Dave Meltzer stuff

[jdw]

The analogy I'd make is that -- in the very specific terms of the early days of the IWC, among fans who read and wrote reviews online -- Meltzer was the Lou Reed, who was tremendously influential to anyone who actually listened to the Velvet Underground (the quote they always trot out is "not many people listened to the Velvets, but anyone who did started a band"), while Scott Keith was the David Bowie -- who reached a bigger and wider audience.

 

As someone who was actually online for the last part of the early days of the IWC, and spent way too much time back them going back to read earlier stuff...

 

Meltzer was the Beatles, or Elvis, or both. There were people who "hated" him like Mr. Schemer, but you'd have a blast going back several years before the turn to see that they were on the same page as Meltzer, and citing him for news and who good workers were to correct others.

 

SKeith wasn't Bowie. He didn't have that level of respect. He wasn't the Monkees since he wasn't a direct Beatles clone. He wasn't Zep because he really didn't have that level of lasting impact nor the respect. He's probably The Eagles if they happened a generation earlier. Popular, influential on some scale but not really a major one since his important elements are derivative of others. Past his prime, but trying to live off the glory years.

 

Suspect that Keith would be perfectly happy with being the Eagles of wrestling writers. A lot of money and fame in that, even if you suck.

[jdw]

Whether you read Scott Keith or Dave Meltzer in the mid-90s, you were influenced by Dave Meltzer, because without Dave Meltzer, there would be no Scott Keith. His impact doesn't have to be direct to still be there.

 

Yep. Again, even if Keith didn't rip off Meltzer or pattern himself in that way, if you look closely it's all there.

[jdw]

This is going to sound silly and it very well may be, but I'll still put it out there. I sometimes wonder if not for Dave, would the Internet not expose the business so much? It's possible it still would have, but I wonder if we would be more PWI than PWO otherwise - talking about win-loss records, winning strategies and that sort of thing.

 

One of two things:

 

* either someone else would have come along

 

* the internet would have still exposed the business, but in a different way

 

It's possible that someone else would have come along. They might not have been exactly like Dave, but the 80s were the era of Bill James, and other niche newsletters/publications in popped up. I recall ones on Asian cinema that you could get in newstands, and ICE popped up covering the CD business and ever so slightly the bootleg business (there were others deeper undercover that covered boots). Someone liking pro wrestling would have come along.

 

Whether they as quickly got undercover that Dave did... who knows. But if you were a fan of any of those other types of niche publications, you'd tend to be surprised by how deep they got and how connected they got with people in the industry. ICE got published scuttlebutt about reissues, box sets and comps usually well in advance of Rolling Stone or your local news paper. You'd get obscure stuff out of the publications covering Asian cinema, where the editors/writers had a network on the other side of the world in a period before the internet made it easy. Given the popularity of wrestling, it's likely someone would have gotten into it if Dave hadn't already been in as the guy.

 

If someone hadn't come along...

 

The net would have quickly exposed the business. TV tapings getting reported instantly, which means angles and title changes are. Silly things like titles being defended on house shows after they changed at the tapings but before they aired. Injuries popping up. Eventually the evolves into more info, and then people getting contacts in the business.

 

This likely would have all happened before 1996/97 when AOL went huge, gave away unlimited minutes, and the second generation of online people happened. There were enough people around in the years before that sharing info. If there was no weekly WON to crack open for news, people would have put their heads together trying to track stuff and figure out what was going on. In fact, I seem to recall coming across someone who went to the Atlanta TV tapings in the Watts era when they were doing the 2/3 fall matches, and he's post his info.

 

So... it would have happened on some level.

[KrisZ]

Guys like Terry Justice, Tom Burke, & Norman Kreitzer were highly influential in the late 70's.....Justice had he not died in a car crash in 1980 could've been huge in the 80's

[cm funk]

 

I think it's pretty fair to say that for a generation of first wave internet/IWC "smart marks" Keith was more influential than Meltzer.

 

 

Keith was in the first wave of internet smart marks, and hardly any of them were influenced by him. Keith had influence on the wave(s) after that when it started moving to Webpages, but the influence of Dave had already taken root by then. In fact, it had taken root in Keith's own writing simply because that whole first wave for the most part were influenced by Dave.

