Dave Meltzer stuff

[jdw]

What happened to:

 

"But Dave said today on Observer radio "at last word" the videos are for Undertaker and Bryan agreed. They sure didn't seem confident though."

 

"Today" was like... earlier today.

 

John

[Tim Evans]

Dave also got a question about if it might have been for Big Dave Batista. He said he doubts it but you never know. It's almost like Dave knows it's Jericho but doesn't want to admit it cause things could go sour.

[sek69]

I guess the real question would be are negotiations that delicate or is Jericho trying to work the boys and/or Dave?

[Loss]

Dave posted this and later took it down. It came up on my RSS feed but is no longer on the web site. He fell for a very obviously fan-edited video. He is all over the place on this story.

 

On 0:29 in this link, a countdown from 10 to 1, during the countdown,

below show The Wait, Is Over, Then & Chris Jericho's Word in fading

Voice says: Best In The World of What I Do & after the 1 countdown, U

See a White Shadow of Jericho Posing is shown before its fades.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkNYLBufKRU

 

thanks to Cohen Morrison

[shawmic]

And now Dave has completely changed his tune:

 

"Those in the company believe it's Jericho.

 

Jericho claimed he'd be in Hawaii that day, but he's going to deny it until it's either true and he's there or if it's not true he'd deny it as well.

 

Jericho was always supposed to come back in January until the video game deal happened."

[jdw]

Someone needs to translate that...

 

John

[kjh]

"Those in the company believe it's Jericho."

I should have trusted those in the company over Jericho when I pushed that he wasn't coming back. But Jericho told me WWE's creative team are so incompetent that they'd shoot videos for his return even when he was determined never to wrestle for them ever again and he hadn't signed with them. A story about WWE's creative team being incompetent, it must be true!

 

"Jericho claimed he'd be in Hawaii that day, but he's going to deny it until it's either true and he's there or if it's not true he'd deny it as well."

I have no way of proving where Jericho will be on that day. He's going to lie to me until he shows up on Raw and then lie to me again about how WWE gave him an offer he couldn't refuse at the last minute because they're so incompetent to shoot videos without having the payoff finalised. But I'm still going to cross my fingers that he doesn't show up and he's been telling me the truth all along.

 

"Jericho was always supposed to come back in January until the video game deal happened."

Remember I was the one, not PWInsider, who first reported that he was coming back in January until Jericho told me all about the video game controversy. Did I mention how incompetent WWE are, I might have forgotten? Clearly, WWE are stupid enough to upset someone by not including them in their video game just as they're about to re-sign with the company! The video game story must be true, even if it is a storm in a teacup and he ends up coming back in January, just as I originally reported.

[jdw]

Awesome.

 

"WWE's creative team is so incompetent that I'm right even if I was wrong because I was right before I was wrong even if I was wrong about why I was going to be right because Vince keeps changing his mind."

 

 

John

[sek69]

I get the feeling some people seem to be under the impression Dave invented the "WWE/Vince changes their minds a lot" meme as a cover for when he's wrong about WWE stuff. That doesn't seem entirely fair when there is tons of evidence supporting shows get rewritten several times and plans change at the drop of a hat.

[shawmic]

I get the feeling some people seem to be under the impression Dave invented the "WWE/Vince changes their minds a lot" meme as a cover for when he's wrong about WWE stuff. That doesn't seem entirely fair when there is tons of evidence supporting shows get rewritten several times and plans change at the drop of a hat.

It's definitely true they change their minds all the time. But there have been too many incidents where Mike Johnson says one thing (and turns out right) and Dave says something entirely different (and is wrong) resulting in Dave using the "they changed their minds" excuse.

[jdw]

I get the feeling some people seem to be under the impression Dave invented the "WWE/Vince changes their minds a lot" meme as a cover for when he's wrong about WWE stuff. That doesn't seem entirely fair when there is tons of evidence supporting shows get rewritten several times and plans change at the drop of a hat.

I don't think _anyone_ believes Dave invented that. We all know it's the case, especially due to Vince's coked up brain. A recent example: the Punk = Greatest Angle Ever~! thread had a major subplot from almost the start that a lot of us thought the WWE would change whatever Master Punk Plan they had a half dozen times.

 

I just added it in as a funny Daveism to play off Keith's running "WWE's creative team is so incompetent" line.

 

John

[kjh]

I think the "Vince changes his mind all the time" meme is a bit overblown. A lot of the time it's just changing his mind on when to implement a plan rather than scrapping it altogether. Sometimes they're thrown a curve ball by events out of their control too (Kevin Nash's medical issues, R-Truth's Wellness suspension, etc). But in this case, I find it hard to believe that they haven't got all their i's dotted and t's crossed before executing a major marketing campaign for a big name return. If Jericho shows up on January 2nd, then he was the plan from day one and Meltzer dropped the ball on the story.

[Phil Schneider]

In todays WON

 

"Those in the company are under the impression Jericho is still returning in January and that the viral videos are a set up for him being on the Jan. 2 Raw in Memphis."

[Ditch]

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

[Mad Dog]

He isn't a good writer, I can't imagine any real journalist covering a real sport getting away with the kind of mangled nonsense in the Observer weekly

He'd be pretty middle of the pack for a sports writer. His stuff isn't any better/worse than what you'd find on ESPN or CBS. There are some practically illiterate people writing about sports.

