Dave Meltzer stuff

[Ricky Jackson]

An ongoing front page poll:

 

Who was Japan's best ever wrestler?

Kenta Kobashi

46 29.7%

Mitsuharu Misawa

38 24.5%

Keiji Muto

21 13.5%

Jushin Liger

17 11%

Jumbo Tsuruta

12 7.7%

Original Tiger Mask

7 4.5%

Toshiaki Kawada

6 3.9%

Genichiro Tenryu

2 1.3%

Shinya Hashimoto

2 1.3%

Kota Ibushi

2 1.3%

Tatsuki Fujinami

1 0.6%

Nobuhiko Takada

1 0.6%

 

I know it may seem like I'm obsessed with this, but including Inoki in a "Biggest Star in Wrestling" poll is OK (which makes no fuckin' sense, but whatever), but he's not good enough to be considered Japan's Best Ever Wrestler? Or Giant Baba?

 

?????????????????????

 

These damn Observer polls bother me more than they should.

[Loss]

I'm not interested in getting into a semantic debate, so I'll just note that you defended the way Flair worked by noting that his schedule as NWA Champion didn't afford him the opportunity to scout his opponents and mix it up. I completely agree with that, but I would submit that that argument is closer to "matches of past eras can't be judged by standards that didn't apply in that era" than "the fundamental elements that make a match great don't change."

It's not a semantics debate. If you re-read my original post, I made the point about formula not meaning all matches that follow that formula are the exact same, almost word-for-word. No one is saying context isn't important. What is being disputed is that the timeframe in which a match takes place is such an important part of that context that it's impossible to compare matches from different time periods. Styles change, moves that are meaningful eventually get killed off and certain promotions just aren't going to have very many pinfall finishes. All that stuff certainly matters, and there is a paradigm shift involved in watching wrestling from different places, styles and eras. The point is that those things are minimal compared to the core of what makes wrestling worth watching, not that they should be completely ignored. It's not an either/or choice, it's a "What's more important?" choice. Dave underrates wrestling fans if he thinks that we aren't capable of taking context into consideration and being fair.

[NintendoLogic]

It's not a semantics debate. If you re-read my original post, I made the point about formula not meaning all matches that follow that formula are the exact same, almost word-for-word.

Right. I never meant to imply otherwise. Flair's matches are samey in the sense that AC/DC's songs are samey. That doesn't mean there aren't differences between them.

 

No one is saying context isn't important. What is being disputed is that the timeframe in which a match takes place is such an important part of that context that it's impossible to compare matches from different time periods. Styles change, moves that are meaningful eventually get killed off and certain promotions just aren't going to have very many pinfall finishes. All that stuff certainly matters, and there is a paradigm shift involved in watching wrestling from different places, styles and eras. The point is that those things are minimal compared to the core of what makes wrestling worth watching, not that they should be completely ignored. It's not an either/or choice, it's a "What's more important?" choice. Dave underrates wrestling fans if he thinks that we aren't capable of taking context into consideration and being fair.

And what I'm getting at is that Flair's matches frequently deviated from that core. Like you said in the psychology thread, "Wrestling that makes sense is good wrestling." And a lot of what Flair did didn't make sense.

[tomk]

Dave in a post on Sabu:

 

This benefit of hindsight showing he sucked is actually the lacking of understanding of hindsight. Everything in wrestling is about time and place. The single stupidest thing modern fans do is try and value and gauge a performance from another era based on a set of standards not applicable to the era. We all go through that phase. I did in the 80s when I'd get tape of guys from the 60s and think that everyone sucked because they weren't wrestling like they did in the 80s. Later, when standards changed, I figured out, especially when older guys were hammering it in my head, how in 1965, how could they possibly work a match for a 1985 audience and to judge them on that is beyond stupid. If they were good for their team, then they were good. If they sucked for their time, but it was a style that actually translated better 20 years later, they still sucked.

I would love for someone to debate him about this back and forth. I'd love to even do it myself.

 

1)We actually live in an age of mechanical reproduction. We no longer live in a world where Bruno learns to wrestle by watching Don Fargo, and Lawler learns by emulating Jackie Fargo. Prospective wrestlers watch tapes, OVW students watched tapes, Florida developmental students are assigned tapes, etc. Tapes exist and especially in a world where performing for the cameras is emphasized over performing to the audience....to pretend they don't is ridiculous.

