Dave Meltzer stuff

[rzombie1988]

Believe me, it's hard to be positive about wrestling in 2013, especially when you have to watch all of it like I used to. Especially since Dave and Bryan don't watch the B-shows which are usually the best shows of the week. I don't blame them for not watching Main Event, Superstars or Dave for not watching NXT, but those shows give you very different feels for WWE. If I only watched Raw, I'd think WWE were a lot worse than it is. Watching all of those shows week in and week out were really stressful and a chore for me so I can imagine what they feel.

 

The Board can't really be helped unless you stay in the ProWres Paradise section or the sports section which isn't too bad.

 

It is much easier to discuss wrestling you enjoy for hours as opposed to wrestling you hate. Trying to review bad shows is just about as bad as watching them. I might be the only one but bad shows usually put me in a bad mood.

[Dylan Waco]

There was a ton of good stuff in 2013, but there was also a lot of bad booking.

 

On the Board, the problem was that the TOS came to late. I enjoy posting things here or there, and there are some decent threads, but the reign of the trolls and gimmick accounts chased off a ton of people who aren't likely to come back.

[rzombie1988]

There was a ton of good stuff in 2013, but there was also a lot of bad booking.

 

On the Board, the problem was that the TOS came to late. I enjoy posting things here or there, and there are some decent threads, but the reign of the trolls and gimmick accounts chased off a ton of people who aren't likely to come back.

Definitely was a lot of good stuff but aside from The Shield or Daniel Bryan, it usually wasn't on Raw.

 

The Authority angle booked me off of WWE TV for a while. TNA was just TNA.

 

Agred that the TOS came way too late and got way too bad. Gonna be hard to toss out that rep and I don't think they will.

[rvd356]

When news hits the Internet, it usually gets reworded and I find that sometimes the meaning is lost. The Undertaker-Daniel Bryan stuff is not *quite* how it was written in the WON, as one example. Also, access to the archive of WONs is awesome, and I like being able to search Dave's message board posts.

Loss mentioned this story but here is the report:

 

Word is that the Undertaker has requested his opponent for WrestleMania 30, and the man he has requested to work with is Daniel Bryan. It is not known at this time if WWE has confirmed the request, but a request from Taker in regards to his WrestleMania opponent always carries a lot of weight when making the decision.

 

Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter

 

Anyways I'm all for this match and when I think more about it, it sounds even better. First of Taker's best matches(recently & alltime) are Big v. Little ones. Taker v. HBK I & II, v. Punk and v. Rey @ Rumble 2010 were all ****+ matches. Somehow Bryan's got to wrap up the Wyatt Family feud by Februray to give the Taker Mania match a real build, and I read somewhere that Danielson has become "Daniel Wyatt" with Godwinns gear and all so this match isn't looking good. I'd still be happy with Danielson vs. Bray Wyatt if we get Brock/Taker or Cena/Taker only.

 

Honestly the Brock/Taker match would be awesome but what would it help other than getting Taker another BIG win. Vs. Roman Reigns with Reigns getting the huge win and 'rocket strapped' push would be great but it's too early for that. Vs. John Cena is the biggest and best match they can do for this Mania, and it would be my pick if I were booker but if Taker doesn't wanna do it, its not gonna happen.

 

The Deadman vs. The American Dragon will rule though if it does go down.

[Ditch]

It says something when the most prominent WWE Establishment guys are constantly going out of the way to book themselves with Punk and Bryan.

[Sidebottom]

I read somewhere that Danielson has become...

Daniel Bryan quite some time ago to a lot of success, my toes actually curl reading Internet fans still refer to him as Danielson.

[pantherwagner]

In the last few years I have changed my opinion and now I think that Undertaker should never ever lose the streak but if there's a guy that he could lose to with zero backlash that would be Bryan. If he can hold up for three years (and that is a very big if) Lesnar, Cena and Bryan should be his three opponents.

[rzombie1988]

I don't want to see Taker ever lose the streak. It's something that will never be repeated and to even have a shot at getting away with breaking it, you'd have to be a big name, which means you don't really need it anyway to be elevated. The streak break would just become the new Jericho line of "I beat The Rock and Austin in the same night".

[jdw]

What's interesting to me is how engaging Bryan and Dave are in person. And Dave can easily be pulled into interesting wrestling conversation. But the two aren't necessarily good for each other. It's two negative people who convince themselves that not liking things is the sophisticated position to take. They need to break up that tag team and try something else.

