Dave Meltzer stuff

[C.S.]

23 hours ago, sek69 said:

IMO that's something that I don't see mentioned as much, a lot of this drama surrounding Dave ends up being churned up by sites/writers in competition to him. I don't think that's an accident as anyone in the same line of work would kill to have the name/prestige/legacy he's built. That's not to say he shouldn't be called out when he messes up, but a lot of the people doing the calling out do so under less than honest pretenses at times. 

Exactly the point I was making above. No matter how hard Dave Scherer or Ryan Satin (and others) try, they will never be Dave Meltzer.

I'm far from a Meltzer apologist - his "injury report" story was cringe-worthy, for example - but he's galaxies ahead of Billy Bob Ryder's former underling and a TMZ guy, and he always will be.

[FMKK]

On 3/11/2019 at 12:50 AM, Strummer said:

Just a thought/observation here.  Scott Keith is often criticized for being a relic.  His opinions and takes are stuck in 1998.  Times have pasted him by., etc

there seems to be a trend (at least to a degree) online and on twitter of "just sit back and enjoy the show. It's just wrestling" and "it's simple storytelling not meant to be analyzed" .  Yet Dave and Bryan are being critical of everything and anything like it's 2003 or something.  These newer, younger and more positive fans see them as behind the times and relics.  I mean I don't disagree with all their takes myself but man they seem to get slaughtered online daily.

just reminded me of SK.  Once seen as source material and now vilified (although varying)

Sometimes Dave and co don't really help themselves with overcriticism of really minor and stupid stuff. Like Randy Orton saying inaccurate things about independent wrestling on Smackdown or whatever. He's meant to be a condescending prick heel who's trying to belittle AJ, not giving a factual assessment.

On 3/11/2019 at 7:11 PM, sek69 said:

People dogpiling on Alvarez for saying Kofi was cooled off after the handicap match was ridiculous. It was a stupidly booked match that sucked the life out of what was a fairly hot crowd, and he was left kind of looking like a goober afterwards. Then everyone started pointing at his tweet like he was waving his junk in public, and it just came off like a lot of other people in the Wrestling Twitter community saw blood in the water after all the Dave fuss and just wanted to pounce on the next thing Bryan was going to comment on. 

IMO that's something that I don't see mentioned as much, a lot of this drama surrounding Dave ends up being churned up by sites/writers in competition to him. I don't think that's an accident as anyone in the same line of work would kill to have the name/prestige/legacy he's built. That's not to say he shouldn't be called out when he messes up, but a lot of the people doing the calling out do so under less than honest pretenses at times. 

Nah, Bryan is just an idiot. Kofi objectively wasn't cooled off by that booking, whether it was the best way to do it or not. So it made it look like he was grasping for the worst case scenario in the booking so he'd have something to be mad at.

[El-P]

8 hours ago, FMKK said:

Like Randy Orton saying inaccurate things about independent wrestling on Smackdown or whatever. 

TBH, Dave mentioned that jokingly though, like he was when he said he didn't mention winning the IGWP title obviously. Is it me or is Meltz much more relaxed when he's doing shows with this Gonzalez fellow ?

[FMKK]

1 hour ago, El-P said:

TBH, Dave mentioned that jokingly though, like he was when he said he didn't mention winning the IGWP title obviously. Is it me or is Meltz much more relaxed when he's doing shows with this Gonzalez fellow ?

Yeah, he's way better with Gonzalez than with Alvarez. It's amazing that Dave and Bryan have been recording together for so long and still have absolutely no chemistry.

[sek69]

9 hours ago, FMKK said:

Nah, Bryan is just an idiot. Kofi objectively wasn't cooled off by that booking, whether it was the best way to do it or not. So it made it look like he was grasping for the worst case scenario in the booking so he'd have something to be mad at.

There's so many things that people could jump on him for that would be legit, that doing it over his reaction to a match that everyone agreed was stupid seemed a little dishonest at best. 

[CarpetCrawler]

30 minutes ago, sek69 said:

There's so many things that people could jump on him for that would be legit, that doing it over his reaction to a match that everyone agreed was stupid seemed a little dishonest at best. 

And to Bryan's credit he's owned up about being very wrong about his Kofi talking point since that night everytime it's been brought up.

[peachchaos]

Why is it so hard for people to imagine Mabel as a possibility for the 3rd man? Part of what made the angle so successful at the time was that you were expecting another shitty 1995 WWF star and got swerved. Anyway, Dave clearly reported two week before the show that Mabel, Lex, and Crush were all in consideration and in the next issue states he's leaning toward Hogan:

[sek69]

5 hours ago, peachchaos said:

Why is it so hard for people to imagine Mabel as a possibility for the 3rd man? Part of what made the angle so successful at the time was that you were expecting another shitty 1995 WWF star and got swerved. Anyway, Dave clearly reported two week before the show that Mabel, Lex, and Crush were all in consideration and in the next issue states he's leaning toward Hogan:

 

Because someone (Bruce? I forget now, one of the podcast mafia) used it as a sledgehammer to prove Dave doesn't know what he's talking about while purposely not mentioning he said it would be Hogan before the show. So now we have to deal with Dave having to individually reply to all the trolls who respond to him with "lol Mabel".