 

 

Yeah, I consider the 94-96 AOL/webpage explosion "first wave IWC" because the internet was incredibly niche before that. Keith and people like him were super influential on that generation of kids/teenagers/young adults who were getting PCs and internet in their homes for the first time. You dinosaurs who were around on RSPW and Prodigy and bulletin boards I'd consider "proto-IWC"

 

Those are just the labels I'd use, not diagreeing

[ohtani's jacket]

I came along around '96-97 and it didn't feel like the first wave. The "community" was already well established (and really quite mind blowing when you first discovered it. ) The first real exposure to Meltzer I had was that interview he did. Before the radio show, the only direct influence he had were the news sites using his stuff and his star ratings, which I think people held in a bit more awe back then, especially when stuff was harder to get. Keith seemed heavily influenced by rspw. The cool kids were influenced by DVDVR. I don't remember Keirh having too many dissenting opinions, though. Most of what he wrote was standard wisdom. DVDVR seemed to be much more at the cutting edge of opinion, hence the reaction they would get to the 500 on your standard "smark" board. Keith was preaching to the choir.

[kjh]

 

Listening to last nights, WOR, Meltzer had a funny line when the word IWC was brought up:

 

"When people use the words IWC or smark, immediately [my reaction is] like, 'Okay, you're a dumb shit, I'm not reading anything you write.'"

 

Love it. Then again, I always thought the use of IWC and smark were dumb shit as well.

 

 

It was also fun listening to Dave debunk all the lies that Vince Russo told on the Stone Cold Steve Austin podcast (Bret turned down every finish we gave him before Montreal, I came up with the finish to have Shawn "beat" him with his own hold, the Owen Hart stunt was a last minute idea when they heard that Sting's stunt operators would be in Kansas City that night, etc).

[goc]

Before the radio show, the only direct influence he had were the news sites using his stuff and his star ratings, which I think people held in a bit more awe back then, especially when stuff was harder to get.

This is another good point. Back when access was much more limited, star ratings were a much bigger deal because you couldn't check out something on youtube first to see if you liked it. If someone else raved about it being a 5 star match then that made it more likely you'd seek it out the next time you're buying tapes. Now with the ability to watch so much between youtube, torrents and DVD comps and the proliferation of people writing reviews and doing ratings it means a lot less.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think I agree Matt.

[Gregor]

"Smark" is an annoying term because it's almost always the other people who are smarks. "Yeah, we both talk about wrestling on the internet, but you're a smark and I'm not."

[goc]

Smark kind of evolved as a term. Scott Keith used to use it to pump himself up "THE SMART MARK!" but then it kind of spurred a whole bunch of clones using it and also doing overly negative snarky reviews so then the term smark developed a second meaning of "overly critical/know it all"

[Zoo Enthusiast]

I'm not sure Matt, because whenever I've listened to podcasts or read books and things produced by fans outside of the PWO bubble, not a lot seems to have changed really. And these are people hardcore enough to produce podcasts and / or write books. I won't name names.

Agreed 100% with this. I am on the F4W board quite often, and it's about the same as ever when it comes to who is considered "good" and the reasoning that is used to arrive at that conclusion. There was a "who are your top 10?" thread recently with appearances by Davey Richards, Eddie Edwards, etc. It's also commonly held opinion in some places that a guy like Sheamus is bad at wrestling, or that Cena can't wrestle. In short, same as it ever was.

[funkdoc]

yea, i tend to use "smark" to mean "typical scott keith-style internet fan". i do loathe "IWC" because it just sounds too self-important to me, but i think we need a term to describe the internet hivemind that does exist.

 

anyway, very interesting discussion here, thanks everyone! as a 90s kid i'll chime in with my experience:

 

i started watching the WWF in 1992, close to summer, and WCW some time after that. i also had a local video store with a ton of older WWF tapes so i rented damn near every one of those once i got into it. i was 7 at the time, and thought it was real at first - papa shango & nailz scared the living hell out of me! but even then, i tended to be most drawn to high-flyers - 2 cold scorpio and the 1-2-3 kid were my favorite wrestlers period back then! i also found savage-steamboat and bret-bulldog from summerslam really exciting, though i couldn't say why at the time.

