Dave Meltzer stuff

[Bix]

 

 

As far as I know, I don't think the women get treated badly, it's just the usual CMLL way of doing things where unless you're related to someone important you get forgotten about until you leave.

I just meant they have a huge slew of women whose whole purpose is to wear almost nothing and dance around as the camera man zooms in on their asses.

That's also not what I was talking about.

[Grimmas]

I'm trying not to rip on Dave as much, but this is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever read.

 

 

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Dave Meltzer Retweeted Nfinit "30th Anniversary of losing at SF2" Vylence

Imagine how they would deal with earthquakes. Nasty tweets all day to the poor seismologists. If average is a 2, how can there be a 7. I don't get it? And if here in New York we've never had a 5, then all you seismologists favor Mexico City because you all like flips.

[Beast]

I'm a Dave apologist, but his defense for the 7-star rating is turning me off.

 

He keeps going back to the idea that he's been giving out star ratings higher than 5 since 1989, but:

 

1) No one, including him, had been calling a Flair/Steamboat house show match as the peak match in all of wrestling history. And the Misawa/Kawada 6-star rating is something no one even knew existed. I don't even know if it's written in the Observer from that period. Now he's constantly going back to these as evidence that the star-rating system has never had a ceiling.

 

2) He's retweeting people who say 5-stars means match of the year, 6-stars means match of the decade, and now 7-stars means match of a lifetime. So that means from when Funk/Lawler or Dynamite/Tiger or whatever received 5-stars, only Flair/Steamboat and Misawa/Kawada were better? And that now nearly every Omega, Okada, Naito, and Takahashi is better than 99.9999 % of all matches ever?

 

I give Dave a lot of credit and defend most of his more controversial opinions, but this is plain bull. He's constantly harping on Bruce Prichard for lies and "working", but his attempts to defend "breaking" his star rating system after the fact is just as embarrassing.

[Matt D]

If you're losing Beast....

[BrianB]

What are you talking about? One is an opinion. The other is a fact. I feel like enough people don't appreciate this fact so here it goes. Beast, if I said you lived in a city with the best burger joints in the country and that you were a fantastic and professional human being...that's an opinion claim. If I said you were born in 1960 and completed a marathon in under 2 hours, that's a fact claim.

 

Sure, in many people's eyes, myself included, Dave's devalued his opinion relative to match ratings. To some extent that's inevitable because wrestling is getting more democraticized and with more access for people, whereas before Dave probably was in more truly elite company for viewing, and now that niche is growing and growing.

 

But mostly, I think this is Dave hitting his later Ebert years. He's going to push stuff that previously he held back on some, despite how most close watchers could discern his preferences, and push what he enjoys a lot and he's starting to have stronger and stronger reactions. The 7 star thing is dumb and devalues the scale, imo, but he probably thinks that match was some Tree of Life type shit or whatever, and suddenly thinks it's metrics above other things he called classics.

 

I've also got to think, I can't blame him because I've turned off watching RAW regularly that he's thinking he should use his influence to get more people to watch Japan and other indies...people can draw parallels to the 90s if they want. Personally, I don't think it's that dire. But it is dire from the perspective that Dave constantly goes back to...how the modern wwe booking largely doesn't matter--which is fine until you get lots of shows you can't keep watching...and Dave clearly hates watching most WWE right now and I can't overly blame him.

[fxnj]

I find the *****1/2 rating for the BOSJ final just as suspect as the Okada/Omega 7 stars business. If he has now presumably reigned in going over the scale as a regular fixture of his ratings, it does make it difficult to fully grasp what a ****3/4 match might really mean compared to when he held back. I imagine this might give him some publicity in the short, but it seems long-term it's gonna hurt the staying power of his newer ratings quite a bit. I will say that might be exactly what he wants. When I had a subscription 10 years ago I remember him being dumbfounded on the board when people would treat the ratings as the main thing to look at on the older issues rather than the news that he covered.

[El-P]

1 - star rating don't mean jackshit. I have no idea why anyone would get all worked up about any of this.

 

2 - I believe Meltz would not get the same hate if he would give WWE matches the same kind of snowflakes. Part of the reactions he gets is because he always pimped japanese wrestling higher than US wrestling. And I believe there's a part of insecurity and resentment from US wrestling fans (and guys like Prichard & Schiavone, who when Meltz praise the hell out of a WWE or WCW match find no issue with his views at all) coming from that fact only. The US are supposed to be the "cultural" imperialist of the world, but when basically the only professional reviewer always puts Japan over the US stuff, well...

 

If he had said Ciampa vs Gargano (the previous one) was the best match he had ever seen (and he did praise the match like crazy, mind you), there would probably not be that much outcry about it. But he comes off as the "elitist" (which is quite funny when you think about his crazy praise of guys like Flair, Michaels, Angle, who are the three biggest mainstream US workhorse stars of the last 30 years) and the guy who likes "japanese stuff".

