Dave Meltzer stuff

[WingedEagle]

28 minutes ago, Charles (Loss) said:

Is there something I'm missing? Why is no one taking this story at face value as a genuine feeling?

That's just not an interesting take these days.

[hammerva]

When co-opted media is having an argument with the company that makes for some funny and rather ironic shit.   I thought it was common knowledge that Elgin was one of Meltzer's source given how much he went out of his way to not saying anything bad about him during the rape story from one of his students and Elgin's dickish attitude on it many months ago.  

I still can't picture the Elite going to the WWE.   They are going to lose so much of that financial and wrestling freedom that they have earned and cherished being in the corporate banner controlled by Triple H and/or Vince.   Although listening to Bullet Club fans who have been so "us vs them" concerning the WWE and how "All In" and the Ring of Honor/G1 MSG show are changing the entire business having to back track will be great.

 

[Memphis Mark]

As we all know  the WWE micro manages everything .  It all flows down hill from McMahon. So the thesis that  because NJPW is no fun ,  we want to jump to the WWE  holds no water. These comments must  just be floated in the media in an attempt to gain leverage . Really if talent thinks NJPW is liking working in a factory wait till they start working for the all controlling McMahon group.

If I am a NJPW upper card talent there is no way I would jump unless I got a AJ Styles type  deal. Granted I don't know the financial details but I would  think that working for NJPW/ ROH would be more lucrative  than the average NXT deal . The WWE marks cannot seem to grasp the reality  that both NJPW and ROH are smaller   business units of much larger companies.. They can both pay to keep certain pieces of talent. They just are not going to pay stupid money .

It might be more profitable to just sit back and let McMahon keep spending cash. If McMahon has a couple of bad quarters in a row , the stock holders are going to pressure the WWE to cut costs .  So I a lot of these recent  signees will be shown the door .

The business reality is that NPJW  and it promotional partners   are trying to  position   their product   as brands that  feature quality in ring action  , not companies that are held hostage by a few key talents.

If spots do open I wonder how many quality wrestlers are waiting in line to fill the void ? 

 

 

[El McKell]

On 10/14/2018 at 1:22 PM, Memphis Mark said:

If McMahon has a couple of bad quarters in a row

 

 

Can you explain how this can really happen when the guaranteed revenue from TV  starting in 2019 exceeding their current income from all other sources by a huge margin?

[sek69]

It can happen if, say, they have to back out of a 10 year deal set to pay them $40-50 million a year and investors react badly to it. 

[Wahoos Leg]

On 10/14/2018 at 12:25 AM, hammerva said:

When co-opted media is having an argument with the company that makes for some funny and rather ironic shit.   I thought it was common knowledge that Elgin was one of Meltzer's source given how much he went out of his way to not saying anything bad about him during the rape story from one of his students and Elgin's dickish attitude on it many months ago.  

 

 

 

my thoughts as well... and also why I find it's pretty easy to at least form an educated guess on who Meltzer's sources are 

Same goes for Brie Bella. I forget where I saw it, but imagine if it had been, say, Dana Brooke or Alicia Fox who had KO'd Liv Morgan, and not the spouse of a longtime friend/source of Da Meltz? He reminds me, at least currently, of some people I ran into during my years of college football coverage, who had their "guys" (i.e., sources), and would always slant the coverage to favor those individuals.

[rovert]

10 hours ago, Wahoos Leg said:

 

my thoughts as well... and also why I find it's pretty easy to at least form an educated guess on who Meltzer's sources are 

Same goes for Brie Bella. I forget where I saw it, but imagine if it had been, say, Dana Brooke or Alicia Fox who had KO'd Liv Morgan, and not the spouse of a longtime friend/source of Da Meltz? He reminds me, at least currently, of some people I ran into during my years of college football coverage, who had their "guys" (i.e., sources), and would always slant the coverage to favor those individuals.

Lance Storm thought that Brie/everyone should keep eye contact with their opponent when delivering a strike until the point of impact. Seems like a pretty common sense fail safe to me. 

Brie has "botched" and been slow on the draw even after the Liv incident. 