[Eduardo]

A week ago Meltzer said that we weren't going to see a UFC flyweight division in 2012, then on Saturday night, Dana announces a four man tournament for the new UFC flyweight crown. So UFC had to have had a deal with the TPF champ Ian McCall and Shooto champ Yasuhiro Urushitani before Saturday, so work towards that was being done probably when Meltzer was denying such a division. Did Meltzer address this reporting of bad information on any podcast or message board post? Or did Dana or Joe Silva change their mind at the last minute?

[Tawren]

Jeremy Botter (an MMA reporter, well-connected) on the F4W board said:

 

Nobody knew this was coming because Sean Shelby didn't know this was coming. They made the entire tournament in 2 days and swore everyone to utmost secrecy.

...

He did a remarkable job in keeping the four guys completely quiet and putting it together on such short notice.

[Dooley]

Shelby knew it was coming. It was Shelby and Silva that set it up.

[jdw]

FWIW, I dig that they're rolling out flyweight. With all the shows they've got going on, it makes for another interesting group of fighters... and frankly the lower weight classes tend to be fun a shit fights.

 

I do wonder what the over/under is for UFC going to a super heavyweight division. I know they have no great desire or plan for it... and lord knows there could be a lot of stinker fights in it. But I always through they had in Brock someone who could open it up if (i) there was a heavy champ he simply couldn't beat, and (ii) he was still over enough / good enough to compete against fatter fucks.

 

John

[Eduardo]

Sherdog.com editor Jordan Breen's version of the story:

 

"They had no idea what was going to happen with this flyweight announcement. Sean Shelby and Joe Silva were kinda in no mans land, knowing that a flyweight announcement was coming but not having the details ironed out yet. So it speaks to the foresight and planning, those two guys sat down in the span of 48 hours, hashed out a hypothetical tournement. So when Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta came to them and basically said "alright, we're actually going to announce that we're going to do this tournement kinda thing", they [silva and Shelby] already had something ready to go."

McCall seems to confirm that it was all rushed rather quickly and he was signed just a few days before the announcement. So I guess it was something done rather quickly on totally short notice. Yeah, considering they are now going to have events on both FX and Fuel TV, makes sense to have another division to fill up those events.

 

Yeah it's awesome that they are doing a flyweight division, Ian McCall is one of the most fun and charismatic fighters around, and it finally gives Mighty Mouse and Benavidez the right division to compete in. I've been waiting for years for Zuffa to finally do this. Yamaguchi is another great fighter with a lot of personality (and a great afro) and Formiga's grappling is amazing (his back control is beautiful stuff). John Dodson will probably drop back down to compete at flyweight, and I could see a few other guys that are currently bantamweights that might drop down too.

[sek69]

I might be Captain Late Pass on this, but is thecubsfan = Joe Gagne from joevstheworld and the wrestling video game reviews on YouTube? I've recently become a fan of the game reviews and noticed when cubs calls in to Bryan's bi-weekly lucha shows the voices sound sort of familiar. Can't tell 100% though since it's telephone quality audio compared to much clearer YouTube audio.

[Bix]

No, Cubs and Joe are different guys, but Cubs's website used to host Joe's podcast.

[rovert]

Want to thank Bryan last night. We have a family emergency and my son was in ICU and needed an emergency procedure done at midnight (he's out of the hospital now and doing fine, cross your fingers) and he didn't fall asleep until shortly after that so I didn't even get home until after 1 a.m. to watch Raw and Bryan stayed until 2:30 a.m. when we finally had to do the show since it was just getting ridiculous, and I hadn't had a chance to see the last 40 minutes or so. This week's issue may be one day late. We'll see. So anyway, after seeing the whole show, I thought it was really good.

Some times even Dave needs to say fuck this shit. Hope it is nothing too serious.

[jdw]

Dittos. Pro wrestling and job takes a back seat to family. Which I think from all that Dave gets. He just shouldn't get stressed out about saying, "Can't do it - family emergency."

 

 

John

[Childs]

He isn't a good writer, I can't imagine any real journalist covering a real sport getting away with the kind of mangled nonsense in the Observer weekly

He'd be pretty middle of the pack for a sports writer. His stuff isn't any better/worse than what you'd find on ESPN or CBS. There are some practically illiterate people writing about sports.

 

 

I'm late replying to this, because I didn't see it before, but that's frankly a ridiculous statement. I've worked as a journalist for 12 years and and have been a high-volume consumer of sports writing for longer than that. And I never see the kind of shoddy writing that appears weekly in the WON in professionally edited publications. I have great respect for Dave's work ethic, contextual knowledge and overall source base. But he needs a real editor to help him clarify individual sentences and to organize his thinking. Just read his Yahoo work to see how much of a difference decent editing makes. The WON audience has never forced him to adopt higher standards in the newsletter, so it's understandable that he hasn't made the investment. But come on, ESPN.com, for all its flaws, would be ashamed to publish the kind of copy that appears regularly in the WON.

 

Personally, I find it frustrating to read his work, especially the big historical pieces, because he comes up with great raw material that would really pop if it was presented more professionally. But like many of his subscribers, I read anyway, because no one else comes close to presenting a similar volume of interesting reportage on wrestling.