Dave Meltzer stuff

[Jingus]

So why did Triple H wrestle "a Daniel Bryan" at Wrestlemania? Right in between his matches with Brock and Sting? Bryan is one of the biggest wrestling names in America today, and to pretend otherwise is just silly.

[Matt D]

I hate to repeat a Triple H point (since it was obviously designed to incite the fans' rage) but Shawn Michaels doesn't wrestle a Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania. He wrestles A list stars at Wrestlemania. IIRC the lowest profile match he's had at Wrestlemania since coming back was either Jericho at XIX or Vince. And those are two names that I think most people would consider bigger than Daniel Bryan.

 

As said elsewhere on this board, that's the sort of mindset that's going to leave them in big trouble in a few years.

[Slasher]

Jingus- I am well aware of how popular Daniel Bryan is. I am not pretending otherwise. I am saying in the WWE's eyes, thry aren't going to burn a potential one off Shawn Michaels match on Daniel Bryan. The situation with Triple H is a bit different. They spent an entire fall and winter on Daniel Bryan struggling to break through and become the world champion while having Triple H play the Lucy takes football away from Charlie Brown type role. Daniel Bryan really needed to have that match with Triple H and Triple H really needed that match to prove himself right that DB isn't the star the fans thought he was. That is strictly in kayfabe. Non-kayfabe, you have to remember Triple H wasn't supposed to wrestle Daniel Bryan in the first place. His scheduled opponent walked out on the WWE so they had to figure out something for him and the Daniel Bryan match fell in his lap as a good Plan B. Plus it sticks it to Punk that Triple H can play ball if he was so inclined to do so.

 

Matt D- I agree. They need to stop treating the part timers as all too important to mingle with current roster members. Look at Summerslam. Did we really need to have Taker vs Brock? If Undertaker was gonna work the show then they should have given both guys different opponents. Two big time matches > one main event match.

[goc]

EDIT: Somehow I posted that in the wrong thread.

[shakla]

Sorry to bump this, been awhile since I've been on.

 

But in light of the last few pages, it reminded me of a story I heard on WOR. A few years ago, someone had a mailbag question about Tony Atlas and Dave told a story about how Verne Gagne had no interest in using him at his prime because "black people don't draw here". Don't recall any talk of slurs, but the AWA really didn't use African Americans all that much, maybe a few toward the dying days.

[jushin muta liger]

Sorry to bump this, been awhile since I've been on.

 

But in light of the last few pages, it reminded me of a story I heard on WOR. A few years ago, someone had a mailbag question about Tony Atlas and Dave told a story about how Verne Gagne had no interest in using him at his prime because "black people don't draw here". Don't recall any talk of slurs, but the AWA really didn't use African Americans all that much, maybe a few toward the dying days.

Compared to other promotions across the nation, the AWA didn't really bank on ethnic draws. You can say part of it was the location cause they didn't have to but when they went national, a lot of different demos watched them. So who knows.

[cm funk]

Minnesota was overwhelmingly white with European ancestry (German, Scandinavian, Irish, Polish etc) in the 50's-80's. Even now it's 85% white. Ethnic draws didn't make sense like they did in the South, North East, Texas or California.

 

They did have The Crusher who was Polish-American, I'd consider him an ethnic draw to a degree

[rvd356]

Omg I have deleted big posts twice this AM. Basically HBK hasn't come back for a match with Brock or Sting who are active and Legends/#1 heel in years, or Rock when he was back with all his star power and the money that he could have made and the moments they would have been(Shawn was a mark first remember.)

 

So he's not going to come back for Daniel Bryan who's great(was?) and organically super over(was?) but was really only a star for a year . Also Shawn had no personal training over Bryan says Bryan, so there's r not close

[Jingus]

Also Shawn had no personal training over Bryan says Bryan, so there's r not close

Bryan's book directly contradicts this, he said Shawn came to training all the time.

[Slasher]

 

Also Shawn had no personal training over Bryan says Bryan, so there's r not close

Bryan's book directly contradicts this, he said Shawn came to training all the time.

You mean his WWE book? Of course he is going to say that now after that becoming part of the story in 2013. But seek out his interviews before then and that directly contradicts his book.

[Jingus]

You mean his WWE book? Of course he is going to say that now after that becoming part of the story in 2013. But seek out his interviews before then and that directly contradicts his book.

Including the parts where he talks about Shawn showing up visibly stoned to training class? It wasn't exactly a fairy-tale white-washed version of history. He spends two whole chapters telling various detailed stories about Shawn training and mentoring them. Including stuff like "and then he showed us how to make a blade, although nobody but Kendrick ended up getting good color that night" and "then he swore that none of us would have firecrackers shoved up our asses, after we were there in Japan and saw the infamous FMW Anal Bomb Match" and other stuff that there's just no way that the WWE office would invent.

 

Any links to, or direct quotes from, these contradictory interviews you mention?

[Jmare007]

 

 

Also Shawn had no personal training over Bryan says Bryan, so there's r not close

Bryan's book directly contradicts this, he said Shawn came to training all the time.

You mean his WWE book? Of course he is going to say that now after that becoming part of the story in 2013. But seek out his interviews before then and that directly contradicts his book.

 

 

Not really, if IIRC Bryan used to say that most of the in ring stuff were taught by Ruddy Boy Gonzalez, something that he also mentions in his book.