I don't even think Dave thinks in terms of sophisticated positions. Especially in a conversational sense. He tosses stuff out, with the filter limited to "can I say this or is this a non-public item", with the side variation of "how can I say this without being explicit about it".

 

I don't know Brian as well, but from what I've read of the Fig4, it also never struck me that he worried about being sophisticated.

 

Dave at least tends to not like stuff that he doesn't like, and likes stuff that he does like. At times with jaw dropping levels of thought in it.

 

"Well... I liked it."

 

 

John

[evilclown]

What's interesting to me is how engaging Bryan and Dave are in person. And Dave can easily be pulled into interesting wrestling conversation. But the two aren't necessarily good for each other. It's two negative people who convince themselves that not liking things is the sophisticated position to take. They need to break up that tag team and try something else.

I don't even think Dave thinks in terms of sophisticated positions.

 

John

 

To them sophistication boils down to whether or not you're "smart." They consider sophisticated fans to be the ones worried about "logic" in the Daniel Bryan-Wyatt angle, instead of ones willing to go with it because they expect some awesome promos and skits along the way.

 

The default position among hardcores for 20 years has been "the booking is awful" and "my guy is being buried." The insistence on being smarter than the booker has caused the internet fan to miss some awfully cool stuff that was right under their noses.

[Childs]

I read somewhere that Danielson has become...

Daniel Bryan quite some time ago to a lot of success, my toes actually curl reading Internet fans still refer to him as Danielson.

 

Then your toes are too sensitive.

[El-P]

Well, Dave has a point when he says Bryan looks like a mini-Duke Droese (well, he didn't say Duke Droese, but that was the sentiment).

[sek69]

I wonder what the deal is with Bryan wanting to stream all the shows live. I guess being able to interact live via Twitter is cool, but it seems like a lot of work on their end for little reward.

 

I think a better improvement would be having a screener for call-in shows to filter out the dummies.

[rzombie1988]

I wonder what the deal is with Bryan wanting to stream all the shows live. I guess being able to interact live via Twitter is cool, but it seems like a lot of work on their end for little reward.

 

I think a better improvement would be having a screener for call-in shows to filter out the dummies.

The questions and the fact that live stuff gets more viewers. I've listened to some shows I wouldn't have otherwise due to them being live.

 

Twitter is a great screener. If it's awful, you skip it.

[jdw]

What's interesting to me is how engaging Bryan and Dave are in person. And Dave can easily be pulled into interesting wrestling conversation. But the two aren't necessarily good for each other. It's two negative people who convince themselves that not liking things is the sophisticated position to take. They need to break up that tag team and try something else.

I don't even think Dave thinks in terms of sophisticated positions.

 

John

 

To them sophistication boils down to whether or not you're "smart." They consider sophisticated fans to be the ones worried about "logic" in the Daniel Bryan-Wyatt angle, instead of ones willing to go with it because they expect some awesome promos and skits along the way.

 

The default position among hardcores for 20 years has been "the booking is awful" and "my guy is being buried." The insistence on being smarter than the booker has caused the internet fan to miss some awfully cool stuff that was right under their noses.

 

It's 30 years: it's been there since the dawn of the sheets.

 

In turn, they've also not-missed a lot of shit right under their noses. Jim Herd thought the Ding Dongs were awesome. Hardcores thought they sucked. Hardcores were right.

 

If one wanted to study Hardcore Consensus vs Booker Consensus over the past 30 years, I suspect that Hardcore Consensus would have the winning %. That's even when factoring in being wrong about a lot of WWF stuff in the 80s.

 

John

[rovert]

[El-P]

That's a pretty awesome exchange.

[evilclown]

It's 30 years: it's been there since the dawn of the sheets.

 

In turn, they've also not-missed a lot of shit right under their noses. Jim Herd thought the Ding Dongs were awesome. Hardcores thought they sucked. Hardcores were right.

 

If one wanted to study Hardcore Consensus vs Booker Consensus over the past 30 years, I suspect that Hardcore Consensus would have the winning %. That's even when factoring in being wrong about a lot of WWF stuff in the 80s.

