way, if both guys are built up prior to a fight, then they have an equal chance to make money on whoever wins. Wrestling on the other hand usually only builds up the person they are booking to win. If anything, wrestling should copy how UFC builds fights.

When it comes to the way WWE, or any pro wrestling company, books, I agree the booking needs to make it look like one or the other could win, but there's a little more to it than that. First of all, pro wrestling can get away with putting together storylines that don't just simply focus on "who's the better wrestler" although that is the theory that should apply when it comes to the blowoff match. But with storylines, while I won't argue the Rock/Lesnar storyline was done very well, pro wrestling has had more success with storylines that don't follow the "who's the better wrestler" argument, from Hulk Hogan's WWF feuds throughout the 1980s to the real concepts that the Four Horsemen and Dusty Rhodes represented in their rivaliry to the nWo to Steve Austin versus Vince McMahon and on it goes. UFC is always going to be built on the "who's the better fighter" concept because that's how sports are. With entertainment such as pro wrestling, you have more options.

 

And another point I want to bring up: Every sport has its athletes and teams who people just can't stand. Plenty of NBA folks don't like Kobe Bryant and actively root for his Lakers to fall (and elsewhere, I've already addressed LeBron James). When the New England Patriots were chasing perfection, people wanted to see them lose because they thought Tom Brady was arrogant and Bill Belichick was an asshole. In MLB, people call the Yankees the "Evil Empire" and hated the late George Steinbrenner with a passion. And on it goes.

 

But none of these cases come from the leagues building up in the fans' eyes that they are villians... they just gained fan perception because, in general, fans want to dislike successful teams and athletes if said teams and athletes bear even the slightest hint of being arrogant.

 

I would argue more of the "UFC fans hate Brock Lesnar" mentality came from fans themselves or other UFC fighters, not from Dana White. He doesn't seem to be shy about recognizing it, but I doubt he's the one promoting it.

 

But in pro wrestling, it's the promoter who decides who to push as the guy the fans love to hate. And if the fans boo somebody who the promoter wants them to like, it's the promoter who ultimately makes the decision to change his strategy.

 

There's no debate MMA can be considered an offshoot of wrestling, especially with how it evolved in Japan from shootstyle wrestling groups and whatnot. On that point, I believe I mentioned before that no one makes the argument that soccer, rugby, and American football are all the same thing just because they all share similar roots.

Agreed.

 

Finally, of course it's a business decision to cover UFC, he gets paid to do that - possibly more than he makes from doing the WON. He only used to devote a paragraph, maybe a page at most to MMA before it became a regular gig for him. As he spends more and more time doing work for Yahoo Sports, he becomes more involved in the MMA world. I think that is kind of putting him in a similar bubble you see so many people who spend their life in wrestling trapped in. He seems to think MMA/UFC is on the verge of becoming the #1 sport in the world, but to be honest the only thing you can say it's beating is boxing which has been dying a slow death since Tyson got KO'd.

I really think Dave and Bryan just need to be honest with themselves and say that there's enough crossover in the MMA and pro wrestling fanbases, combined with the fact they both enjoy MMA, are the reasons they want to cover it. They don't have to spend their time comparing it to pro wrestling to justify coverage. It's their decision to cover it and they don't need to be thinking of themselves as doing one or the other first and foremost.

[goodhelmet]

I think a wise man once said, there are only two real dynasties worth mentioning in basketball... The Celtics and UCLA. Just saying.

[Bob Morris]

Oh, and as far as Dave's argument about how UFC's business model is similar to WWE's in that the company is expanding to the same European markets that WWE had success in because they believe people who are wrestling fans will watch UFC...

 

Pro wrestling had already existed in Europe at the time WWF/E started coming over there, and as I recall, WWF shows in the 1990s were regularly watched in those countries, so WWF already had an audience there.

 

UFC and other MMA shows air in Europe, do they not? And I suspect there's plenty of MMA taking place in Europe as well.

 

Therefore, it makes sense UFC would go there because there is likely already an audience for it. Just as basketball was already taking place in Europe when more European players came to the NBA, and any NBA expansion there would be because there already is an audience, not because they want to tap into somebody else's audience.

[jdw]

I think a wise man once said, there are only two real dynasties worth mentioning in basketball... The Celtics and UCLA. Just saying.

I wouldn't toss the 1957-69 Celts at Dave as being comperable to the entertainment popularity of the current NBA: it's not close. The NBA from 1957-69 didn't have a pot to piss in relative to today. It's biggest stars weren't as big of stars as Mike in the 90s or even Lebron today. While Wilt was a known major star in the sports world (even when I started paying attention to the NBA in the early 70s he was still a big name), he wasn't as oppressively in our face as Mike was.