 

What happens with art in an era of mechanical reproduction (books after the invention of the printing press, painting after the ability to do prints, music after invention of phonograph, etc); is that certain fads are forgotten and stuff that continues to influence is seen as valueable. In world with mechanical reproduction being able to withstand test of time (to continue to have contemporary influence) is important.

 

If someone told a literature class that they shouldn't value Anna Karenina above (the more popular at time of publication) Sarah Wiggins novel about how the evil Sioux indians held her captive...they'd be laughed at.

 

Are we supposed to deny that tapes exist and that which withstands test of time continues to influence?

 

2) A good portion of how we study history is built on the idea that we are better able to see the big picture with the advantage of (the distance of ) historical perspective.

 

As a result of research over the last twenty years we probably know more now about the early development of jazz than we did at any other point in time. Do we have to reject that research because it doesn't match up with what people with less access to the materials wrote in 1920?

[tomk]

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but isn't Ric Flair the obvious counterexample to this argument? He's readily admitted that his matches don't really make sense when looked at in the aggregate. As such, they're not really timeless the way something like Baba/Destroyer is. But he's considered great because of the context in which he worked.

 

Do you think Baba or the Detroyer would be able to explain that there matches make sense?

Wrestling is a vernacular folk art form.

 

The guy who gets a MFA in creative writing is taught theory and can explain the "logic" behind why elements of a story are put where they are. The painter who gets an MFA is taught theory and can explain the theoretical logic behind his artistic decisions.

 

We don't expect that of artists working within vernacular folk traditions.

 

All of the great pulp writers had formulas. The author of Doc Savage novels wrote approximately 10 6,000 word novels per year over the course of 16 years. He had an exact formula where he would havea scene of mistaken identity within the same twenty pages in each time. Harry Stephen Keeler had an even more elaborately kooky formula.They had formulas they didn't have theories about why those formulas worked.

 

The pulp writers job is to develop a formula and put out the work, not to be able to explain the logic of why it works( or to even believe that there is a logic). The vernacular artist job is to produce the art. Its the critics job to explain why it works.

[NintendoLogic]

Do you think Baba or the Detroyer would be able to explain that there matches make sense?

Absolutely. Well, I'm sure Baba could have at least. All Japan matches in the 70s were obviously worked completely differently from All Japan matches in the 90s, but there are also plenty of core structural similarities. It's reasonable to conclude that Baba had specific ideas about how matches should be put together that went well beyond "do signature spots to pop the crowd."

[tomk]

Really? I don't buy that.

 

We have 3 Jumbo v Billy Robinson matches from the late 70s. They have a bunch of crowd popping signature spots and counters that they do pretty much in the same order in each match. They do those spots in different falls.

 

I have a hard time believeing that Baba or either of the participants would tell you some theory why they were in one fall vs the other.

 

The Meltzer quote where he talks about finding it funny when matches from the seventies are analyzed like classic literature when he's spoken to the wrestlers involved and their intention was merely to entertain the audience...was pretty clearly a response to discussions of Destroyer matches.

 

It's one of the dumber things that Meltzer has ever said

 

I know watching Iron Sheik v Slaughter that their goal was to keep an audience made up of lowest common denominator entertained.

 

Muddy Waters was trying to entertain a drunk crowd

 

Bill Monroe's goal was to entertain a crowd that mostly cared about dancing.

 

Jack Kirby's goal was to entertain kids.

 

Keeping an uneducated audience entertained motivated Cervantes and Charles Dickens.

 

The "intention" of the authors behind much "classical literature" is entertaining fans.

 

Entertaining audience and possibly scoring some tail is pretty much the motivation behind the development of all popular and vernacular forms of entertainment.

 

Saying that one shouldn't analyze any cultural product that isn't "fine art" ( where artist is supposedly motivated by pure artistic/aesthetic principles) is dumb.

 

When you talk to an old jump blues guy and you ask him about the interesting chord progressions in a particular song and he answers that he just knew the right order to play the tasty licks to get the women to shimmy...that doesn't mean that the chord or rhythms aren't worth analyzing.

 

Flair has a signature bump that he only uses when he works face.It's a really cool face bump, he never uses it when he's working heel. It makes sense within the context of working face more than it does as a heel. But I don't expect that Flair would be able to explain that. that doesn't make it lacking in logic.

 

It doesn't matter if Destroyer/Baba had no intention beyond laying out spots in an order that entertained audience.

