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Dave Meltzer


Brewster McCloud

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1 hour ago, bAzTNM#1 said:

Mabel probably wasn't in the WWF middle of 1996. I could have seen him coming in, just not as the third man.

ADDED: Didn't Meltzer say that Yokozuna was going to do a slow run-in and destroy both Nash and Hall during that match that they had at whatever WCW PPV so Hogan could get his win back from KOTR 93?

Yes he did bisch covered it this week. Conrad brought it up and he said thats the first time he ever heard of it. But take that for what its worth

Edited by quote the raven
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Bischoff really fucked himself over from the off with that whole Bret Hart debacle on one of his early shows. Went completely over the top in his denial, coming up with 100 reasons why it never happened despite the fact it was common knowledge and Bischoff himself was even on record at the time discussing it.  Really undermines his credibility for all these subsequent denials (of which I'm sure he's probably telling the truth about in some cases).

Edited by CTXRussomark
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I'd be amazed if WCW hadn't looked at Yoko, to be honest. He was the kind of "monster of the month" heel they loved pre-nWo, and during the nWo angle he was a big name former WWF Champion that wasn't locked down to a contract anywhere.

When one of the earliest additions to the nWo was Virgil, and Beefcake was routinely slotted into major programmes, I don't think there was a single ex-WWF talent that Bischoff can realistically claim was beyond the pale.

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This is a pretty refreshing thread. I don't know what it is about the Meltz, but for some reason he raises a huge amount of ire I have never understood. 35 - 40 odd thousand words a week for 35 years or so is really ridiculous. He must have written more than L Ron Hubbard. I was actually suprised to hear people complain about his writing. Not his typos which there are way too many of, but his writing quality. I think he has an excellent sportswrting syle, it's one of the best things about the observer for me.

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5 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I'd be amazed if WCW hadn't looked at Yoko, to be honest. He was the kind of "monster of the month" heel they loved pre-nWo, and during the nWo angle he was a big name former WWF Champion that wasn't locked down to a contract anywhere.

When one of the earliest additions to the nWo was Virgil, and Beefcake was routinely slotted into major programmes, I don't think there was a single ex-WWF talent that Bischoff can realistically claim was beyond the pale.

Konnan talked about Eric's efforts to court Yoko back on MLW Radio a few years ago. I think Eric basically called him up and spoke to him as if it was a done deal he'd be happy to accept, like "So, when you coming on board?", and Yoko was offended by that because his family had years of goodwill established with the McMahons and he wasn't going to be so quick to betray it like that.

 

Or... Yoko was smart enough to see that they were basically sharpening the knives to stick in him and wasn't going to go for it.

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Yeah. Yoko was giving Konnan a bit of lip service there. If Yoko was allowed to wrestle in enough States, Vince would have still had him on board. Look how desperate Vince was to keep him around in 96/97. He was desperate for him to lose some weight, and he didnt. Vince was always loyal to those Samoans.

Edited by IANdrewDiceClay
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It's interesting to consider him as a "critic" as far as the star ratings go. Of course it's just his opinion, but then you also have to consider that he's an "expert" and his opinion might carry more weight, as someone who's watched a ridiculous amount of wrestling matches, compared to the average fan, smart or not. The star rating system was based around workrate, so it's rather outdated now, as we're all now - the pepole on this forum - at the stage as wrestling fans to consider things like crowd reactions and the importance of engaging the audience while not taking crazy bumps, which the star rating system doesn't include. 

You can go on with this stuff re: film/music critcs: yes, it's ultimately just the writer's opinion, but you might also want to consider that certain people are in a position to make an informed opinion. There is a difference, and it's one I appreciate as an everyman who doesn't specialise in any particular field.

Edited by Brewster McCloud
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1 hour ago, Brewster McCloud said:

It's interesting to consider him as a "critic" as far as the star ratings go. Of course it's just his opinion, but then you also have to consider that he's an "expert" and his opinion might carry more weight, as someone who's watched a ridiculous amount of wrestling matches, compared to the average fan, smart or not. The star rating system was based around workrate, so it's rather outdated now, as we're all now - the pepole on this forum - at the stage as wrestling fans to consider things like crowd reactions and the importance of engaging the audience while not taking crazy bumps, which the star rating system doesn't include. 

You can go on with this stuff re: film/music critcs: yes, it's ultimately just the writer's opinion, but you might also want to consider that certain people are in a position to make an informed opinion. There is a difference, and it's one I appreciate as an everyman who doesn't specialise in any particular field.