 

i stopped watching in mid-93 and didn't come back until shortly after the austin boom started...i think the raw where he won the title back from kane was my first show. i was the perfect age for the attitude era, and i ate it up all the way (although i did snark on the most obviously corny stuff like beaver cleavage). i had the internet now, and was already active on the usenet groups for final fantasy & street fighter, so it wasn't long before i found the infamous RSPW FAQ and had my mind blown. that led me to scott keith, and i absolutely DEVOURED everything of his. he was THE influence on me as a fan during that time, although by the end of the attitude era i began noticing what a bad writer he is.

 

so yes, you can chalk me up as a product of that first big internet wave before i discovered this place! i'm actually inclined to agree with parv somewhat, as the way keith rated *everything* made him come across as an authority to people who didn't know any better. he did more work than anyone besides meltzer in that regard, i am pretty sure, and it helped that he was reviewing a lot of older shows during the period when wrestling had the most eyeballs on it. and of course, i didn't have to pay for his stuff like i did with meltzer!

 

just one man's 2 cents, of course, but i figured it might be of interest since i'm part of a generation a lot of yall are discussing

 

EDIT: oh yeah, one more thought. i suspect herb kunze may be underrated as a hidden influence of sorts. in particular, i'm thinking of his post from 1990 where he essentially lays out a definition of "work rate" to bash hogan-warrior since he was mad at all the praise for that match. it was basically "count the number of different Proper Wrestling Moves used in the match, and dock points for restholds", which is how so many still view matches to this day. you can't say this was just copying meltzer either, since meltzer liking hogan-warrior was one of the main things that triggered this. and of course, herb was one of the original big puro guys on the internet which probably counts for a lot...

[Zoo Enthusiast]

I'd love to read that post.

[funkdoc]

you can! go on http://rspw.org/tidbits/ and look for a post right after WM6 =)

 

oh yeah, one more thought - scaia had to be one of the more important internet presences of the attitude era as well. i distinctly remember bill simmons plugging "ask the rick" in his columns during that time. and didn't online onslaught do the russo interview that basically got him hired by WCW?

[goc]

Herb Kunze is a great mention for this discussion. When I first got online the only thing I did wrestling related was look for rumors (who is coming in/leaving) and do e-feds. This was like 1995-1996. But I do remember reading Kunze fairly early into my internet days and the only wrestling I'd seen outside of WWF & WCW was Tim Noel's Wrestling Power show on cable access. I remember reading his stuff and thinking "Damn does this guy like anything!?" but still binge reading.

 

Reading that back, I think that kind of highlights that there is a natural split in wrestling viewers that is only influenced by the internet and not created by it. Case in point, I'm sure there are plenty of other people who could watch the same shows I've recapped in my Continental thread and shit all over it for having wonky finishes, short matches, and bad production values. There are some people who are watching for the promos, the angles, the whole overall picture and some who really only want to see fast, athletic matches with all clean finishes. I like that stuff sometimes but it gets boring to me to watch it all the time so I'll take my fun angles, goofy gimmicks and good promos and suffer through the bullshit finishes.

[Petey]

I really feel like we're only starting to get past workrate dogmatism, maybe in the last few years, which I, again, think is a combination of Indy style burnout (we got too much of what we thought we wanted), Benoit/Misawa dying and how they died, and so much more older footage being so easily available.

Benoit/Misawa dying and how they died greatly altered how I enjoy pro wrestling. I used to be a huge ROH fan back from 04-08 and loved all the head drops and everything. I went out of my way to track down some 90's AJPW during those years and ate it all up. But with Benoit and Misawa and even the increased concussion awareness in the NFL, I really got turned off to that style. Now when I go back and watch some of the ECW stuff and Attitude Era matches I actually cringe at unprotected chairshots and other stuff that I used to think was awesome.

 

As for the other discussion about Meltzer and SKeith's influence, I'll try to add my perspective. I'm a relative newcomer compared to some of the rest of you. I didn't get a PC until Christmas 1997 (I was 10 years old) and when I first got the internet (around the same time), I was really only looking up insider/newz info to see what was gonna happen and/or what guys might be jumping from one company to another. I never knew what RSPW was and really didn't start to care about the workrate part of things until after the Monday Night Wars. I don't think I discovered SKeith until around 2002 but I'll be the first to admit he was a huge influence on how I started to view pro wrestling. He made me start to pay more attention to the in-ring action. I bought his books and thought they were like my bible. I was a disgruntled high school pro wrestling fan who longed for the times when I was still a mark for most of the Monday Night Wars. I always knew it was a work but them times were still a great time to be a mark.