 

Also holy shit every time I'm reminded of the ridiculous PPV cut Hulk had, fuckin' WCW man.

[sek69]

On 3/14/2019 at 3:18 PM, FMKK said:

Yeah, he's way better with Gonzalez than with Alvarez. It's amazing that Dave and Bryan have been recording together for so long and still have absolutely no chemistry.

It seems from context clues in their conversations Garrett lives near Dave, perhaps they are IRL friends? 

[SomethingSavage]

22 hours ago, sek69 said:

 

Because someone (Bruce? I forget now, one of the podcast mafia) used it as a sledgehammer to prove Dave doesn't know what he's talking about while purposely not mentioning he said it would be Hogan before the show. So now we have to deal with Dave having to individually reply to all the trolls who respond to him with "lol Mabel".

 

Also holy shit every time I'm reminded of the ridiculous PPV cut Hulk had, fuckin' WCW man.

Bischoff brings it up all the time - mainly as a way to dismiss something whenever Dave speculates or includes guesswork in his reporting.

Tbf I find that Eric is actually a less hostile toward Dave these days, especially when compared to Bruce.

The "Mabel was the third man" bit does still get used regularly though.

[The Thread Killer]

8 minutes ago, SomethingSavage said:

Bischoff brings it up all the time - mainly as a way to dismiss something whenever Dave speculates or includes guesswork in his reporting.

Tbf I find that Eric is actually a less hostile toward Dave these days, especially when compared to Bruce.

The "Mabel was the third man" bit does still get used regularly though.

Yeah as we've talked about in the 83 Weeks thread, Bischoff is at least a lot more fair regarding Meltzer than Prichard has ever been.  For the most part, Prichard dismisses every single thing Meltzer reports out of hand, and won't even discuss it or give Meltzer any credit for anything.  Bischoff gives Meltzer credit a fair bit of the time, and can even be quite complimentary towards him about certain things.  When Bischoff does get a wild hair up his ass is whenever Conrad reads something Meltzer reported about the inner workings of Turner Broadcasting, because a lot of the time history has shown that Meltzer was way off with a lot of those stories - as in he was either flat out wrong, or he got worked.  I forget which episode of 83 Weeks it was, but Bischoff actually goes into detail and names the Turner insider whom he knew was leaking Meltzer deliberately false and misleading information.  When you boil it down, Bischoff's main issue with Meltzer is that he would get information from sources and report it as fact, seemingly not considering the fact that he was getting worked.

[Bix]

Setting aside the merits of the Mabel thing itself for a moment,  should Dave really be using the Hogan report to debunk the Bischoff narrative around it? There's no movie or even non-wrestling TV show episode (that IMDb is aware of) that Hogan and Piper co-starred in together. That means the report—which at least Dave was transparent about the sourcing for, unlike his usual style—was either complete bullshit or incorrectly sourced. Maybe one was visiting the other on a movie set, but the story can't be true as written.

[NintendoLogic]

Dave mentioned the movie in a few other issues. It was called The Overlords, and it also starred Gary Busey. As best I can tell, it never saw the light of day.

[SomethingSavage]

Sounds to me like some studio is sitting on a goldmine.

[Bix]

9 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

Dave mentioned the movie in a few other issues. It was called The Overlords, and it also starred Gary Busey. As best I can tell, it never saw the light of day.

For whatever it's worth, there are basically zero non-Observer references to this movie on the internet, the exception being a super barebones entry with no new information on a non-English language film site.

[peachchaos]

16 hours ago, Bix said:

Setting aside the merits of the Mabel thing itself for a moment,  should Dave really be using the Hogan report to debunk the Bischoff narrative around it? There's no movie or even non-wrestling TV show episode (that IMDb is aware of) that Hogan and Piper co-starred in together. That means the report—which at least Dave was transparent about the sourcing for, unlike his usual style—was either complete bullshit or incorrectly sourced. 

The original report not coming from a valid source or even being complete bullshit does not change the fact that Dave reported Lex Luger, Crush, and Mabel as possibilities in the 7/1 issue and then said he thought Hogan was the most likely the next week. Even if it was just a wild guess and he got lucky, he actually got it right. 