 

Meltzer's [if the] "author's intention wasn't to create work that stood up to analysis it shouldn't be analyzed" strikes me as silly.

[NintendoLogic]

I don't want to pull a Hunter Golden, so I'll link to a review of Baba/Robinson:

 

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=3913

 

Things like extended transition sequences and putting over certain moves by having the recipient desperately block them the first time around are much more subtle than Flair getting thrown off the top or Hogan hulking up. And they were staples of the King's Road style from the founding of All Japan up until Baba's death. So I think Baba clearly did have a theory.

 

It's one thing to say that purveyors of popular entertainment aren't motivated solely or even primarily by artistic/aesthetic concerns. It's quite another to say that they aren't motivated by such concerns at all. There's a quote by Jose Fernandez I've seen bandied about quite a bit that goes, in part: "Negro Casas knows more about wrestling than the entire internet put together, and he would never do anything that the old women that attend Arena Mexico wouldn't understand." Except I've heard a couple of times that Casas made a point of trying to incorporate the Japanese style into lucha. El Dandy and Blue Panther were certainly known for watching New Japan and UWF tapes and incorporating that style into their work. The old ladies at Arena Mexico must be avid tape traders.

[Matt D]

Tom's just posted some of the best stuff I've seen on this board and that's really saying a lot.

[goc]

Wrestling seems like it's done very much by "feel", in the sense that I can definitely believe that there would be a lot of wrestlers who may not be able to explain to you the logic of how and why they do what they do when they do it. Just imagine a work situation you've probably seen before where someone is really great at their job but really bad at training someone else how to do it because they can't explain how they know when to do what. In the same sense a wrestler might not be able to tell you why they did which spots in what order, they just know it "feels right" because they have trained themselves to be in tune with the audience.

[Ditch]

Most wrestling sucks. As much as anything good wrestling is about avoiding things that DON'T make sense.

[tomk]

I don't want to pull a Hunter Golden, so I'll link to a review of Baba/Robinson:

 

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=3913

I have no idea what this is supposed to demonstrate.

 

This is a great match, no doubt. But it being a great match does not mean that Baba and the Destroyer went into it Kurt Angle style "I'm going to go out and have a five star classic".

 

If Baba and the Destroyer go into a match with the Meltz quote of sole purpose to entertain, that doesn't keep the resulting product from being something so good that it can be analyzed like classic literature.

 

Muddy Waters wrote great tunes that stand up to criticism and analysis so did Bill Monroe.

 

this is Lester Dent's formula for putting together a 60,000 word pulp:

 

http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html

 

This is Keeler's far more complicated formula:

 

http://www.spinelessbooks.com/keeler/mechanics/sparrow.html

[NintendoLogic]

I'm not disputing that something can be analyzed critically even if it wasn't created with critical analysis in mind. But just because most musicians are primarily concerned with entertaining drunk crowds or making people dance doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of musicians who simply played what they liked with little or no regard for commercial success. And just because most comic book writers have been only really concerned with getting a paycheck doesn't mean that there aren't comic book writers with serious literary pretensions. By the same token, most wrestlers may simply be haphazardly throwing out spots to entertain a live crowd, but there are also plenty of wrestlers who study tapes and put serious thought into how their matches are put together. I don't know why you're disputing this. To be honest, though, we've gone so far afield from my original point about Flair that I'm not really sure what we're supposed to be arguing about.

[jdw]

At this point, even Flair's most ardent defenders acknowledge his weaknesses in psychology and storytelling, but they note that he had fundamentally different ideas of what he was trying to accomplish in a match than, say, Bret Hart. That's closer to wrestling relativism than wrestling universalism, for lack of better terms.

I don't think this is quite the case. I'm not sure that Dave or Bruce would phrase that first part of the sentence like that. They'd probably only get there after about five back-and-forths where one pointed out examples of the weaknesses... but it's far more likely that they would hit the eject before that and toss out some walk off point like, "He's the greatest ever" or "how could he have weak storytelling if the fans ate up all his matches?!?!".

 

Our little circles in corners of the net aren't his most ardent supporters. Hell, even Bruce and Dave, as massive fanboys of Flair as they are, aren't his most ardent supporters. Try to get Madden to acknowledge there's any flaw in the work of Saint Ric.

 

John

[jdw]

Rack Posts #2129, #2130, #2132 & #2137.