 

The backlash steeming from the Post Benoit Workrate Guilt in our little niche of a niche of a niche (talking about boards and stuff, not PWO per say) saw a wave of reactionary opinions and tastes which happened at the same time when japanese wrestling was in the hole (Kobashi's reign was over, NJ was not exactly back on track yet, joshi was dead) and the US stuff, old (territories) and new (Cena) got praised a whole lot more than before. Loving Japan was not only too "elitist", but it was the roots of evil for a while (Benoit was a product of puroresu-style more than anything else / Misawa dying would add another layer on the idea that what had been praised in the past was stylistically and to a point morally wrong, because too physically damaging, although of course it was a pretty simplistic take on it).

 

Anyway, just rambling, but yeah, I do think Meltz crashing his scale on WWE matches would not get half the hate it gets (not that it matters one bit anyway, cf 1).

[Laz]

It would if he doubled down on it and continued to break it when obvious flaws were obvious. Kenny Omega is garbage at chain wrestling and Okada isn't much better, so when they front load their "classics" with them and it's embarrassing to see and then it gets 7/5? Yeahhhhh...

[Grimmas]

 

2 - I believe Meltz would not get the same hate if he would give WWE matches the same kind of snowflakes. Part of the reactions he gets is because he always pimped japanese wrestling higher than US wrestling. And I believe there's a part of insecurity and resentment from US wrestling fans (and guys like Prichard & Schiavone, who when Meltz praise the hell out of a WWE or WCW match find no issue with his views at all) coming from that fact only. The US are supposed to be the "cultural" imperialist of the world, but when basically the only professional reviewer always puts Japan over the US stuff, well...

You know this is bullshit for the majority of people, right? If he did the same over praising of NJPW, but kept all those matches at 5 stars then nobody would complain about him breaking the system.

 

Most of us know Dave's tastes and I know I like what he does, but it's the taking a system out of 5 and increasing it that is ridiculous. Comparing it to the richter scale is insanity.

[Beast]

My annoyance has nothing to do with what he rates 5-stars and above.

 

It's him trying to rewrite history and pretend this has always been an option. Whenever anyone asks him about going above 5-stars for Omega/Okada, he pulls out the "it's been this way since 1989", when it's obvious that he didn't even realize he gave a Flair/Steamboat house show match 6-stars until some reader brought it up.

 

He's pretending there's a method to his madness rather than just admitting he was blown away by these new matches and so he readjusted the scale.

 

By pulling out the "1989 card" whenever he's criticized, it ensures he never has to give an actual reason or engage in actual discussion.

 

And yeah, when there's ten 5-star matches, plus six 6/7-star matches in the past 18 months, it devalues his opinion. The people coming out to blindly defend him on Twitter are just as bad as those sent by Russo and Prichard. It also stinks of PR strategy so people will pay $65 dollars to watch him and Alvarez answer questions live at NJPW San Fran and All In.

[El-P]

 

 

2 - I believe Meltz would not get the same hate if he would give WWE matches the same kind of snowflakes. Part of the reactions he gets is because he always pimped japanese wrestling higher than US wrestling. And I believe there's a part of insecurity and resentment from US wrestling fans (and guys like Prichard & Schiavone, who when Meltz praise the hell out of a WWE or WCW match find no issue with his views at all) coming from that fact only. The US are supposed to be the "cultural" imperialist of the world, but when basically the only professional reviewer always puts Japan over the US stuff, well...

You know this is bullshit for the majority of people, right? If he did the same over praising of NJPW, but kept all those matches at 5 stars then nobody would complain about him breaking the system.

 

Come on, people were already complaining about Meltz "overpraising" NJPW way before Omega/Okada cracked the system. Him making stars rain (hey, he's the Starrainmaker !) only made it worst.

 

But the system means nothing to begin with. It's like rating movies, albums, hotels, sex partners, whatever... It's complete bullshit. It means nothing. It's like people crying over not getting the validation of a higher authority. Really, Meltz haters act like disgruntled children who want their daddy to tell them they really are proud of them. And they actually give him and his ratings even more importance by bitching all the time about it. Like I said, major insecurity issues.

 

And as far as NJ (or ROH) announcers using that as a selling point, well, it's pro-wrestling. It bears no more actual value than the old PWI "Best rookie of the year" you'd hear about on NWA TV.

 

(hey, I'm writing music reviews on a webzine. I have to use a star rating with every review. But really, it's a detail. If I could get rid of it, I would, but I'm only a writer on the site, I can't change the interface. What matters is what I write, not a stupid rationalization of something than can't be rationalized)

[Grimmas]

 

 

 

2 - I believe Meltz would not get the same hate if he would give WWE matches the same kind of snowflakes. Part of the reactions he gets is because he always pimped japanese wrestling higher than US wrestling. And I believe there's a part of insecurity and resentment from US wrestling fans (and guys like Prichard & Schiavone, who when Meltz praise the hell out of a WWE or WCW match find no issue with his views at all) coming from that fact only. The US are supposed to be the "cultural" imperialist of the world, but when basically the only professional reviewer always puts Japan over the US stuff, well...

You know this is bullshit for the majority of people, right? If he did the same over praising of NJPW, but kept all those matches at 5 stars then nobody would complain about him breaking the system.