Of course, it's an informed opinion, but still an opinion. And that's become more apparent over time - when he's giving out five or more stars to matches that tend to fall very heavily in line with his own tastes (jokes about "add a star for the Tokyo Dome" aside, he's clearly enamored with the modern PWG "super-indie" style), and wrestling is more accessible than it's ever been, so he's not as influential a tastemaker as he was when we had to rely on tape-trading, and when an "expert opinion" could be a real decision-maker on whether you spend £20 on this video or not. 

To say that it's just his opinion isn't a criticism, but it's something that has to be recognised, same as a film or music critic - when I see a good review by Everett True, or by Mark Kermode or Kim Newman, I go in knowing full well what those critics' tastes are, and when Meltzer gives a modern match five or more stars, I go in knowing what his biases are. There are matches that have been given five stars in the past couple of years that I've not bothered watching because given the wrestlers involved, and the promotion where it takes place, I can already tell that it's not going to my cup of tea. 

 

Once upon a time, Jim Cornette explained that the star system as it was first envisioned meant that a five star match was one that had exciting action, nothing that "exposed the business", told a great story, both wrestlers were over, drew a good crowd, had a great finish, had a great crowd response, and was a significant moment in a feud or memorable angle.

I don't necessarily agree with every qualifier he used, but at least they're there. When Meltzer rates a 4.5 star match, I don't know what makes that fractionally better than a 4.25 or worse than a 4.75. I don't know what about this 4 star match could have been done better to make it a 5 star. Of course it's all subjective, and I think Meltzer's detractors take the ratings far more seriously than he does, but it would go some way to make them have any meaning if there were something approaching a set of rules as to what they mean.

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Good post, Pat. I think the point you make in your last paragraph is key: Meltzer will describe the moves and asign a rating without justifying it. He's done it a few times that I'm aware of in my long history as a subcriber - it would have been 5 stars if so and so had done this - but it's usually not the case. The whole concept of "rating" wrestling matches is verry silly, though. The only system that should matter is whether or not the match in question got heat/drew money for the promotion. Or, whether the likes of us enjoyed watching it. Nothing else really matters. 

Edited by Brewster McCloud
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2 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

The only system that should matter is whether or not the match in question got heat/drew money for the promotion. 

On paper this always sounds good, but I still disagree. It's like the Al Snow line about Andre/Hogan being the best match at Wrestlemania 3 because it's the one that drew the most money - but that means it was the best match of the night before the opening bell had even rung. It might be more accurate to say that the best match is the one that gets people to spend money on the next show.

It's difficult, though, because matches are all about context. If two complete scrubs wrestled the exact same match, movement for movement, as Hogan/Rock, it would be dreadful. As it stands, it's one of the most memorable matches of the last 20 years, between two of the biggest ever stars, it presumably drew good money, and the crowd were on fire for it - and Meltzer rated it 3 stars, which would suggest it was completely average. That seems to be missing the point.

In a broader sense, the first match on the card serves a very different purpose to the main event, and to the match before intermission. A match that takes place one month into a three month programme will serve a different purpose to a match between the same two wrestlers in the third month. Plenty of us will have memories of a great match we saw live, that just didn't live up to expectations when we watched it back on tape. Context and timing are absolutely key, and Meltzer seems willfully ignorant of that a lot of the time. Again, I think a lot of this is a bit of a hangover from tape trading days, when you'd often be seeing these matches in isolation, or on a compilation, so their position on a card or in any wider context is lost, so maybe none of this does matter, but it feels like when offering a quantifiable measurement of how good something as subjective as a wrestling match is, it would help to define your terms.

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1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

On paper this always sounds good, but I still disagree. It's like the Al Snow line about Andre/Hogan being the best match at Wrestlemania 3 because it's the one that drew the most money - but that means it was the best match of the night before the opening bell had even rung. It might be more accurate to say that the best match is the one that gets people to spend money on the next show.

 

 

Well, did Steamboat/Savage convince people to spend money on the next show? No. People were just into wrestling at the time due to weird cultural factors. For some reason wrestling was the "thing" at the time. That's all it was. 

 

I think people were just so into wrestling at the time it didn't really matter who was headlining, although clearly Hogan and Andrea resonated with the masses on a scale that had never happened before.

Edited by Brewster McCloud
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