 

I wouldn't say Baba and Destroyer gave no thought to themes in their match, even if they were limited to basic wrestling themes (Dick was a cheating heel, Baba was the local face, Baba needs to look good, Dick wants to retain his heat, etc). But when they whipped out stuff like Dick's Big Book of Headscissors Escapes, the thought was much more likely:

 

"Here's a series of spots we can fill space with that we've worked before and keep the crowd into it."

 

They've got 60 minutes to fill. Two guys who've done a lot of 60:00 minutes matches by that point in their career, and knew stuff that could fill it.

 

That doesn't mean that like Classic Literature that it's not worth studying, even if it's for something as simple as "if you've got to fill space in matches, how do you go about it to keep the crowd?" That also doesn't mean in a literal sense: the head scissors spots might not work these days, so you're looking for modern equivs.

 

Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion, done spot-for-spot, might not be a best seller if rolled out cold today. That doesn't mean that they're not worth studying... something that people still are doing, not just modern writers but also students/experts in Lit that don't even have aspirations of becoming writers. In turn, Austen probably would be amused/amazed by how much thought people put into analyzing her works, point to / picking out things that she herself didn't give a great deal of thought to while writing it other than "it seemed the right thing for that point in the story."

 

* * * * * * * *

 

I'll add that Dave's concept of only being able to understand Sabu "in the moment" is pretty obtuse given the world of entertainment / artistic analysis and study. The notion that we can *only* judge the movie Network through the prism of 1974-76 when it was written, produced and released, is... Bat Shit Crazy. In fact, I don't think there's a movie critic or fan in the world who could claim such a thing. If one did, they'd be laughed down.

 

There was *elements* of the movie that certainly are impacted by the times, as is the case for any movie. King Kong was "limited" by 1932 level special effects, so folks expecting wild ass modern CGI might be a big disappointed.

 

But then again, when we're watching Flair-Steamer in 1984, are we really expecting moonsaults and power bombs? A reasonable critic / analyst / reviewer understands the context and the limitations.

 

John

[cm funk]

Sabu is the Sex Pistols of wrestling criticism

 

I think he belongs in the Hall of Fame, others think he's a disgrace to all that's holy

[El-P]

I just watched a Sabu vs La Parka match from December 2002, and Sabu never cease to amazes me, the more I watch him, the more I enjoy him. I feel like I will never get tired of him, he's rather fascinating and way more fun that just "look the table spot".

The "in the moment" is kinda ridiculous, since Sabu was much better in 2000 than he was in 1994, and rewatching stuff with a fresh eye really opened my eyes on him.

[cm funk]

And he was better in 05/06 than he was in 00.....

 

I haven't seen anything too recent other than the TNA match he had with RVD where they had to go out and do a PPV caliber ECW spotfest main event, when he is clearly more comfortable working a grounded style now. That sucked, but he wasn't put in a spot to succeed.

 

Anybody seen any of recent indy stuff? I'm curious how he looks now. He seems to take a few years off here and there with all the injuries, then comes back strong for a bit.

[Al]

It would be interesting to see if Sabu could have a prolonged career wrestling a similar style as his uncle. Sabu's 47. The Sheik hit that age in 1971. The Sheik had that age had a decade of headlining ahead of him yet.

[cm funk]

Sabu seems like a lifer. He could totally get by on just brawling and blading like some of his influences did. He's a good enough and smart enough worker that he doesn't need to kill himself with table spots. But he'll probably be like Terry Funk doing moonsaults in his 60's while he's barely able to walk.

[rovert]

Dave Meltzer on the Legacy of Wrestlemania 3:

http://bostongardenbalcony.wordpress.com/2...s-dave-meltzer/

 

An extract covering everyone's favorite the attendance figure:

 

 

Wallask: Finally, last question here. They often mention the attendance of WrestleMania III was 93,173 and they’ve really hammered that number for years. However you reported in the Observer many years back, that the real attendance was closer to 78,000 or so. Could you talk a little bit about that?