 

Come on, people were already complaining about Meltz "overpraising" NJPW way before Omega/Okada cracked the system. Him making stars rain (hey, he's the Starrainmaker !) only made it worst.

 

But the system means nothing to begin with. It's like rating movies, albums, hotels, sex partners, whatever... It's complete bullshit. It means nothing. It's like people crying over not getting the validation of a higher authority. Really, Meltz haters act like disgruntled children who want their daddy to tell them they really are proud of them. And they actually give him and his ratings even more importance by bitching all the time about it. Like I said, major insecurity issues.

 

And as far as NJ (or ROH) announcers using that as a selling point, well, it's pro-wrestling. It bears no more actual value than the old PWI "Best rookie of the year" you'd hear about on NWA TV.

 

Yeah, if that is what you think you don't understand the majority of the reasons people are talking about.

[El-P]

I do understand (don't insult my intelligence, thank you very much). I also do think it's completely ridiculous.

[Grimmas]

I do understand (don't insult my intelligence, thank you very much). I also do think it's completely ridiculous.

So why make the statements you made? The issue is the going over the 5 stars, it's not him not praising WWE enough.

[El-P]

If he did the same over praising of NJPW, but kept all those matches at 5 stars then nobody would complain about him breaking the system.

 

If he broke the system with Ciampa & Gargano, less people would complain about him breaking the system (and bitch about the 1989 argument, which indeed reeks of bullshit on Meltz part, but like I said, it really doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things because the system is bullshit to begin with). I'm absolutely convinced of this.

[El-P]

 

I do understand (don't insult my intelligence, thank you very much). I also do think it's completely ridiculous.

So why make the statements you made? The issue is the going over the 5 stars, it's not him not praising WWE enough.

 

Because I believe the fact he broke the system with his (over)-praise of New Japan plays a role in why people are so incensed about it. See my post above.

[Grimmas]

 

If he did the same over praising of NJPW, but kept all those matches at 5 stars then nobody would complain about him breaking the system.

 

If he broke the system with Ciampa & Gargano, less people would complain about him breaking the system (and bitch about the 1989 argument, which indeed reeks of bullshit on Meltz part, but like I said, it really doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things because the system is bullshit to begin with). I'm absolutely convinced of this.

 

So, there is no point of discussing this then. You are convinced and there is no way to actually prove your point, so let's move on I guess.

[El-P]

Like I said in my very first post, I was basically just rambling. It's something I've been thinking about for a while though (well, since the Gargano vs Ciampa match actually), so at one point, why not get it out there...

[SomethingSavage]

At this point, I honestly feel like watching wrestling with the distinct purpose of "rating" it is detrimental to the overall viewing experience in the first place.

 

If you can't simply enjoy something without the obsessive need to validate it via some weird criteria or ranking, then perhaps you're taking things way too seriously. It's a hobby. You aren't obligated to see everything, rate it, and document it. Just enjoy it every now & then for fuck's sake.

 

Star ratings are the shits. I don't need to check in with someone - journalist or not - to know if I actually did or didn't enjoy something I just saw for myself.

[El-P]

Totally agree.

 

It's the RYM syndrome. 25 years old kids having more than 10.000 albums rated. What kind of relationship to this music do they actually have when they listen to three new albums everyday on their phones or computers for the sole purpose of rating them ? None. It's compulsive quantification for the sake of it. It's cultural consumption at its worst.

 

For me the most fun I ever had in doing a wrestling project was the WCW Highway to Hell (ok, it wasn't *always* fun). Tons of it was shit wrestling. Some was good. But what mattered was trying to make sense out of the whole thing unfolding and of course writing an episodic thread that would be fun to follow. Picture what the star ratings would have been overall for this stuff if that had been my aim.

[Beast]

I would LOVE to see you tackle another era like the Highway To Hell project. That's one of the peak threads in this site's history.

[El-P]

Wow, thanks a lot.

 

I did do a bunch of early TNA stuff a few years ago basically to keep me occupied and to cope with a depressing situation (yeah, the title of the TNA 2003 thread was legit), but I wasn't ready to keep on going forever with that stuff (although tons of good TNA stuff would deserve a spotlight). I actually thought about doing a WCW invasion project several times over the past years, as it would be the logical follow-up of epic suckitude too and would not be as much of a time investment, but I backtracked every time. Fear of repeating myself, of being less fun to read than before, not to keen on tons of Benoit matches either honestly. Well, you never know. But yeah, would be fun to actually have a project that people would enjoy and have fun reading as opposed to be a regular dickhead like I can be at times...

[Matt D]

92 WCW.

[Loss]

My main issue is that whether purposely or not, he has basically told people who won't know better that all wrestling before New Japan from this decade sucked. Even the stuff that we thought was great but learned otherwise later.

[Laz]

That's not even a big deal, because those kids who take Meltzer's snowflakes to heart will eventually sour on NJPW and find something else. Some will go back and watch World Class, some will find the Attitude era, some will probably even fall in love with Onita.