Dave Meltzer stuff

[GSR]

In a sea of awful accounts on wrestling Twitter, that MeltzerSaidWhat one is the worst by some way.

Fancy hating someone so much that you would devote your time reading everything they write, listening to everything they say just to play "gotcha" on Twitter (not to mention carefully editing audio).  And actually paying that person to do so!  Whomever runs that account has one seriously empty life.

[El-P]

I never wanted to be known or anything, but now is the worst time ever to be a "celebrity", as social medias have given all the creeps in the world a platform to be more creepy than ever. Of course women gets the worst of this deal by far with all the sexual shit, but yeah, even a simple journalist like Meltzer has to deal with so much of shit from obsessive sickos.

[El-P]

Very cool interview with Debbie Malenko. At 47 she now wants to get back into wrestling now that her children got older, that would be a terrific story. People talk about how women wrestling is kinda rated on a curve, sometime with good reason, but in Debbie's case, she was right in the middle of the most insane roster ever near its peak basically, and she was not just hanging on with them, she was actively on the level of the Hasegawa's and Yoshida's in 1992 (not quite elite level, but top-tier midcard level, which by this time's standard is awfully good already). Transfer 1992 Debbie Malenko in today's wrestling realm, she's right at the very top. Some really cool stories told, the old Mariko Yoshida fan in me loved how she credits her for helping her out a lot. Would absolutely love to see her make a comeback. AEW, IMPACT, make it happen (yeah, WWE is out of question when they make Mickie James out to be "old", which is such a disgrace) !

[Bix]

On 9/8/2020 at 1:26 AM, FMKK said:

How can it been that Ryback and Rusev/Miro both fell out with WWE management but still internalised their siege mentality bullshit when it comes to Dave? Suggests they aren't exactly the brightest...

So I happened to have conversations with (mostly former WWE) wrestlers in the last several days where Meltzer happened to come up, and based on what they said, the answer is likely "because they think Dave is a puppet for the office." Being that:

* WWE has largely stopped responding to wrestling reporters' requests for comment, but Dave is constantly talking about needing to formally ask WWE about this or that.

* He reported that quickly debunked story (that he never issued a correction on) about Riddle "telling WWE about the rape allegation when he signed" (when Riddle's narrative is that Cartwright went Bitches Be Crazy after he broke off the affair, which was almost a year after he signed).

* Stuff like the "I don't know if Punk is gonna be at Raw, but one of the biggest stars in the history of the business is sure he will be" story turned out to be explicitly planted by the office, if I remember correctly.

...I can see where they're coming from.

[NintendoLogic]

Gonna be honest, the idea of Meltzer as a puppet of WWE management strikes me as so preposterous on its face that I'd need to see it fleshed out in far greater detail before I could take it seriously.

[rovert]

Just now, NintendoLogic said:

Gonna be honest, the idea of Meltzer as a puppet of WWE management strikes me as so preposterous on its face that I'd need to see it fleshed out in far greater detail before I could take it seriously.

Nah it is (broadly) true. WWE has a media liaison who handles this type of stuff. It is killing me that his name has slipped my mind. Meltzer's big-time sources have left the company long ago and he's lazier about backstage news than ever.  Also, this at a time where there are more co-opted journalists than ever.

The flow of information in Pro Wrestling has changed a lot now. WWE Wrestlers know very little and what they do know they are the last to be told on. The people who know the real stories and company direction are the marketing and media people in WWE even ahead of large portions of the Creative team.

[Migs]

The answer seems like it's somewhere in the middle. Puppet is a pretty strong word, and I kinda doubt Dave is actively attempting to carry water for WWE. On the other hand, if he's just sort of reporting what his sources give him and that's the office line, then yeah, he ends up unintentionally advancing their agenda.

[WrestlingPower]

I haven't read or heard any of Meltzer's stuff in 6+ months but I remember he used to present things as how he's learned how the WWE office looks at things.  I remember him saying that he didn't necessarily agree with stuff but it didn't matter, he needed to report on their point of view on stuff because that would explain why things are done the way they are done.  He seemed to be more willing to stop banging his head against the wall on stuff than Alvarez and would resort to that excuse.

I can see the argument that people like Cornette might make that Meltzer used to be more on a campaign to carry the flag & try to change things by pointing out what he thought was wrong and how things "should be done" and maybe now he's softened and just figures he can't change things so just report on things as they are.

[Jmare007]

Man, I just listened to the Jim Valley interview.

I remember listening to a show early in the pandemic with him admitting he was in the high risk category and talking about how people like Reigns were right in pulling out of WWE shows. When I heard he had Covid it was a real bummer. So glad he was able to pull through.

[CarpetCrawler]

1 hour ago, Jmare007 said:

Man, I just listened to the Jim Valley interview.

I remember listening to a show early in the pandemic with him admitting he was in the high risk category and talking about how people like Reigns were right in pulling out of WWE shows. When I heard he had Covid it was a real bummer. So glad he was able to pull through.

He so badly wants to just talk and talk and talk which is very Jim and I love that he's already clearly antsy about getting back to normal.  I needed that level of a pick-me-up and I'm so happy he's working towards recovery.

