Dave Meltzer stuff

[soup23]

"UFC is covered too little" is pretty much exactly why I have never subscribed and will never subscribe to the Observer. For the record I am - and always have been - a MMA fan

 

Agreed and this is why I stopped subscribing in May and have not regretted it. I think Bryan and Dave really fail to realize the amount of "groupthink" that exists around their website and while they do have a hardcore audience, they are alienating another portion that someone like the Torch capitalizes on.

[Tim Evans]

Dave's board posts are just the worst. Most of the time it's just him talking down to people. I guess it's understandable considering the trolls on that board but it's still annoying.

[Loss]

I bet a poll of the readers would also reveal that they're looking forward to seeing "The Muppets" more than TLC. Would that mean Dave needs to cover more puppetry?

More wrestling fans celebrated Thanksgiving than purchased Survivor Series. Attendance was down in the Smith household this year from last year. The general feeling is that without Aunt Trudy's delightful mashed potatoes and gravy, the meal was missing its top draw. Grandpa having too much wine last year was also frowned upon by some sponsors, and the Mom-daughter feud from last year hurt the return gate this time around. Not to mention that every angle tried since Jason brought his boyfriend home and came out has seemed anti-climatic. However, Christmas is only a month away, so it could just be a case of people deciding not to show up for the B show. In fact, some argued that Cousin Ingrid from Sweden flying in should have been held off where it would mean more on the bigger holiday. (Her husband John is considered difficult to be around, but Dave said anyone who has a problem with this doesn't understand holidays, as he should be happy since him showing up means more presents for everyone.)

[Cox]

I may have said this before, but honestly, I mostly subscribe for the classic Observers at this point. There is a joy in his wrestling coverage that is so obviously absent from the current issues that makes them a lot more enjoyable to read. Granted, the wrestling of 1994 was so much better than the wrestling of today, but still, what does it say when I'd rather read Dave's takes on things from 17 years ago than anything he writes today?

[kjh]

Surely if you want to know what subscribers want to read in the Observer and on the site, then you'd do a poll about that, rather than trying to infer it from questions like "What shows are you most interested in" and "What was your favourite recent show"?

[Sean Liska]

Dave's board posts are just the worst. Most of the time it's just him talking down to people. I guess it's understandable considering the trolls on that board but it's still annoying.

It is unfortunate that Observer subscribers have this open access to Dave, and can ask all sorts of questions to this great wrestling mind, and the end result is mostly Dave berating people for being dumb. I would have been so excited to be able to communicate with Dave like this 15 years ago.

[Guest Slickster]

Well it's worked out well for him as he is slotted to be champ till Mania.

Vince is mercurial so that could change in an instant.

Even if it does happen, if CM Punk becomes a 'corporate' character and loses that special fan connection it can cause problems for him after Mania and beyond as a babyface.

[sek69]

Maybe it's the fact that Big Sexy is still around to remind me, but happy face Punk reminds me so much of Smilin' Babyface Diesel it's scary. I thought WWE was over their fetish of making someone champ and then taking away everything that made them get to that level.

[sek69]

Also, to keep things topical, both Dave and Bryan are available as downloadable additions to the new WWE 12 game in the Community Creations section (assuming you can log in, there's been server issues). The creator included the cowboy hat for Bryan and both 80s mullet version and current version for Dave.

[rovert]

Dave will probably shutdown the board if he sees all the 4chan murder pics one particular GENUINE sociopath with possible asbergers is posting currently EVERYWHERE on the board. Do not visit F4W today at work or in the presence of mix company for the next while.

[sek69]

I don't know if I want to know what 4chan murder pics would be like.

[rovert]

I don't know if I want to know what 4chan murder pics would be like.

You will never know as that user was banned and all pics deleted. Thank goodness.

 

The entire All-Round Star poll thread was collateral damage in the purge and now is gone.

[cm funk]

I had a random question but I have to comment on the topic at hand...

 

Does WO/F4W really have any "mma fan" subscribers who want them to drop pro-wrestling coverage? Dave gets enough e-mails about it to warrant making that comment? I get that he's just trying to make the point that they cover wrestling and they cover MMA and people need to accept it, but that was an absurd thing to say

 

This site has been carried for years by UFC and WWE, in no specific order, depending on which is hottest at that moment.