[artDDP]

Is it just me or does it seem like Bryan is just tolerating Dave at this point on the WOR audio? To me it sounds like Bryan is just there to feed Dave a topic, let him talk about it a bit before reigning him in and moving to the next one. His tone during those transitions sounds like he's just letting Dave do his thing because he knows without Dave the site loses a lot of subscribers.

From listening to a lot of the audio on the site it sounds like Bryan is really having a great time with his buddies on their morning zoo shows and he's bored shitless listening to Dave talk about Don Leo Jonathan, for example.

Bear in mind I've only been subscribing for a few years now so forgive me if this is something that's always happened. And I may be completely off, too.

[Big Pete]

I've missed a few weeks of Observer Radio, so this could be a recent development, but the impression I was under is that Bryan tones it down with Dave. Bryan is more professional with Dave around, possibly because he's a mentor and also because it's just good business. The fans don't want to hear Dave goofing around and getting into trouble, they just want his perspective on things and Alvarez is merely a sounding board.

I actually appreciate that about Bryan. If he was the same Bryan who does Bryan & Vinny it would be a clown show and he'd be far more obnoxious than he already is (at least to some people).

I do miss the Sin Limente shows with Dave & Mike. Three hours of Dave answering questions was as good as any shoot interview out there. The closest we got to that was the Q&A at Starrcast which was one of the highlights of the event.

[sek69]

I get the impression that Dave wants to keep the show at an hour or so and tells Bryan to keep things on track.He does the same thing to a lesser degree on his shows with Lance Storm,  but that's probably due more to Lance having a million classes to teach and needing to squeeze time in. He's always been more of a "these are the subjects we need to discuss next" guy on those shows. 

He's also been fairly open with the fact he kind of purposely plays heel on the B&V type shows since him and Vinny have good comedy chemistry as the "loudmouth little guy and his much larger friend who gets his shots in" type. I actually think the shows they do with Craig are even better since he tends to make jokes that everyone but Bryan get and let him do whatever the comedy equivalent of heel stooging would be. 

[Jesse Ewiak]

Yeah, as somebody who's actually hung out w/ Bryan a few times through the years, he totally plays things up because that's what people listening to the B&V Show want. He'll also be the first to admit he doesn't have the most wrestling knowledge in the world, but that's never been his thing. It's not like his newsletter was doing deep dives on AJPW before he hooked up with Dave or anything. 

I mean, all things considered, I can see why there's some weird reasons to hate Bryan - not so much on here obviously, but places like Reddit and Twitter. After all, he has a good life, doing what he enjoys, and unlike certain chunks of the wrestling fandom, is a relatively normal human being with a wife and a family who some probably feel isn't worthy of being Dave's right hand man because he doesn't know about the life story of some 1987 WWF midcarder or because he misstated something that got blown up on a newzzzzz site that they bought into. 

Now, if you want to hate him because he still thinks HBK was a good wrestler post-comeback, go ahead.

[C.S.]

So, what the hell is this Tweet about?

Is Meltz really questioning the timing - and thus honesty - of Roman's health issues?!

 

[sek69]

All he was saying is that Roman's statement of "11 years ago" was a little off because he started in WWE in 2010. Wasn't questioning anyone's honesty at all. Just someone concern trolling. 

[C.S.]

18 minutes ago, sek69 said:

All he was saying is that Roman's statement of "11 years ago" was a little off because he started in WWE in 2010. Wasn't questioning anyone's honesty at all. Just someone concern trolling. 

But 2010 wasn't 11 years ago. Roman said he was diagnosed with Leukemia 11 years ago, not that he started with WWE then. 

[sek69]

In his promo he framed it as being after his football career and before he started in WWE whn he was first diagnosed. Dave was just mentioning, more or less in passing, that the 11 years timeframe was a bit off, he wasn't making it a big deal at all. 

 

edit: here's the actual quote to show how overblown any concern is:

Quote

He said he first found out about the leukemia at the age of 22, which would be in 2007, although that may be a year off since WWE listed it as 2008, and he said he found out after “football was done for me,” which would also be the latter part of 2008.

That's all he said, one sentence in a several page story on the issue.  

 

edit 2: there was another mention:

He noted that this was the second time he had contracted the disease, saying the first was 11 years ago, after his football career was over. That time line doesn’t fit perfectly since he played the 2008 season with the Edmonton Eskimos in the Canadian Football League, prior to his July, 2010 signing with WWE.