 

John

My point kind of boils down to this: when it comes to understanding what real wrestling fans want, the dirtsheet guys have been huge failures. In the biggest aesthetic battle of their era they were wrong. Hugely wrong.

 

Despite being shown over and over again that "workrate" isn't the key to wrestling success, I still find myself reading about how they should turn the keys to the company over to the small indy worker dujour. The amount of projection in the average wrestling newsletter or column is staggering. What you like, as the dirtsheet writer, is not what the average fan likes. Poking holes in whatever the current direction is, calling it "illogical" and refusing to engage with it honestly, doesn't really work when your track record is so bad.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

What's interesting to me is how engaging Bryan and Dave are in person. And Dave can easily be pulled into interesting wrestling conversation. But the two aren't necessarily good for each other. It's two negative people who convince themselves that not liking things is the sophisticated position to take. They need to break up that tag team and try something else.

I don't even think Dave thinks in terms of sophisticated positions.

 

John

 

To them sophistication boils down to whether or not you're "smart." They consider sophisticated fans to be the ones worried about "logic" in the Daniel Bryan-Wyatt angle, instead of ones willing to go with it because they expect some awesome promos and skits along the way.

 

The default position among hardcores for 20 years has been "the booking is awful" and "my guy is being buried." The insistence on being smarter than the booker has caused the internet fan to miss some awfully cool stuff that was right under their noses.

 

Somewhere in the past year, I lost that whole aspect of my fandom, thankfully. Now, I just really like watching wrestling and find something I enjoy in almost all of it that I watch. Once you get past the entitled wrestling fan way of being, it's a hell of a lot more fun. Once in a while I'll be disappointed in something, but it doesn't deter me from enjoying the shows for the most part. I still subscribe to the Observer, and enjoy Dave and the newsletter (and even some of the board) very much. Bryan, not so much. To the point that I don't listen to much of anything there aside from the Dave shows (the Sin Limite shows are the best, obviously) and Alan's show (most of the time, depending on the topic).

 

The negativity from Bryan is just too much for me to handle anymore. It's professional fucking wrestling, not anything important in the big scheme of life.

[jdw]

Odd.

 

The dirt sheets were onto Stone Cold before Vince was. They got the potential of Rock quickly, and were onto him getting over with the NOD every bit as quickly as the Two Vince's.

 

They got the concept of the Outsider's Invasion even quicker than Eric, knowing it needed to be put over strong, but also needed to deliver on #3. In turn, they grasped the excesses of the nWo era long before Eric & Co. They grasped the errors Vince & Eric were making in running WCW into the ground.

 

They got the positives and shortcomings of Bret and Shawn on top, more so than Vince. They got the doomed failures of Vince pushing Lex, Sid and Nash far quicker than Vince.

 

While they liked ECW especially in the beginning, they talked realistically about the business side when ECW fanboys wouldn't, and wrote realistically about the booking and presentation issues when ECW fanboys wouldn't... and frankly when Heyman was lost in his own Kool-Aid himself.

 

They got the short term pop of the "injection" of the nWo into the WWF, but also saw long term it wasn't going anywhere... while Vince & Co actually had some hopes beyond Mania... hell, even put the belt on Hogan.

 

They got pushing Brock like a monster even before he got pushed like a monster. They got the impact on his push it would be when Eric gave a belt to Trip.

 

They were, if I recall correctly, rather positive on Batista's push and his potential to zoom up... and tended to be right on that, even if Batista's work wasn't something that turned them on.

 

Dave has spent more than half a decade supporting the push of Cena, even if Cena isn't his favorite worker. Why? Because it's a business, and Cena does business.

 

Shoemaker wants to see wrestling in post modern, post worked shootfabe terms. You want to see the sheets in terms of acting like sophisticated snobs who turn their nose up on pro wrestling. That's not really the case. Dave and Wade have covered it as an entertainment business for years, and generally don't ignore when something is over. They might not like Hogan, and lord knows you'll find a shitload of rips on him in the 80s and 90s sheets. But they also were extreme realistic about what got over, what was done well, what drew. We all may wax poetically about Jake crashing the Wedding and Macho getting bitten by the snake as one of the great angles of the era. But it bombed at the box office. Which they reported, covered and discussed. They may well have liked it, but they didn't ignore when it wasn't working.