 

As a kid, I remember watching matches like Steiners/Nastys, Flair/Vader and remember being really entertained by the match itself. Ditto for Warrior/Savage and Hogan/Warrior. Those matches always stuck with me, not because of the result but because of the in-ring action. It wasn't until I was older that I finally understood why those matches stuck with me. I do think Dave has been a unifying component for good v. bad matches and I think he was probably the first to really communicate that on a relatively large scale. But at the same time, you can watch plenty of 1980's/early 90's house shows on WWE Network and hear boring chants during certain matches and of course there was Black Saturday with WWF replacing GCW, so I think fans were always able to understand that there could be good and bad matches much in the same way that there are good an bad boxing fights. Dave just seemed to be the guy to really stress the importance of good/bad at a whole new level.

 

And finally, for me personally, EWR also greatly shaped how I viewed 'workers' and actually got me into the indy scene. When I saw some of the ratings the indy guys got, it made me want to check out AJ Styles, Chris Daniels, Low Ki and the like.

[jdw]

 

 

I think it's pretty fair to say that for a generation of first wave internet/IWC "smart marks" Keith was more influential than Meltzer.

 

 

Keith was in the first wave of internet smart marks, and hardly any of them were influenced by him. Keith had influence on the wave(s) after that when it started moving to Webpages, but the influence of Dave had already taken root by then. In fact, it had taken root in Keith's own writing simply because that whole first wave for the most part were influenced by Dave.

 

 

Yeah, I consider the 94-96 AOL/webpage explosion "first wave IWC" because the internet was incredibly niche before that. Keith and people like him were super influential on that generation of kids/teenagers/young adults who were getting PCs and internet in their homes for the first time. You dinosaurs who were around on RSPW and Prodigy and bulletin boards I'd consider "proto-IWC"

 

Those are just the labels I'd use, not diagreeing

 

 

AOL really didn't exploded until later in 1996 and into 1997. Even there, you had the original first generation people who ended up as the forum leaders on AOL and Prodigy (where Ryder ruled) who ran the shop, and influenced the wave of newcomers who came in when relatively cheap internet became more common.

 

Keith was very much *of* the first generation, his being in RSPW. Then people from that generation like SKeith and Scia and Scherer and Ryder moved onto webpages, along with slews of other people who moved onto message boards like Dean & Co. Those first gen people influenced the second gen, and on down the line.

 

It's really hard to call the RSPW and AOL/Prodigy Leaders dinos when major players out of those communities became leaders read by the generation that came after.

[Loss]

I understand Dave waiting until 1999 to go online, since technology is not his strong point. But considering where his strengths are, it is really surprising to me that the Torch was not online much earlier. Wade tries to be on the cutting edge as far as technology goes these days, but maybe he was not always that way. I'm not sure.

[Matt D]

There was definitely a time in 98-99 as I was finishing up high school that I went to Scoops and 1wrestling more than once a day.

[jdw]

What in particular is Dave's (and Williams's) problem with the terms IWC and "smark"? Why does the use of these terms make you a dumb shit? Anyone care to explain?

 

On IWC, I've always found it stupid because there is no real "IWC" as some singular, homogenous entity. In the end, they're just Fans.

 

The parallel is that there is just barely a PWO Community. There's not a ton of consensus. People come at things from all sorts of directions. There's very limited agreement on modern wrestling. There's wildly divergent opinion on older wrestling, or what we even like out of wrestling. Etc, etc, etc.

 

That said, the posters here are quite a bit closer than what one would find if we move out further into the larger massive swamp of wrestling sites online.

 

So "IWC" strikes me as about as meaningful as "Peoples of Earth", and someone trying to draw lines between folks in Iran and folks in Alabama. Just kind of dumb ass.

 

As far as Dave's reasons... who knows

 

On "smark", it's a term created by people in the business to call "smart fans" marks. It wasn't a term of affection. Not exactly sure why one would like it.