 

Shawn oversaw stuff and got them bookings, he very rarely stepped in the ring (like the story were he tried teaching them how to take a backdrop and his mom scolding him for getting in the ring). As time has gone by, Bryan has talked more about how important Shawn was in pushing him and Kendrick and getting them gigs, but he's always been clear about his "real" teacher being Regal.

[EricR]

Kendrick told me a story years and years ago about Michaels, saying in TWA when it was time for them to work on their characters and figure out things like entrance music, Shawn said he wanted to think of the PERFECT entrance music for American Dragon. Kendrick said everybody was joking that Shawn was going to come up with something obvious and lame like "Born in the USA" and Dragon thought Shawn had something bigger in mind. Next day Shawn shows up and says he was stuck on what Dragon's entrance should be, kept thinking long and hard about it, and finally the PERFECT song came to him: Born in the USA. Kendrick said everybody in the room started laughing and Shawn had no clue why that was their reaction.

[MFoy]

Bryan has consistently said Shawn trained him. Watch his 02/03 RF shoot. It was the second class with London and Michael Shane that Shawn had little involvement in.

[Dooley]

Omg I have deleted big posts twice this AM. Basically HBK hasn't come back for a match with Brock or Sting who are active and Legends/#1 heel in years, or Rock when he was back with all his star power and the money that he could have made and the moments they would have been(Shawn was a mark first remember.)

 

Shawn has wanted a Rock match at Mania before. It's Rock that won't work with Shawn.

[The Thread Killer]

That's one of the things I have always liked about The Rock.

[Slasher]

He definitely has principles but then he goes to the Hall of Fame to make jokes about guys and overruns his segment. Hard to get a read on him that way.

[hammerva]

I was listening to Observer last week and Bryan and Dave was talking about the drop in RAW ratings and Bryan said something like "if the number of viewers in Observer dropped 25% in 3 years I would be freaking out".

 

What is funny is that if it did happen they would probably decide to include more MMA coverage than usual which sounds exactly like the same mentality as the WWE right now

[Loss]

Dave runs the WON a lot like Vince runs WWE, actually. There's a need to shake things up and abandon some of the formula, but they're still profitable, so they see no reason to make changes. Both are rich guys who should be even richer.

[Parties]

Re: MMA coverage - hasn't their assertion been whenever criticized for it that they get tons of feedback from people who subscribe "just for MMA" and want more coverage of it? You can argue the veracity (my guess would be that like lots of business owners, Dave and Bryan most actively retain the feedback that confirms their biases) but they've been raked over the coals for it in the past and always insist that the MMA-focused audience is real. It's not the "Pro Wrestling Only" crowd, but they're allegedly out there (unless you think Dave/Bryan just cover it because they like covering it, and justify it to themselves in shoddy ways).

 

For what it's worth, I do think it's interesting that at least 80% of the calls and mailbag questions they receive are about pro wrestling, with very little in the way of customer feedback on anything in MMA. What they do get is always about top stars like Ronda/Jones, or historical questions to the effect of "Was this thing from Japan in 1993 a work?"

 

As for what else needs to be shaken up: there's a lot of clutter and useless content on their site, and it could likely use a redesign, but I'd be curious to hear what people here think would help their bottom line if added/subtracted.

 

They're doing their second big reader survey as we speak. The last one they did 12-18 months ago, I basically told them that the F4W newsletter is completely redundant and that someone else should be writing it to allow Alvarez to produce more audio. That ended up happening.

 

I think I also told them that my favorite thing they did was the mailbag and Dave interviewing old wrestlers and promoters, but I also think there's only so much history you can be mining and that they would do well to cover a more diverse selection of indies and international promotions. I'd rather hear Dave's take on Evolve or lucha than hear Alvarez fantasy book RAW on every show six days a week.

[Loss]

Dave cultivating a really deep pool of writers that can review every taped wrestling show under the sun would be awesome. The key is to have real editorial guidelines and a standard format for all reviews.

[sek69]

That was one of the main things I mentioned when filling out the survey they posted for members. Nothing makes the site look more bush league when they get emails from random people then publish them as columns on the front page.

[cm funk]

I was listening to Observer last week and Bryan and Dave was talking about the drop in RAW ratings and Bryan said something like "if the number of viewers in Observer dropped 25% in 3 years I would be freaking out".

 

What is funny is that if it did happen they would probably decide to include more MMA coverage than usual which sounds exactly like the same mentality as the WWE right now

 

He said subscribers to the website. I don't think he cares how many people actually read the Observer, and I get the sense that the majority of their subscriptions are podcast driven

[C.S.]

Dave cultivating a really deep pool of writers that can review every taped wrestling show under the sun would be awesome. The key is to have real editorial guidelines and a standard format for all reviews.

 

A writing staff is the one area where Wade has always kicked Dave's ass.

 

I'm not saying all of Wade's writers are fantastic, but at least he's made a consistent effort from day one to feature other writers. Dave hasn't really done that - at least not in the same way or nearly as strongly.

[Hobbes]

There was a thread on the Observer board that Dave posted in just a day or two ago that I can't seem to find, but Dave said the site is doing very well right now, and is driven largely just by WWE and UFC. I also recall Bryan a few weeks ago saying that the site had the lowest percentage of subscriber loss post-WrestleMania that they've had a in a long time, maybe ever.

 

When people requested more old Observers in the online archive, Dave asked if a $1 a month subscription increase would be worth it. Are the old Observers that much of a money maker or that hard to transcribe that it would take a dollar month until the end of time to subsidize having them being put on the site faster than one a week?