Dave Meltzer stuff

[Dooley]

 

As much as I respect John's opinion on wrestling, his responses are exactly why there shouldn't be star ratings in MMA.

 

Because a reviewer would offer up his opinion on the quality of a fight in a short hand fashion.

 

Yep... that would be bad.

 

 

Yep....that's exactly what's being debated.

[cm funk]

I side with Dooley on this. I find reducing something down to snowflakes a pointless exercise. It's reductive. In music, films...art.....it's a very shallow and narrow way of judging art. I'm a Leonard Maltin fan, but I enjoy his blurb reviews far more than his ratings. His rating system is way off...even just in the space of a paragraph he'll describe a movie he likes but then give it **......or he'll describe a movie he didn't like a lot but then give it ***

 

Rolling Stone......they have the hugest joke of * ratings in history. And I love Rolling Stone as a magazine (at least I did when I was younger).....they've actually gone back and re-rated albums because there was an agenda at the time of the review which wasn't honest or fair to the artists involved......and they also take money to give good reviews to shitty, shitty stuff.

 

To me, a good interpretation and good review doesn't need snowflakes attached to it. They're meaningless. So many great albums have been given shitty snowflake reviews over the years.....so many wrestling matches I don't care for at all given high marks by Meltzer and a lot of fans.....that's all good......but I'm not basing my opinion like that

[Bix]

The short version of John's argument, if I'm reading it correctly, is:

 

Dave does a lot of PBP and sometimes buries how good he thinks the round/fight is in the middle of it. He needs either a shorthand for how much he enjoyed a fight or a standardized way of recommending fights.

[Al]

Most reviewers would rather not do star ratings. But readers demand them. They're a fun diversion but best taken with a grain of salt.

[jdw]

The short version of John's argument, if I'm reading it correctly, is:

 

Dave does a lot of PBP and sometimes buries how good he thinks the round/fight is in the middle of it. He needs either a shorthand for how much he enjoyed a fight or a standardized way of recommending fights.

 

I didn't say he "needs" to do it. Just that I would like it.

 

Also, when sifting through prelims and tv cards a year after the fact, a quick reference source would be nice rather than scanning the text of 5 show recaps.

 

Frankly, I'd be happy if Snowden did it and posted an archive somewhere. I simply point to Dave because we have nearly 30 years of wrestling PPV snowflakes to look through, and he's been writing up MMA PPV for 20 years in similar ways to how he's been writing up... with the exception of snowflakes.

 

FWIW, the "entertainment vs sports" argument kind of fails when trying to explain why Dave doesn't snowflake the stuff. He also didn't snowflake UWF-style work after 1984-ish. I'd even have to check to see if he included any UWF 2.0 matches in the 1990 Yearbook's list of Top 65 matches. UWF workers made the Worker List... but matches always were treated differently.

[jdw]

Most reviewers would rather not do star ratings. But readers demand them. They're a fun diversion but best taken with a grain of salt.

 

Pretty clear that I've talked about taking it with a grain of salt - you did see my inclusion of Delta Force among examples of Ebert's 1986 *** movies.

 

I don't think many people treat them as diversions, and instead as references. They're not handed down by God on tablets. Mention Hart vs Hart cage match and you'll find out how quickly people do not take them as the Gospel. On the other hand, that is a decent reference for when making something like the YB:

 

"Hmmm... Dave gave this five. We need to take a look at it to see what's doing."

 

And from there people agree, disagree, and some decent discussion happens.

 

If that same match got **, which is actually close to the *** that I thought of it at the time rather than the *****? That match at ** never would have entered into YB discussion other than checking out the finish.

 

It's been useful in pro wrestling. It's useful in movies. It's useful in a number of things.

[jdw]

On the flip side...

 

I don't recall assigning any of my own stars in the Pimping Posts. Certainly not consistently, and more likely in terms of "This got ****1/2 at the time but really was more like ***" The Pimping Posts had some value, thought the Ballots likely had more. It's likely that a number of matches in the Pimping Posts would have gotten more attention if I did sprinkle snowflakes on them.

 

So, you can put something over with just "words", even loads of flippant ones like I tossed around in those posts. You also can put them over with snowflakes, at times more given the crowd.

