Dave Meltzer stuff

[Bix]

Dave heard the rumor least a year or two before the sleaze thread, which was when it first showed up online, so n that sense you have to disregard the sleaze thread post. Then there was something I messed up in the post where we tried to figure out the timeline, but I fixed it later.

[Slasher]

That JR caption is wonderful

I'm rather particular to the Heyman caption because the accompanying photo makes it even better.

[hammerva]

Okay I am confused is Bonnar going to the Hall of Fame on his own or as a tandem with Forrest Griffith? As separate I agree that it doesn't make sense but as a group it makes perfect sense since their Ultimate Fighter 1 fight was easily a top 3 influential fights in the history of the UFC.

 

Besides Meltzer wet dream is to put more pro wrestling in his MMA so these nominations should fit right in.

[KrisZ]

Meltz's argument was that you might as well put in Liz Carmouche as well since she was Rousey's opponent and to a degree Vince McMahon for allowing TUF Season 1 to air after RAW

[Dooley]

Neither man has a HOF career, but the TUF 1 finale was such a big part of the MMA boom that I don't have a problem with it. Meltz's comments are kind of ridiculous, but really par for the course for him in his MMA work.

[jdw]

Dave heard the rumor least a year or two before the sleaze thread, which was when it first showed up online, so n that sense you have to disregard the sleaze thread post. Then there was something I messed up in the post where we tried to figure out the timeline, but I fixed it later.

Dave allegedly heard the "he's too crazy" theory in 2001. He said to you that he'd already heard the "Savage banged Steph" years before that, but dismissed it.

 

There's a problem with that: Keith pointed out that Vince negotiated to get Savage back in 1996 and 1999 when his contract ran with WCW.

 

That's the problem with this: people keep inventing New Versions of this when facts show them to be bullshit.

 

It's a bit like the Stone Cold Superstar story. Some of us pointed out that it was a bullshit idea that Graham thought up after seeing Austin go from Heel to Super Over Face, and after decades of gravytraining his rep as having inspired Hogan, now create a new relevance for himself that "I could have been Austin before Austin!". Nonsensical stuff.

 

Except, after some of us pointed out it was bullshit, at some point Dave tried to lend the "Turn Graham Face" story credibility by saying he heard about it in the 80s and how it bummed Graham out.

 

Okay... fine... that makes sense.

 

Until one looks at Dave's famous Graham interview in 1992. It ain't in there. Despite knowing about this key, life altering element of Graham's life, Dave didn't ask about it. Not only that... but Graham walked through the end of his WWF run, bragged about making more money in the year he lost the title than in the year he held it, and then copped to the cause of him crashing to the ground on being a junkie and totally burned out.

 

Never really heard a good comeback on that, because it kind of shut down the claim. Except of course it lives on in Graham's book.

 

Anyway... Macho Porked Steph just keeps mutating. People want to believe it, so they create new bullshit to keeping believing it.

[Alchemy]

Why so invested in this, JDW?

[jdw]

Why so invested in this, JDW?

Because a central core element of the hardcore movement that grew up around Dave over the past 30 years was to not take the bullshit of the business on face value. People in the business lie.

 

I've been part of that hardcore movement for the majority of those 30 years. I've watched people in the business lie right to Dave's face. I've seen him laugh in people's face ("Tanaka is better than those All Japan buys, Dave"). I've seen him nod buying the bullshit until someone else pointed the bullshit out ("But Carlos... the finish was a DQ"). We had running jokes that lasted for years over bullshit ("Good diet!"). And I've been with him when the bullshit was so offensive that it took him a back, left him speechless, and led to a long rant once we were back in the car away from the goofy worker.

 

So I tend to get annoyed when people feed Dave bullshit, it's pointed out to be bullshit, he alters the Story to get around those facts, has it pointed out that it's still factually wrong, and morphs it yet again. The WON was built on bringing truth out when covering a lying business. I might roll my eyes at crappy fact checking in the Kobashi bio, but it's just sloppy work. Trafficking in bullshit... that's not what the WON is about, and is annoying as shit.

[Alchemy]

That's all fine. I get that.

 

But it doesn't sound like he's "taking bullshit at face value." In fact, part of what he's written is that he wrote it off but it's gained credibility over the years. I don't really know anything about Savage's relationship with the McMahons, except that it obviously was aberrationally bad (that Macho Man Collection set is unreal in a lot of ways).

 

Maybe you should talk to him about it.

[Bix]

I'd have to look again but I'm pretty sure John is my remembering my first post which had some kind of typo and not the subsequent correction. Dave was sure he heard it before it became an Internet rumor.

[cm funk]

Why so invested in this, JDW?

Because a central core element of the hardcore movement that grew up around Dave over the past 30 years was to not take the bullshit of the business on face value. People in the business lie.

 

I've been part of that hardcore movement for the majority of those 30 years. I've watched people in the business lie right to Dave's face. I've seen him laugh in people's face ("Tanaka is better than those All Japan buys, Dave"). I've seen him nod buying the bullshit until someone else pointed the bullshit out ("But Carlos... the finish was a DQ"). We had running jokes that lasted for years over bullshit ("Good diet!"). And I've been with him when the bullshit was so offensive that it took him a back, left him speechless, and led to a long rant once we were back in the car away from the goofy worker.

 

So I tend to get annoyed when people feed Dave bullshit, it's pointed out to be bullshit, he alters the Story to get around those facts, has it pointed out that it's still factually wrong, and morphs it yet again. The WON was built on bringing truth out when covering a lying business. I might roll my eyes at crappy fact checking in the Kobashi bio, but it's just sloppy work. Trafficking in bullshit... that's not what the WON is about, and is annoying as shit.