[cm funk]

Epic Roddy Piper talk on today's WOR from Dave & Bryan including Piper trying to bring Nord in to Portland to put a hit on Alvarez

[El-P]

On 11/12/2020 at 1:54 PM, cm funk said:

Epic Roddy Piper talk on today's WOR from Dave & Bryan including Piper trying to bring Nord in to Portland to put a hit on Alvarez

No shit ! 

Piper comes off like a total nutjob though, to the point of it being really pathetic. Which, really, should not surprise anyone, but still, the story about Piper turning off the lights and putting a lighter to his face while he talked to Alvarez and threatened to burn Meltz's house is out of this world wacky !

[cm funk]

Bryan had actually told that one before, lol.  I still love Piper, he was my first favorite wrestler as a kid, but there is no denying that he was fucking crazy and the gimmick was no gimmick.   When Dave dropped the Nord story even Bryan was surprised.  It starts with Dave like, "remember when you were supposed to work Nord?"  and Bryan is like, "WHAT?!!?  No.....when?  Like, a couple years ago, with Filthy Tom?" and Dave is like, "NO!"   Bryan had never even heard it before!!!!

 

Edited November 13, 2020 by cm funk
more info

[El-P]

That's some deadpan humour.

 

[sek69]

Of all the things to try to work up anger over, the weird Dave obsessives tried to have a go at him for saying Seth Rollins is going to take some time off after Survivor Series when Becky gives birth. They were trying to gotcha him over assuming her due date, and people were rightly pointing out how nutty it is to be mad at someone for counting to 9. 

[El-P]

Let's be honest, the anti-Meltz obsessives are a special breed of creeps. 

[sek69]

So Dave mentioned on the Survivor Series recap show that he wants to create a new award for the Observer Award called the Shad Gaspard Award that is basically his version of WWE's Warrior Award only not named after a shithead. Essentially wants to honor someone in wrestling for doing good things outside of the ring. 

[MoS]

Dave's been using a pizza place analogy to argue that wrestling is in better shape than it has been in 20 years, and I get what he means but now I have seen about 50 tweets comparing wrestling to some pizza place and it has made me almost hate pizza, something I genuinely considered an impossible task

[Clayton Jones]

What exactly does the analogy boil down to?

[sek69]

People were trying to say that just because Papa John's business is down (largely because the founder was revealed to be a sweaty, drunken racist) it doesn't mean the pizza business in general is down.

The argument people were making that because WWE is down from its popularity in the 90s, it means no one is interested in wrestling at all. Dave was pointing out that interest in non WWE wrestling was higher than it's been in ages before the pandemic hit. He mentioned several non WWE companies doing record business and indies in general running more shows than ever, which would fly in the face of the "no one cares about wrestling" argument.

tl;dr, WWE centric people try to argue the declining interest in WWE means people no longer care about any kind of wrestling. 

[Migs]

1 hour ago, sek69 said:

People were trying to say that just because Papa John's business is down (largely because the founder was revealed to be a sweaty, drunken racist) it doesn't mean the pizza business in general is down.

The argument people were making that because WWE is down from its popularity in the 90s, it means no one is interested in wrestling at all. Dave was pointing out that interest in non WWE wrestling was higher than it's been in ages before the pandemic hit. He mentioned several non WWE companies doing record business and indies in general running more shows than ever, which would fly in the face of the "no one cares about wrestling" argument.

tl;dr, WWE centric people try to argue the declining interest in WWE means people no longer care about any kind of wrestling. 

I think even more, though, WWE-centric people use the raw ratings numbers of today to argue AEW isn't successful. When, of course, the TV world looks very different than it did 20 years ago. Part of Dave's point is, if people are opening up pizza places and they're staying in business, things must be pretty solid in the pizza business!

[Edwin]

22 hours ago, sek69 said:

He mentioned several non WWE companies doing record business and indies in general running more shows than ever, which would fly in the face of the "no one cares about wrestling" argument.

Crazy how most of the indys biggest events all revolve around WrestleMania which is why a lot of them were even seeking crowd funds just to survive when the pandemic hit and they all had to cancel their events.

[sek69]

6 minutes ago, Edwin said:

Crazy how most of the indys biggest events all revolve around WrestleMania which is why a lot of them were even seeking crowd funds just to survive when the pandemic hit and they all had to cancel their events.

Yes, it certainly is a puzzle that indies who survive on selling tickets had an issue surviving without ticket sales. 

You can probably make an argument that too many companies put their eggs in the Wrestlemania Weekend basket, but I can't really fault anyone who didn't  take into account "worldwide pandemic shutting down live events" in their business plans.

 

[Edwin]

1 hour ago, sek69 said:

Yes, it certainly is a puzzle that indies who survive on selling tickets had an issue surviving without ticket sales.

You can probably make an argument that too many companies put their eggs in the Wrestlemania Weekend basket, but I can't really fault anyone who didn't  take into account "worldwide pandemic shutting down live events" in their business plans.

Then these "record" businesses Meltzer says they are doing don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things.

If WrestleMania crowds tank, then there's a high chance the crowds for these indy shows will be less as well which the point I was trying to make.

[Migs]

6 hours ago, Edwin said:

If WrestleMania crowds tank, then there's a high chance the crowds for these indy shows will be less as well which the point I was trying to make.

It's not really Wrestlemania per se, it's a weekend in which there's a ton of people gathered in one place. AEW shows were great for indies as well. Those weekends get indies extra shows to make money on, and they probably could have survived this if they'd been able to actually run locally in the six months that followed.