[goodhelmet]

 

From today's WOR.

While The Rock was shooting a film, he was watching Memphis wrestling, and he emailed Dave Meltzer, apparently asking, "Who the fuck is Austin Idol? Who is this guy? He's one of the best promos I've ever seen."

 

 

He should be asking his dad. I am sure Rocky Johnson crossed paths with Idol... or did he?

[cm funk]

I'm actually kinda shocked Dwayne didn't know Idol. Idol worked Memphis off and on for years.....Dwayne started in Memphis. I'm not from the south.....and I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of southern territory days......I can't imagine not knowing of Austin Idol. Rock is a wrestling fan/historian to this day.....amazing to me he wouldn't know Idol

 

Rocky Johnson might have crossed paths with Austin Idol in Cali? Possibly?

[SomethingSavage]

To be fair, Idol was in and out of the Mempho scene A LOT - though I kind of doubt he was doing much work there circa '96 when Rocky was coming through. I remember seeing Flex Kavana work spots with Lawler and Christopher on TV, but not much else. Maybe I'm mashing my time periods together, but I don't recall much else going on in Memphis at the time - other than some awful stuff with the Truth Commission guys, a lot of the mime/Spellbinder fella, and that whole ECW crossover. No Idol though.

 

Must admit however, I AM kinda curious to know more specifically what film Rocky was working on when he first "discovered" the awesomeness of an Idol promo though. I'd just like to scan back and see if I could place him "borrowing" any lines or plugging anything into his stuff afterwards.

 

Sort of like he MUST have watched some American Dream before the Rumble 2013 promo versus Punk. Almost stole that one word for word from Big Dust.

[ohtani's jacket]

Most reviewers would rather not do star ratings. But readers demand them. They're a fun diversion but best taken with a grain of salt.

 

In Ebert and Siskel's case, they boiled it down to "Should I see this movie? Thumbs up -- yes. Thumbs down -- no." But they had a lot of trouble with the middle ground, since you can't give a 2.5 star movie the thumbs up. That's why Ebert generally rated a 2.5 star movie higher if he thought it was worth seeing, because people react more favourably to a 3 star rating than a 2.5 star one. If you know that Ebert generally rates higher and that he will give an action movie a positive review if it meets his genre expectations then I think the star system is useful. I certainly refer to ratings whenever I'm researching films or music albums. I think they're an invaluable research tool if you trust the reviewer's opinion. In the case of someone like Robert Christgau, I usually check his ratings to see how far apart we are.

 

For MMA, it would be great to have a better resource for recommended fights instead of having to skim through google results. I don't think it necessarily needs to be star ratings, but more definitive lists would help.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

 

 

Thanks to Phillip Willis who sent me a hardcover book of all the 1992 Observers. I was out of town for a wedding yesterday and was reading back and it was quite amazing reading the stuff week-by-week. He was actually presenting me with the idea of doing either hardcover or soft-cover books covering the entire year of Observers, at least from 1992 on. Is there interest in such a book which would take up a lot less space and be far more cost effective to purchase than all the back issues separately?

 

I would love this.

 

I have a friend of mine who is working on a book anthology of her zine, and thought how great that was. It would be neat to see something like this done with the WON, covering every year. In the past, I've lost issues from time to time, so this would help me out a lot. Also, would be great to keep notes on certain issues. Anyone else interested in this?

 

I've got scans of many years worth of the Observer (and the Torch for that matter) and would gladly drop money on bound collections. It'd be cheaper than buying them off eBay and still would satisfy my need to hold them. Not to mention the amount of paper it would save my place of business.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

 

So the thread derailed a little bit, yes?

 

Not at all. We go off on tangents like this that start off as Dave-related. It's 4400 posts long.

 

I started all this and I really didn't even have a horse in this race. I just thought it was weird that you'd start professional coverage of a sporting event with a Thumbs Up/Down poll from your readers.

 

 

MMA involves a certain degree of match making and there are performance incentives designed to produce a more exciting card, so I think there is merit in the thumbs up/thumbs down system.