 

I completely disagree with the notion that the Celts are the only NBA dynasty worth mentioning. The Russell Celtics died when I was 3. I'm not even sure if you were born by June 1969, Will. I'm not going to say they're irrelevant: I'm a fan of sports history, so it has great meaning to me. But 1969 was the 23rd season of the NBA. There have been nearly twice as many season since then: 41. If you're going to ask me what's more relevant, a dynasty from the 11th through 23rd season of the league or the totality of what's happened in the last 41 seasons, I'll go with what's happened in the last 41 years. Titles since 1969:

 

11 - (72, 80, 82, 85, 87, 88, 00, 01, 02, 09, 10)

6 - Celtics (74, 76, 81, 84, 86, 09)

6 - Bulls (91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98)

4 - Spurs (99, 03, 05, 07)

 

Those are worth mentioning. You can't write the history of the NBA without talking about the Magic Lakers, the Bird Celtics or the Jordan Bulls. They are the history of 20 years of the NBA where it was growing rapidly in national attention. And ignoring the Shaq-Kobe-Phil Lakers or Timmy's Spurs is just crackpot stuff. In a few more years we'll be able to see if the current Lakers step up to that level, or push slightly higher. Three straight Finals and a back-to-back is a pretty good foundation.

 

John

[goodhelmet]

I didn't say they weren't important, I just don't consider them dynasties. I use that word in the strictest sense of the term. You have a looser definition with a wierd time constraint. And the guy who gave that quote was Greg Popovich.

 

Anyway, back to the topic.

[jdw]

I'm not sure how the 1980-88 Lakers (or even expanded to 1980-91) weren't a Dynsty. 5 titles in 9 years, with 2 other trips to the Final, isn't one.

 

Or Mike: 6 straight full seasons with the Bulls = 6 straight titles. Those 6 titles in 8 season.

 

Dittos the Spurs 3 titles in 5 years. Pop was playing humble.

 

Were the Celts on a different level? Sure. But no one us comparing the volume of success.

 

It's a bit like saying there is no such thing as a great and successful rock band other than the Beatles: no one sold as much, no one had as much success, and no one has the critical acclaim. I'm a Beatles fan... and even I wouldn't claim they're the only great and successful band, the R'n'R equiv of the Celtics, and it's not worth mentioning those other ones.

 

John

[Guest Cerebus The Aardvark]

I think a wise man once said, there are only two real dynasties worth mentioning in basketball... The Celtics and UCLA. Just saying.

The Celtics are the only one, IMO. UCLA totally ignored pretty much every rule in regards to recruiting/boosters and were allowed to do so by the NCAA until years after Wooden had retired.

 

As far as Dave's MMA/PW comparison, sometimes I wonder how much of it he really means, and how much is just him being obtuse.

[sek69]

Considering he really hasn't made much of a defense for it beyond "because I said so" I'd be inclined to believe he knows it's a card he can play to rile people up.

[Dan]

What do you mean?, Dave has offered lots of good reasons. Like:

 

*) Some of his old wrestling buddies now like UFC.

 

*) Dana White acts kinda like a young Vince.

 

*) The atmosphere of 1970s wrestling is the same as UFC's.

 

*) The Japanese wrestling magazines cover MMA as wrestling, so why not?

[Johnny Sorrow]

I think it's terrible slight on Dave's part that he isn't giving any attention to the rising popularity of Roller Derby. His love of Derby always made sense as that it was a popular fake sport. It's back, and draws a lot of dedicated fans. He could throw his weight behind it and maybe help out the business.

 

[kjh]

But considering pro wrestling is most effective when it’s able to cause its spectators to suspend disbelief, while the moves are different, the goal of pro wrestling is create the illusion of and MMA fight and the goal of MMA promotion is to use hype tactics learned from a century of boxing and wrestling and use it to create the illusion of heated conflict before the fight.

Oh dear.

Surely, if "the goal of pro wrestling is to create the illusion of an MMA fight", then the best way to work a pro wrestling match would be to make it look as close to an MMA fight as possible? But that style of working is dead. <_>

 

That one actually goes back at least to a Cyber Sunday event when Matt Hardy and MVP were feuding. The fans were going to get to choose between a standard wrestling match, a boxing match, and an MMA match, and Dave decried the pointlessness of the MMA choice because "a worked MMA match is just a regular wrestling match, anyway". Because, you know, it's not like there's any difference at all between how your average WWE match is worked and how your average RINGS match is worked. Nope. No siree. MMA=wrestling, just like WWE=UWFi.

I did troll Dave on this point on his board. His response:

 

The illusion to the crowd dummy, not copy move for move. You say the same about boxing and who would suggest do guys do a pro wrestling match where they stand there with gloves and work jabs and footwork. When a pro wrestling match is at its best and an MMA match are at its best both have the same kind of feel in the crowd. Even pro wrestling will admit that because how often do you hear wrestling commentators use the "big fight feel" line on PPV or when there is a big television main event?

[Bix]

while the moves are different, the goal of pro wrestling is create the illusion of and MMA fight

When a pro wrestling match is at its best and an MMA match are at its best both have the same kind of feel in the crowd. Even pro wrestling will admit that because how often do you hear wrestling commentators use the "big fight feel" line on PPV or when there is a big television main event?

Those aren't the same thing.