Listening to the complete run of 83 Weeks at the moment and it's pretty obvious this "Mabel Was The Third Man" thing is just another Conrad rib to sell merch. I mean, Mabel is no more ridiculous a choice as Crush. When Bischoff learns that Meltzer actually did report Hogan, he's apologetic and gives him credit. But the meme is alive so Twitter gonna troll, I guess. Actually it's pretty incredible the amount of stuff Bischoff debunks, to the point where it changes entire narratives we've held as gospel truth as fans. 

Also, Bischoff said Hogan pitched the idea of being the third man on the set of Santa With Muscles. There most likely wouldn't have been another shoot within that same timeframe, especially with Hogan taking wrestling dates in July. But even the idea of an unreleased Gary Busey + Roddy Piper + Hulk Hogan movie is magical.

 

[NintendoLogic]

I will say that the story strikes me as suspect for other reasons. It seems implausible to me that a couple of old-school carnies like Hogan and Piper would have been blabbing about the payoff to a major angle in front of some marks. Maybe someone from WCW leaked it and the part about it coming from a movie set was a smokescreen to protect the identity of the leaker.

[peachchaos]

21 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

I will say that the story strikes me as suspect for other reasons. It seems implausible to me that a couple of old-school carnies like Hogan and Piper would have been blabbing about the payoff to a major angle in front of some marks. Maybe someone from WCW leaked it and the part about it coming from a movie set was a smokescreen to protect the identity of the leaker.

Yeah, I'm assuming all of the info around this time came from Kevin Sullivan and he either got the story all mixed up or told Dave to print it as if it came from a reader.

[Al]

https://twitter.com/Athletics/status/1108325589604167680

[...TG]

There are lots of parallels between wrestling Twitter and baseball Twitter.

[The Thread Killer]

On 3/17/2019 at 10:04 PM, peachchaos said:

Listening to the complete run of 83 Weeks at the moment and it's pretty obvious this "Mabel Was The Third Man" thing is just another Conrad rib to sell merch. I mean, Mabel is no more ridiculous a choice as Crush. When Bischoff learns that Meltzer actually did report Hogan, he's apologetic and gives him credit. But the meme is alive so Twitter gonna troll, I guess. Actually it's pretty incredible the amount of stuff Bischoff debunks, to the point where it changes entire narratives we've held as gospel truth as fans.

You're not kidding about that.  Even if people want to make the argument that Eric Bischoff is lying or being intentionally misleading on 83 Weeks to make himself look better (which I don't think he is, at this point) there's still the book "Nitro" by Guy Evans which presents a ton of facts which fly in the face of the traditional "Meltzer approved" narrative regarding the rise and fall of WCW. That's probably the reason they talk about that book on 83 Weeks so much, even though the book doesn't always paint Bischoff in the most flattering light. 

One of the thing that seems to drive Bischoff the most mental, is that Meltzer frequently attributed creative or managerial decisions that were made in WCW after Bischoff was named "Executive Producer" in 1993 to Bischoff - when in reality Bob Dhue and Jim Barnett were still in charge then.  Bischoff wasn't given the authority over creative or other major executive decisions until he was promoted to Executive Vice President in 1994, after Dhue resigned.

[Superstar Sleeze]

2 hours ago, Al said:

https://twitter.com/Athletics/status/1108325589604167680

I LOVED THIS TWEET! Thanks for posting this.

[sek69]

4 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

You're not kidding about that.  Even if people want to make the argument that Eric Bischoff is lying or being intentionally misleading on 83 Weeks to make himself look better (which I don't think he is, at this point) there's still the book "Nitro" by Guy Evans which presents a ton of facts which fly in the face of the traditional "Meltzer approved" narrative regarding the rise and fall of WCW. That's probably the reason they talk about that book on 83 Weeks so much, even though the book doesn't always paint Bischoff in the most flattering light. 

One of the thing that seems to drive Bischoff the most mental, is that Meltzer frequently attributed creative or managerial decisions that were made in WCW after Bischoff was named "Executive Producer" in 1993 to Bischoff - when in reality Bob Dhue and Jim Barnett were still in charge then.  Bischoff wasn't given the authority over creative or other major executive decisions until he was promoted to Executive Vice President in 1994, after Dhue resigned.

The thing about that is Dave will frequently mention how much he was in contact with Eric, so either Eric was exaggerating how much control he had at the time or he's trying to minimize how much of the mess WCW turned into after the fact was his fault. 

[Wahoos Leg]

Big Dave saying that AEW is the No. 3 promotion in the world when they haven't even run a show yet (or 1 show, if we count All In) is... an interesting take on reality.

[sek69]

Yet if the rumored Turner deal comes to fruition, they would instantly be the #2 promotion in the US just based on that. 

Granted everything could end up worse than the most awful Russo TNA/2000 WCW mashup possible, but AEW is more or less getting handed the greatest opportunity any non WWE company has had since Billionare Ted decided he wanted to put a rasslin show on Monday nights.