[KrisZ]

Idol & Rocky were in Memphis at the same time in 1987 when Rock was in high school

[BillThompson]

 

Most reviewers would rather not do star ratings. But readers demand them. They're a fun diversion but best taken with a grain of salt.

 

Pretty clear that I've talked about taking it with a grain of salt - you did see my inclusion of Delta Force among examples of Ebert's 1986 *** movies.

 

I don't think many people treat them as diversions, and instead as references. They're not handed down by God on tablets. Mention Hart vs Hart cage match and you'll find out how quickly people do not take them as the Gospel. On the other hand, that is a decent reference for when making something like the YB:

 

"Hmmm... Dave gave this five. We need to take a look at it to see what's doing."

 

And from there people agree, disagree, and some decent discussion happens.

 

If that same match got **, which is actually close to the *** that I thought of it at the time rather than the *****? That match at ** never would have entered into YB discussion other than checking out the finish.

 

It's been useful in pro wrestling. It's useful in movies. It's useful in a number of things.

 

 

In all my film writing throughout the years I've always used star ratings. I don't mind them, they are a nice shorthand way to allow people to know where I would group a movie compared to other movies. I keep personal star ratings for wrestling matches I consider great, but for whatever reason I don't include the star ratings with my online wrestling writing.

[Hollinger.]

The short version of John's argument, if I'm reading it correctly, is:

 

Dave does a lot of PBP and sometimes buries how good he thinks the round/fight is in the middle of it. He needs either a shorthand for how much he enjoyed a fight or a standardized way of recommending fights.

 

Exactly. I almost never watch MMA live anymore. I just want to be able to look at a card and be told which fights were worth watching, so I know what to fast forward through. I don't want to read three paragraphs about everything that happened in the fight, because I still want to watch the good fights without knowing how it went down.

[evilclown]

I think what we need is a weekly "What You Need To See" list. Include UFC, boxing, Bellator, etc. There's so much material, it would be worth the effort to help people decide when to hit play on the DVR and when to clear that precious room.

[Hollinger.]

This is a man with ideas.

[El-P]

Include UFC, boxing, Bellator, etc.

 

The name of the board is Prowrestlingonly. Not ProwrestlingobserverwhichalsomeansMMAsinceMMAequalsprowrestlingalthoughitsprettysupidinfactwhenyouthinkaboutit.

[goc]

As a guy who stopped watching UFC because there is just too much to keep up with, and too many boring fights to sift through to blindly try and find the good fights unspoiled, I really like the "What you need to see" list idea. That also gives all the people who watch the B-Shows, lucha, or whatever a place to pimp stuff that other people don't regularly follow.

[Loss]

 

Include UFC, boxing, Bellator, etc.

 

The name of the board is Prowrestlingonly. Not ProwrestlingobserverwhichalsomeansMMAsinceMMAequalsprowrestlingalthoughitsprettysupidinfactwhenyouthinkaboutit.

 

 

He was just responding to the posts before his.

[Jmare007]

To give you an idea of just how highly Idol’s work is still regarded today, the Rock never saw much footage of the Universal Heartthrob until the late ’90s—Dwayne Johnson reportedly was blown away at just how brilliant Idol’s promos were.

 

 

 

http://kentuckyfriedwrestling.com/theword2/austin-idol-returns/

[hammerva]

So is Chael Sonnen going to be like Lance Storm where he comes on every week? I mean I know that Meltzer has a severe hard on for the guy but how many more interviews are you going to do with this guy.

[evilclown]

I am told that giving fights a star rating would be "dumb." So if I'm going to do it, it would be on my own and for free.

[fxnj]

Someone tell me how giving star ratings to fights is dumb but calling them "good" or "worth watching" isn't. These methods of evaluating quality only have meaning in that you know they're saying a fight is better than one that's "bad" or that you should "avoid watching," in the same way that rating a fight ****1/4 only has meaning because you know it's better than fights that are **** or below. Those folks at Ring magazine must have had it all wrong these last 90 years attempting to pick 1 FOTY rising above all others instead of just assigning them to ranges of quality, which some posters in here would call a beyond herculean effort with all the variables they need to account for to even decide what's entertaining.