I'm sure this is true for website traffic, but jesus, the audience is wrestling fans who are also MMA fans, and the subscriber base is wrestling fans. I usually defend Dave re: the wrestling/MMA arguements, but that post makes him sound delusional. I mean, his Yahoo articles don't even link to the website or offer subscriptions to the newsletter.......

 

Anyway, my question was if anybody had any thoughts on why Dave never does WOL anymore? I get why he handed over the hosting to Bryan, but he never is on the show anymore, not even a quick 10-15 minutes to plug the newsletter. He still does Live Audio Wrestling though. I wonder why they even bother with WOL at this point. I don't know the numbers, but it seems like Sports Byline has minimal penetration, the shows are taped now and don't take calls, no guests, and in general aren't very interesting or a good advertisement for subscriber audio. It's like they're just keeping the show around out of habit. I have to think that if they were to reevaluate and shop themselves around they could find a much better platform for it. Even just hooking up with a radio app like IHeartRadio would make the show more accessable.

[cm funk]

Oh, and a comment about Chuck Langerman, since I asked a while back if anybody knew anything about who he is and somebody else brought it up recently....

 

I was reading some 94 Observers the other day and noticed his name pop up in the thanks section for people who sent in house show results. I googled him and he's apparently a "high school football historian" from somewhere in New Jersey who writes some articles for a tiny local sports journal (so tiny they didn't appear to have a website). Explains why all of his "trivia" has to do with high school and other amateur athletics I guess

[jdw]

So what caused the poster(s) to start tossing up murder pics?

 

John

[rovert]

So what caused the poster(s) to start tossing up murder pics?

 

John

He is just really mental disturbed.

 

He got banned for the exact same thing about six months ago.

 

He would legitimately spaz out about STUFF creating millions of threads about Wrestling, MMA, message board politics etc

People would reply with or just trolling him

He would spaz out more

Later he would ask for clean start asking why people were picking on him while admitting zero fault & displaying a persecution complex

Hours later the process would be repeated whether other posters would provoke him or not

 

He isn't a standard troll putting on an act or persona. He appeared on a message board blogtalk podcast after his first ban retelling the story how he got banned in like 900 tiny steps, his reasoning and speech was very childlike and slow. He loved making lists - for example a huge Youtube thread covering every ***** Meltzer match so people including myself thought asbergers - which generally there is no harm in and frankly when it comes to wrestling geekry is rather handy. But there is a difference between having a lack of social awareness/consideration for others and being a raving psycho.

[kjh]

It really is ridiculous that they don't moderate the whole board, so things like this are nipped in the bud earlier. It's amusing that for all the times they talk down to their readership and subscriber base that they're so laissez-faire on this issue.

[Phil Schneider]

Do they still have the child porn thread?

[KrisZ]

This actually made the news update today. At least it wasn't the top story.

 

--Chuck Langerman's daily wrestling trivia actually is about a good friend of mine. The New Jersey Interscholastic Athletic Association is the governing body for high school sports in the state of New Jersey. Former wrestler and promoter Jeff Bukantz (kind of a stretch in the sense he only did a few matches, all under a mask) works for the NJSIAA as a rules interpreter for the sport of fencing. His father, Daniel Bukantz, was a legend in that sport and Jeff was the team captain of the 2004 and 2008 U.S. Olympic fencing team. He also is the only person in the world who was in the front row both when Bruno Sammartino lost to Ivan Koloff and when Randy Couture beat Tim Sylvia, some 36 years apart.

[FLIK]

It really is ridiculous that they don't moderate the whole board, so things like this are nipped in the bud earlier.

Guessing Alvarez is too scared he might lose business over it. "The Board" is something he's used quite a bit (not as much lately however) as one of the selling points of the site and he'd always bring up ppl telling him they subscribed just for that part of it.

 

I think it's the biggest shit hole ever myself but I will ocasionally post in the Radio & old school sections as well as Alan4L's since those are the few that aren't 100% swarming with trolls and idiots on a constant basis.

 

Plus it gives Bryan & sometimes lately Dave too the excuse to brush off any legit criticism they may get as coming from trolls or ppl who just don't "get it"

[Loss]

I can't say I don't sympathize with the frustration Dave and Bryan have running their board. I think a highly moderated Dave-heavy forum would be great. I can only imagine what his subscribers within wrestling think of it if they ever look at it. But the worst elements of that board are an example of the mindset behind making Pro Wrestling Only the type of board it is. And even here, we've had some questionable things pop up from time to time.