Still, nothing to suggest he's questioning anyone's honesty. Just Dave trying to be as accurate as possible on the timeline.

[C.S.]

Thanks. Good to see the actual quotes. Just Dave being anal, pedantic Dave - nothing malicious at all IMO. 

[Strummer]

So weird on twitter today seeing Dave talk about .Shawn Michaels like he's Kanyon from 1998 or Brad Armstrong from 1992 or something.  "Yeah he was good for the time but doesn't compare to the guys of today" So jarring to see and probably will take some time to adjust to

[NotJayTabb]

He said that Michaels doesn't compare to Will Ospreay. I don't even like Michaels, and that feels like a real slap in the face.

[BigBadMick]

Agreed on the Ospreay thing.

It makes you wonder if every opinion he held since the 80s was rubbish too.

[Jmare007]

9 hours ago, Strummer said:

So weird on twitter today seeing Dave talk about .Shawn Michaels like he's Kanyon from 1998 or Brad Armstrong from 1992 or something.  "Yeah he was good for the time but doesn't compare to the guys of today" So jarring to see and probably will take some time to adjust to

The weirdest part was him trying to talk about psychology in modern wrestling

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BigBadMick]

1 hour ago, Jmare007 said:

The weirdest part was him trying to talk about psychology in modern wrestling

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is absolute gibberish.

 

I'd love to hear him try explaining that to Cornette.

[SomethingSavage]

Shawn can't get over with modern Meltzer. Not enough Crossfit.

Dave is essentially just a movez mark at this point. I mean, yeah. He happens to know a lot about history, so he's knowledgeable enough when it comes to facts & figures. But as someone with actual good taste? I just don't see it.

I'm not even completely convinced that he'd recognize good psychology if he saw it anymore. Seems like it would have to be pointed out to him & then fully justified in his mind.

Honestly, I could rattle of twenty people who offer better insight and more viable opinions than Meltzer. His fetishes & favoritisms for the flashy stuff have risen and been catered to in today's wrestling, and those things have bred to create a really shitty Twitter account with the social skills of a rug.

I get that some people love and defend Dave, but holy shit. I can differentiate my respect for him as a historian from my thoughts of his ratings & his sliding scale of what qualifies as great wrestling.

[Microstatistics]

Way too many people treat Meltzer's comments and ratings as gospel and that exacerbates anything controversial Meltzer says. It's sort of understandable considering, like Loss and others had discussed previously, he is considered maybe the only "legitimate" and established wrestling critic. But it's still completely wrong considering how this is all subjective. Comments like that are just gonna fuel revisionism and tribalism ("Oh if you don't see the genius of Kenny Omega, then you aren't a real fan"). Plus it is such a general, throwaway statement that it comes off as arrogant, bordering on troll, because he didn't actually say how the modern standards are elite and workers think outside the box. 

[SomethingSavage]

Meh. Dave Meltzer is a dinosaur. He was good for his time, but his views are primitive by the elite standards of today's wrestling critics.

Their understanding and analysis of storytelling/psychology is much more advanced. Dave only thinks within one box. It's an oddly-shaped box full of Japanese guys and Crossfit fanatics, and it makes a strange thigh-slappy noise whenever you lift the lid to look inside.

[fxnj]

1 hour ago, Microstatistics said:

Way too many people treat Meltzer's comments and ratings as gospel and that exacerbates anything controversial Meltzer says. It's sort of understandable considering, like Loss and others had discussed previously, he is considered maybe the only "legitimate" and established wrestling critic. But it's still completely wrong considering how this is all subjective. Comments like that are just gonna fuel revisionism and tribalism ("Oh if you don't see the genius of Kenny Omega, then you aren't a real fan"). Plus it is such a general, throwaway statement that it comes off as arrogant, bordering on troll, because he didn't actually say how the modern standards are elite and workers think outside the box. 

Agreed. It’s impossible to argue with a statement like that since he fails to back it up with any specific examples. It’s just another Twitter Dave hot take designed to incite controversy and little else. If you’re getting triggered into going on a message board and bitching about how he only likes “CrossFit wrestling” then you’re doing exactly what he wants you to do.