 

Meltzer: Sure. I remember — it’s funny, because at that time in ’87, I was getting all the gates of all the WWF shows from WWE. And they would say like, “Blah, blah, blah, blah” and they gave me the gate of $1,599,000. And I said, “What was the real attendance?” And I just remember it’s funny because they just said there were 2,300 freebies. But I was never actually told 93,173, and it was sort of like, well, what was the real number. And just kind of the subject was changed. So, I just figured 93,173 was probably the real number. Nobody else had ever questioned it. It wasn’t like anybody came up with a, you know — like now, now every year at WrestleMania they announce a number and six weeks later I get the real number, and it’s 8,000, 10,000, 12,000 different. They make up the number to have the record for the building, even though usually they don’t have the record for the building because they got the big stage. For a football game, you actually can get more people for a football game than you can for a WrestleMania, than if you have a Final Four or something like that at some of these indoor stadiums, where you don’t have the big screens or anything. You draw out far, far more people.

 

So, the point is, yeah, at that time I didn’t know and it really wasn’t until, God, I don’t know seven or eight years later that I remember this. There had been, and I don’t know if it was E! or somebody who did a True Hollywood Story on Hulk Hogan. And Hogan was out there talking about 93,000, and I got a phone call while I’m watching the show from Zane Bresloff, who promoted that show. And he just goes — and he and Hogan are tight, they were good friends — and he just goes, “God, Hogan probably really believes that number.” And I go, “Isn’t that the real number?” And he goes, “No, of course not!” Because when I was getting numbers from WWE, the numbers, even for the indoor WrestleManias, the numbers that they have on their computers and the numbers that they announce are always different.

 

But in ‘87, as I told you, they kind of like, in the conversation, I think one of the things is that they didn’t want me to know that number, so they didn’t tell me that number. So, that was my first time, seven or eight years later, because Hogan was already on WCW by then, so it’s probably ‘95, I’m thinking — maybe ‘94, ‘95, ‘96. And he just goes, “No, no the real number is 78,000.” And I go, “Really?” And he goes, “Yeah, we made up 93,000,” because, whatever it was, the Rolling Stones had drawn like 87,000 or something like that. Maybe the Rolling Stones was after it, but they knew it was coming.

 

But there was the pope and the Rolling Stones and them, so they’ve created a number that neither of those groups could have and nobody could have because you couldn’t get that many people in the building. So it was a number that was created before the show ever started and it was a number — I mean, they did sell out. The sellout was real. And the truth of the matter is, that if the building was big enough to where they could put 93,000 in, they really would have. But you could say that about a lot of WrestleManias. Of all the WrestleManias, the one that would have put the most people in the building was the one at the Astrodome with Rock and Austin, because that one, they sold out every ticket as soon as they put tickets on sale. Whereas this WrestleMania, you know, they might have sold 20,000 tickets the first week at the Pontiac Silverdome, the WrestleMania with Rock and Austin, they sold like, I don’t know what it was, like maybe 50,000 tickets the first day. You can’t even compare the two. That one would have sold the most.

 

But the Astrodome was smaller than the Silverdome, so they didn’t get as many people in. But anyway, since then I’ve talked to many people there, and I’ve talked to Vince about it once. And he said, “The numbers that we give you are the real numbers, and the numbers that we say on television are for entertainment purposes only.” And that was the answer. So, it’s for entertainment purposes only, that number, so they could claim the record. You know for a long time they would claim the largest indoor, whatever, the largest indoor sport crowd in the history of the world or something. So, they claimed that for a while and everything. But that was the story behind that. I mean the fact is, like I said, they probably could have got, I don’t know how many people, maybe a 100,000 there. They probably could have gotten 120,000 there maybe for the Austin match. But who knows? No one really knows because they filled up the stadium, that’s all you can say. And how many extra they would have gotten, no one really knows.

[Dylan Waco]

The problem is there was no big stage, the screen was hanging from the ceiling and we have photographic evidence that no areas were roped off/lost for hard camera use/et. It is theoretically possible that the 78k figure is correct, but if it is it has nothing to do with those factors at all. And I think it is far more likely that the number is in between the 78 and 93k

[jdw]

Dave confirms it was a sellout, and confirms that if they could fit 93K in the building they would have had 93K in the building.

 

There are other threads here and around the net that make it really clear that the building held 78K... before you even put a *single* person on the Football Field:

 

XVI - Pontiac - 81,270

 

So... uh... does Dave know that he's contradicting himself?

 

I think we even pointed to WON's *before* the event where Dave was talking about the number of tickets sold in advance.

 

John

[KrisZ]

I forget how much of Dave's info was from Zane Bresloff.

[Dooley]

What I can't figure out is why Bresloff would give the 78K number to Dave.