[Coffey]

I just straight-up can not stand Dave Meltzer anymore. Like, he legit makes me angry. I was trying to listen to the Wrestling Observer Radio show today and I actually shut it off because I was getting mad just hearing him talk. I have an irrational hate for that man. My breaking point was when he was talking about the no contest after the low kick in the MMA fight. I'm done with that dude. So over him.

[FLIK]

I can't say I don't sympathize with the frustration Dave and Bryan have running their board. I think a highly moderated Dave-heavy forum would be great.

One of the funny occurances that happened after the merger was Bryan creating a moderated wrestling section (the one Alan is in charge of now) at Dave's insistance and everyone thinking he he wouldn't want to bother with the rest of the forum. Then after it was created, Dave largely ignored it and usually spends all his time now posting responses like the one shawmic quoted on the previous page in unmoderated parts of the board.

 

And even here, we've had some questionable things pop up from time to time

......*sniff*, we miss you Strangler Corleone

[jdw]

Running a board can be a pain in the ass, and the positives don't always outweigh the negatives.

 

Bryan and Dave don't have the time to moderate it. Which means they'd have to find someone who would moderate it. Everyone here has seen plenty of boards where you run into problems with additional moderators/admins/etc as the original founder/founders have their time impacted and can't still be the all knowing god of the joint. *raises hand*

 

Hell, does anyone have any confidence that Bryan or Dave would pick good mods, or mods that would run a good discussion WON Moderated board along the lines that Loss has in mind? In the end, the mods' job would be to make Bryan/Dave happy more than making the posters. If you have a thread in a WON-Mod forum that was critical of Dave, and not exactly gentle, the mods would far more likely crack down on the posters than Dave or Bryan.

 

Think along the lines of some of the old WC threads that Dave was in and were critical of him. I think all of us who have been in more heated arguments online would say that those were downright tame in comp. But if they got heated on Dave's part, and a poster responded in kind, it's likely the poster would get cracked.

 

We can envision a Best of All Possible Dave Boards in out heads... but we've all seen Dave and Bryan's response to some stuff, and it's not exactly our Dream Board Postings along the lines of what we get from the WON when Dave dives into a topic. Dave just doesn't have a board poster mindset, and is unlikely to ever have one. That's not a negative in terms of his vast overall contributions to wrestling fandom over the past 30 years. It's just that board conversation just isn't him thing.

 

Is it a bit sad on some level? Yes. Having seen him field a string of questions from one fan after another, often getting asked the same question five minutes later by someone else, and being extremely giving of his knowledge/information/opinion, I do wish folks could sit down to shoot the shit with him. He is exceptionally nice in person, which I doubt has changed over the past decade.

 

Boards... they're just a different beast. It's never going to be something that fits him.

 

John

[FLIK]

Everyone here has seen plenty of boards where you run into problems with additional moderators/admins/etc as the original founder/founders have their time impacted and can't still be the all knowing god of the joint.

Hi Smarks Choice

 

Hell, does anyone have any confidence that Bryan or Dave would pick good mods, or mods that would run a good discussion WON Moderated board along the lines that Loss has in mind?

Alan does a good job with his forum but the majority of the threads tend to be about modern day Indy & Japanese wrestling with a little bit of Lucha & WWE talk mixed in. Karl Stern does a good job with the classic wrestling forum too but it doesn't see much activity. Dave and Bryan for that matter rarely post in either.

 

Is it a bit sad on some level? Yes. Having seen him field a string of questions from one fan after another, often getting asked the same question five minutes later by someone else, and being extremely giving of his knowledge/information/opinion, I do wish folks could sit down to shoot the shit with him. He is exceptionally nice in person, which I doubt has changed over the past decade.

Reminds me that these days it seems to be really hard to get Dave to respond to random general knowledge type questions like you're describing unless you get Bryan to ask the question on one of the radio shows and if Bryan doesn't like you or have an interest in/like the question there's little chance it's gonna get asked.

 

I tried 3 times (once asking Dave directly twice sending it in to the mailbag) to get Dave to talk about The Matsunaga's & Jimmy Hart as HOF candidates and never did get an answer so i've pretty much given up at this point.