[jdw]

EDIT: oh yeah, one more thought. i suspect herb kunze may be underrated as a hidden influence of sorts. in particular, i'm thinking of his post from 1990 where he essentially lays out a definition of "work rate" to bash hogan-warrior since he was mad at all the praise for that match. it was basically "count the number of different Proper Wrestling Moves used in the match, and dock points for restholds", which is how so many still view matches to this day. you can't say this was just copying meltzer either, since meltzer liking hogan-warrior was one of the main things that triggered this. and of course, herb was one of the original big puro guys on the internet which probably counts for a lot...

 

Kunze was the definitive Meltzerite of RSPW. There were Herb didn't see eye to eye on with the WON, but they were minor.

 

Something like Hogan-Warrior tends to get across that Dave isn't quite the workrate purist that people believe he is.

 

Herb was a big puro guy, and ironically Scherer was as well (and Lucha too) before going all-in on ECW. The thing is... when spending all that time going back through the RSPW archives from the years before I hit it, there was a surprising lack of depth to the puro discussions. The change came in the spring/summer of 1996, and it really was a night & day change. I recall at some point someone pointing back to some Kunze piece on the juniors as a support of some such point. When I went and read it, it was pretty jarringly mediocre/errant.

 

Kunze was an influence of direct Meltzerism in the group. But there was also a lot of indirect influence by guys like Scherer and his gang, even if they didn't see it themselves.

[jdw]

I understand Dave waiting until 1999 to go online, since technology is not his strong point. But considering where his strengths are, it is really surprising to me that the Torch was not online much earlier. Wade tries to be on the cutting edge as far as technology goes these days, but maybe he was not always that way. I'm not sure.

 

There really wasn't the incentive to go on, i.e. Make Money.

 

Wade would post some shills of the Torch on rsp-w in the mid-90s, as did Alverez. Wade's were usually invitations for someone like Scherer (or his socko group during their heyday) to take potshots at. There wasn't a lot of incentive for Wade to get involved in discussions: they just take time, and are hard to shape in a way that get people to buy your stuff. In turn, he like Dave had their hotlines which were making them good money.

 

There really wasn't a ton of money in websites initially. Folks who made some coin were the ones who sold out to places like Sportsline, though that was a limited amount of money. Wade and Dave were never going to go that route.

 

Wade started thinking about it in 1998/99, was pretty smart and focused on what he wanted initially, and launched with what was a decent site at the time. The net bubble burst, and ad money didn't go where one would have expected back in 1998 and early 1999, and he did a good job of adjusting over time.

 

The problem with following the Sportline model is that you're giving away loads of content for free. A lot of the content is coming from people you're paying chump change to, or nothing to. Wade giving away loads of content for free would have taken away from what he was making his living with. Bit of a catch-22 there. Overall, he did and has done a pretty decent job of adjusting to the issues of an online presence over the years.

[fxnj]

Benoit/Misawa dying and how they died greatly altered how I enjoy pro wrestling. I used to be a huge ROH fan back from 04-08 and loved all the head drops and everything. I went out of my way to track down some 90's AJPW during those years and ate it all up. But with Benoit and Misawa and even the increased concussion awareness in the NFL, I really got turned off to that style. Now when I go back and watch some of the ECW stuff and Attitude Era matches I actually cringe at unprotected chairshots and other stuff that I used to think was awesome.

I don't really understand this mentality. I mean, if you refuse to watch it, it's not like it's like it's going to make the videos go away or reverse the effects that wrestling that style has already had on guys. Going online and condemning dangerous looking spots also isn't going to stop arena fans from continuing to pop big for them. After all, even when we're talking about reeling in new fans, the matches that generally get recommended the most and have the highest success are ladder and TLC matches built around crazy stunts. I'd argue that instead of there being some "workrate dogmatism" (lol) created by some obscure RSPW guys, there is just something about watching these athletically impressive or death-defying spots that appeals to some primitive part of the brain and creates the same unparalleled excitement seen while watching slugfests in boxing or MMA. WWE may have been able to condition fans to accept a less violent style, but I doubt that visceral quality so fundamental to wrestling's appeal can ever be entirely learned away.

[cheapshot]

I remember getting my internet news in 1995/1996 from Alex Marvez and his "View From Daytona" page or email. Hazy memories at best.