 

Honestly man, no disrespect, you talk a lot about how you used to know Dave, but it sounds like you haven't had much personal interaction with him in the last 20 years and you kind of come off sounding bitter a lot of the time.

 

You seem to be a bit obsessed with the guy tbh

[Loss]

He's responding to a point about Savage and Stephanie. He is not the one that keeps bringing it up. It feels wrong to turn the obsessed tag on him.

[S.L.L.]

Sek's psychological diagnosis of Vince is funny, though I don't agree. It's not Vince's job to be a moral crusader, and the fact is that he wouldn't have been successful had he been a moral crusader. I remember Meltzer arguing in the Observer once that wrestlers would get off roids if Vince would just job them out. True. But they could also go to the competition and make their fortunes there. People like big bodies, and big bodies sell. The fact that so many wrestlers do blow their money on drugs and die while off contract would make Vince less sympathetic. I'm not saying that he's right, but his mentality isn't unusual. Vince, however, does seem manic, and his continual pushing/de-pushing of guys and incessant, unnecessary rewriting of shows points to that. But Vince likely wouldn't qualify as a clinical sociopath. He would have blown all the company's profits by then. He is probably a narcissist however.

You mean my post? What does being a moral crusader have to do with anything? I laid out the standards of diagnosis quite plainly. Nowhere in there did it say "individual is exempt from diagnosis if it's not their job to be a moral crusader", nor for that matter was anyone arguing that it was Vince's job to be a moral crusader. I thought it was quite clear that my argument was "Vince is crazy". If you want to argue that it's not Vince's job to not be crazy, that's not really an argument, at least not against my point. If you want to argue "it's not Vince's job to not be crazy, therefore Vince is not crazy," you might be crazy yourself.

 

What was jdw just saying?

 

That's the problem with this: people keep inventing New Versions of this when facts show them to be bullshit.

I quoted from DSM-IV, which, up until a few weeks ago, represented "the facts", at least from a diagnostic standpoint, and built my argument around that. With limited actual arguments available against that (most of which I provided in that post), a New Version of the story is invented.

 

People want to believe it, so they create new bullshit to keeping believing it.

[jdw]

Maybe you should talk to him about it.

Zero desire to. But you can if you'd like.

[jdw]

I'd have to look again but I'm pretty sure John is my remembering my first post which had some kind of typo and not the subsequent correction. Dave was sure he heard it before it became an Internet rumor.

Went back and looked at your edited post. You have Dave first hearing about the "Savage Is Too Crazy" explanation in 2001. You have him saying he heard about the "Savage Fucked Steph" years before that, but dismissed it.

 

The problem with that: Vince wanted to bring Savage back not long before the "Savage Is Too Crazy" explanation. There simply isn't enough daylight in there, Bix.

 

Which is a consistent problem with the shape shifting of the story: if we slow down and try to fit the pieces together, they don't. Unless we toss away everything that's been written and just go with:

 

"I think Savage fucked Steph because I think Savage fucked Steph."

 

Which is easy enough if we want to turn off our brains.

 

John

[jdw]

Honestly man, no disrespect, you talk a lot about how you used to know Dave, but it sounds like you haven't had much personal interaction with him in the last 20 years and you kind of come off sounding bitter a lot of the time.

Last 20 years? I hadn't even met Dave 20 years ago today. Wouldn't until August 28, 1993 at a show.

 

 

You seem to be a bit obsessed with the guy tbh

Not with Dave.

 

This specific bullshit story, however, does annoy the fuck out of me.

[jdw]

He's responding to a point about Savage and Stephanie. He is not the one that keeps bringing it up. It feels wrong to turn the obsessed tag on him.

That.

[Dylan Waco]

Honestly man, no disrespect, you talk a lot about how you used to know Dave, but it sounds like you haven't had much personal interaction with him in the last 20 years and you kind of come off sounding bitter a lot of the time.

Last 20 years? I hadn't even met Dave 20 years ago today. Wouldn't until August 28, 1993 at a show.

 

 

 

 

Please tell me you had to look that date up

[jdw]

Of course. The show was on my mind because Yohe and I were talking about that lucha card last week.

[kjh]

In the trailer to Sean Waltman's Timeline WWE 1994 shoot DVD, he tells a story about how he was shooting the shit with Vince, joking about bathroom humour, when Arnie (I guess Skaaland) jumped in and made a comment about Randy Savage and Vince's face turned sad and he almost went into tears. Um...

[rovert]

Meltzer's live tweeting of the TNA-Ramage Jackson-SPIKE Press Conference was a tour de force

[Childs]

I liked the global warming promo he cut in the middle of this week's Observer. Particularly amusing was the fact that in came in connection with an item about Jim Ross, who strikes me as a likely climate change denier.

[Loss]

You would think, but Jim Ross is apparently pro gay marriage, believes Henry Louis Gates was a victim of racism and watches Bill Maher.

[ohtani's jacket]

I liked the global warming promo he cut in the middle of this week's Observer. Particularly amusing was the fact that in came in connection with an item about Jim Ross, who strikes me as a likely climate change denier.

I don't know about global warming denial, but having lived through a major nuclear disaster I can tell you I will never take activists at their word ever again.

[Bix]

I liked the global warming promo he cut in the middle of this week's Observer. Particularly amusing was the fact that in came in connection with an item about Jim Ross, who strikes me as a likely climate change denier.

I don't know about global warming denial, but having lived through a major nuclear disaster I can tell you I will never take activists at their word ever again.

 

Having lived through a major natural disaster that nobody saw coming until a about 3 days prior BECAUSE IT NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE...huh?