 

Again, if someone wanted to do a 30 year study of the WON, I suspect you'd find Dave to have been right more often over those years than the bookers / promoters of the WWF, JCP/WCW, ECW, TNA, NJPW, AJPW. On a lot of things they would have seen eye to eye, and either been right or wrong. But on the differences... bookers and promoters in the past 30 years haven't been so hot. JCP died, and only survived due to Ted's money. WCW died. ECW died. The original version of TNA died, only saved by a money mark. The second and third versions of it died, only kept alive by the money marks. The Hogan version bombed out... and who knows what the fuck it is at this point, other than perhaps the owner's masturbatory project.

 

I could run this into the ground, and probably already have. We have a perfect example on the site here:

 

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=19237

 

For all one ever needs to know about a group of Bookers and Promoters across a two year stretch, with tremendous resources and talent and opportunities... and being a bunch of fuck ups.

 

John

[jdw]

The negativity from Bryan is just too much for me to handle anymore. It's professional fucking wrestling, not anything important in the big scheme of life.

I have no skin in the Bryan game, so this isn't to defend him... and for anyone who dislikes him on podcasts, have at it. It's the last sentence I want to touch on.

 

For some reason we treat Pro Wrestling and Pro Wrestling Fandom as being something different from other forms of entertainment and/or hobbies such as sports.

 

"Why be so negative about it?"

 

"Why be so critical of it?"

 

"If you don't like it, watch something else!"

 

"Why do you think you know more than the people in the business?"

 

But if we take a look around and are truly honest about it, we both see and admit that people do it about EVERYTHING.

 

Examples...

 

Snowden is one of the best MMA writers around, and has been for years. He writes positively about MMA, and he writes critically about it. He Fucking Pisses Off a whole slew of people inside the business, in the reporting world, and in the Fanboy Circles with his critical pieces. They think it's hatchet writing when it's really Jon using "critical thinking" about the MMA related topic, and if what comes out is positive then it's positive, and if it's criticism then it's criticism. It's what one wants out of a writer, rather than some House Organ bullshit or some Fanboy bullshit.

 

I'm a Manchester United fan. The fucking suck this season, and the rest of the futbol world is have a good, well deserved laugh at us. As a fan are were suppose to blindly sit back and watching the ship sink? Should we stick to reading fanboy articles, or house organ pieces? Or should we seek out writers who are looking at the club, the upper management and the field level management objectively, providing us with insightful analysis? I'm not talking about slagging just for the sake of slagging, since I'll admit that there's a certain negative writer I won't read because it's not analysis on any level but just tossing venom out that's half brain dead. But analysis like one gets from Jon on MMA? Yeah, that's the shit I seek out.

 

Movies? I don't need a movie reviewer to tell me that Transformers is a hit - I go over to Box Office Mojo several times a week, and have for years. I'm more interested in whether it's any good, and whether it has any impact on the business of film. Same with the Marvel movies. I checked out reviews of Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle when my girlfriend and I were trying to decide on date movies over the holidays. I want some good reviews, not some bullshit fanboy crap of "It's MARTY!!! It's so AWESOME!!!!" In turn, when I am asked about the movies, I'm honest in what I think about them, try to get across what I mean in non-spoiler fashion, get a gauge of the person I'm talking to and can recommend one of them to some, the other to different people, and both of them to still others.

 

We do this about EVERYTHING.

 

Yet Pro Wrestling is somehow this religion of fandom where we're all the equivs of Moonies or Scientology folks who can't be critical of the mother church.

 

Irony?

 

Dave loves a certain New Japan wrestler, thinks he's an all-time great, and even at this young stage of his career doesn't have a problem with him going in the HOF.

 

Who shat on him for that? Who did a metric ton of critical thinking about whether Dave was right, or off his rocker?

 

"It's okay when we do it, but not when someone else does it about something we like."

 

:/

 

John

[Bix]

As someone who's had this conversation with Snowden before, I *think* he's talking about now the newsletter writers/readers were a bit too in the bag for JCP/WCW back in the day, which manifested in the WWF not being covered properly in the WON and other newsletters.

[Matt D]

Pro wrestling fans (what we would traditionally call "smarts") in general have more of an inferiority complex than any other fandom I can think of. Maybe comic book fans. I think almost every one kind of secretly wants wrestling to get big again because then they could talk about it with the general public again, even if it would only get big by appealing to a widestream audience at the cost of a lot of things that we prefer and that we get when they aim more at the hardcore crowd.

[W2BTD]

Odd.

 

The dirt sheets were onto Stone Cold before Vince was. They got the potential of Rock quickly, and were onto him getting over with the NOD every bit as quickly as the Two Vince's.

 

They got the concept of the Outsider's Invasion even quicker than Eric, knowing it needed to be put over strong, but also needed to deliver on #3. In turn, they grasped the excesses of the nWo era long before Eric & Co. They grasped the errors Vince & Eric were making in running WCW into the ground.

 

They got the positives and shortcomings of Bret and Shawn on top, more so than Vince. They got the doomed failures of Vince pushing Lex, Sid and Nash far quicker than Vince.

 

While they liked ECW especially in the beginning, they talked realistically about the business side when ECW fanboys wouldn't, and wrote realistically about the booking and presentation issues when ECW fanboys wouldn't... and frankly when Heyman was lost in his own Kool-Aid himself.

 

They got the short term pop of the "injection" of the nWo into the WWF, but also saw long term it wasn't going anywhere... while Vince & Co actually had some hopes beyond Mania... hell, even put the belt on Hogan.

 

They got pushing Brock like a monster even before he got pushed like a monster. They got the impact on his push it would be when Eric gave a belt to Trip.

 

They were, if I recall correctly, rather positive on Batista's push and his potential to zoom up... and tended to be right on that, even if Batista's work wasn't something that turned them on.

 

Dave has spent more than half a decade supporting the push of Cena, even if Cena isn't his favorite worker. Why? Because it's a business, and Cena does business.

 

Shoemaker wants to see wrestling in post modern, post worked shootfabe terms. You want to see the sheets in terms of acting like sophisticated snobs who turn their nose up on pro wrestling. That's not really the case. Dave and Wade have covered it as an entertainment business for years, and generally don't ignore when something is over. They might not like Hogan, and lord knows you'll find a shitload of rips on him in the 80s and 90s sheets. But they also were extreme realistic about what got over, what was done well, what drew. We all may wax poetically about Jake crashing the Wedding and Macho getting bitten by the snake as one of the great angles of the era. But it bombed at the box office. Which they reported, covered and discussed. They may well have liked it, but they didn't ignore when it wasn't working.

 

Again, if someone wanted to do a 30 year study of the WON, I suspect you'd find Dave to have been right more often over those years than the bookers / promoters of the WWF, JCP/WCW, ECW, TNA, NJPW, AJPW. On a lot of things they would have seen eye to eye, and either been right or wrong. But on the differences... bookers and promoters in the past 30 years haven't been so hot. JCP died, and only survived due to Ted's money. WCW died. ECW died. The original version of TNA died, only saved by a money mark. The second and third versions of it died, only kept alive by the money marks. The Hogan version bombed out... and who knows what the fuck it is at this point, other than perhaps the owner's masturbatory project.

 

I could run this into the ground, and probably already have. We have a perfect example on the site here:

 

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=19237

 

For all one ever needs to know about a group of Bookers and Promoters across a two year stretch, with tremendous resources and talent and opportunities... and being a bunch of fuck ups.

 

John

This is a fantastic post. 100% spot on with every single point.

[sek69]

I think the outrage about Bryan is not just because he's a great technical worker, but he's got the biggest reactions anyone in the company has got in years despite at times being actively shit on by the writing/booking/whatever. I think the people who read the sheets get more pissed at the constant claim of giving the fans what they want, only to see them punish anyone who gets over without their seal of approval.

 

The funny part is, he's like the Obi-Wan of WWE. The more they try to cut his legs out from under him, the bigger he becomes. Even way back when he was an NXT "rookie", they jobbed him out constantly and had the fucking Miz as his coach which was almost entirely designed to be a "we'll show these fans he's not a real star" move. They don't seem to realize his whole appeal is the little guy who beats the odds, so all these attempts to downplay his popularity play right into it. He's not one of those guys they get in developmental who were star athletes but end up getting their passion for wrestling beat out of them. By all accounts Bryan lives off that kind of stuff. That's why I'm not too worried about the Wyatt stuff with him. Yes, I think the idea of him willingly joining them sucks, but I have little doubt he will end up just as over (if not more) when it ends.

 

Hell, if Cena ends up the one "rescuing" him, I can really see it blowing up in their faces and having more people turn on him.