NOVEMBER 2019 WRESTLING CHAT.

[Curt McGirt]

They actually ended with the Ali bit, better than their usual "slice o' life" pieces. 

He said he was done with the evil Muslim gimmick after a young kid put up his dukes and punched him out of the crowd. He thought "you just taught this kid to hate". Not sure whether he was just referring to the parent or to his own participation, but still, ouch. 

He also said that the worst thing that was ever called out to him was a kid saying "I thought we killed you, Osama". Surely he was soft-balling that one for national air.

Edited November 7, 2019 by Curt McGirt

[John from Cincinnati]

I've heard him tell that first story a few times. Definitely packs a punch. 

[John from Cincinnati]

Here's the whole segment. They also talked to Steph.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mustafa-ali-wwe-wrestler-fighting-stereotypes-in-and-out-of-the-ring-2019-11-04/

[sabremike]

49 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Wrestling related but not necessarily an easy read

 

While everyone laughed at him when he was in WWE (and I'm sure that after learning about his condition everyone greatly regrets it and would never had done so if they had known) it has to be noted that he once uttered the single most interesting and profound comment ever made on a WWE broadcast: " A small guy has to prove he can play, a big guy has to prove he can't play". 

[Guest Edwin]

8 hours ago, BurningBeard said:

 Does anyone know of anyone who attended? 

Destrucity.

There's a name for a wrestling newsletter.

[Swift]

7 hours ago, AxB said:

I watched this Prince Devitt documentary from Irish telly on the YouTube

Bizarrely I just watched that at the weekend. And even more bizarrely it was a DVD from the library here in Calgary.

Along with the ICW ballsacks, there was also a funny exchange between Devitt and some Scottish indy guy.

Devitt: Haven't seen you in a while. How are things?

Scot: Aye, I was out injured for a bit.

Devitt: What happened?

Scot: *points down* Lost a ball.

Devitt: Haha... wait what? You're serious!?

Scot: Aye, only got one ball now. Crotched myself on the turnbuckle.

[Swift]

Cut to 7:15 for Davey Boy Smith doing a promo for Super WrestleMania, followed by Jim Duggan chanting USA! USA! to a UK audience, playing the game against a kid and then carrying a woman in a wetsuit down to the basement to have sex with her.

[Peck]

Dildo blender!

[BurningBeard]

13 hours ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

I have to chuckle at the frothing-at-the-mouth some do when Dave is caught reporting something that isn't entirely factual.

It's not so much that for me, working in journalism I get that misreportings happen, but the fact he got the person who gave the speech completely wrong and the ensuing flack Rollins caught I just found to be a bit pathetic and verged on pushing an agenda. Unless you're being fed shinfo then attributing quotes is impossible to mess up. But, like I said, I'm actually used to being there when reporting on things and, well, he's always been going on second hand information and we just lap it up.

[MORELOCK]

14 hours ago, MapRef41N93W said:

I don't mean to prolong this discussion too much, but what are some especially egregious examples of Meltzer getting things wrong without retraction?

The "CM Punk to return to Chicago RAW" debacle is probably the most egregious off the top of my head.

And that's just the thing - people keep saying Dave is good about corrections and retractions, but I'm struggling to think of any official ones that occurred prior to this week. I do see a lot of "Plans changed/source was wrong/Dave was just speculating/Newzsites misquoted him" excuses.
 

16 hours ago, Hagan said:

- Re: Meltzer - he's pretty good at offering up corrections. A lot of guys don't. I do find it interesting that the anti-Dave movement, which was basically fermented by known bullshitters like Bischoff and Pritchard trying to make a buck off gullible people, essentially boils down to saying that anything this journalist writes is "fake news." 

I understand cognitive dissonance  is a thing but I would love to know if the people who think that the majority of what Dave writes is bullshit also believe that everything in the Times and WaPo is fake too. Or, is it this thing where the people who spend time yelling at Dave and accusing him of making shit up are gonna be outraged when Jericho's interview with Junior features a healthy amount of media bashing?

"People that don't like Meltzer's bastardized version of reporting are likely to be Trumpers" is one of the most idiotic things I've ever seen on this board, and a great example of the tactics Meltzer fanboys use to blindly defend everything that he says and does. There are people on the left that appreciate and understand what real journalism is - including not sending stories to print if the source/information is suspect.

Have we officially thrown out the "no politics" rule on this board? These conversations get unnecessarily personal enough without going there. Since we're making these unflattering comparisons, the people that are suggesting that we extract Dave's news and reject his opinions sound like the Fox News people insisting there's a discernible line between their news and opinions. His opinions have peppered his news for the entirety of his career - it's the main reason it's difficult for me to view him as an actual journalist.

[Matt D]

3 hours ago, BurningBeard said:

It's not so much that for me, working in journalism I get that misreportings happen, but the fact he got the person who gave the speech completely wrong and the ensuing flack Rollins caught I just found to be a bit pathetic and verged on pushing an agenda. Unless you're being fed shinfo then attributing quotes is impossible to mess up. But, like I said, I'm actually used to being there when reporting on things and, well, he's always been going on second hand information and we just lap it up.

He never shows his work correctly. Look at the lead story on the Post right now about Trump wanting Barr to provide cover. Every paragraph has  "people familiar with the matter said" or "Trump advisers say" or "people close to the administration say," followed up with "Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the politically fraught situation."

That stuff is basic and matters.

[Guest Edwin]

One of the best wrestling documentaries I've seen.

[Curt McGirt]

https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2015/04/27/muhammad-ali-ric-flair-oral-history-pro-wrestling-north-korea

This should be added alongside that. A must-read. 

And paying for somewhere to put my passwords is really, really fucking funny

Edited November 7, 2019 by Curt McGirt

[Technico Support]

Gotta agree with @MORELOCK on this.  I don't think the Venn diagram between people who hate Meltzer and right-wingers is a circle or anything.  Looking at places like /r/squaredcircle or, god help me, comment sections on grapz newz sites, it seems like hating Meltzer is more of a "young person" thing than it is a MAGA thing.  Young people mistake cynicism for wisdom and, on top of that, want their own thing, not the previous generations' thing.  Put those together and you get a lot of shit-talking on conventional wisdom and things we olds normally just accept.  I mean I came up with Meltzer as the gold standard of fake fighting journalism and I accept that.  I mean, fuck, what's left when he goes?  Bryan?  Shit.  So anyway, young people want their own rasslin' reporter, not mine, so shitting on Dave is what they do to prove their bonafides.  God I hope that all made sense.

Edited November 7, 2019 by Technico Support

[Firebreaker Chip]

There does seem to be a block of young wrestling fans who have somehow become convinced that rather than having good sources but being eccentric and frequently sloppy and naive, Meltzer literally has no inside knowledge at all and anything he's right about is a fluke consequent to him throwing a lot of shit at the wall and some of it sticking

There is also maybe some defensive resentment about him criticising or bringing negative attention on wrestlers they like, an egregious violation of the sacred rule that annoying nerds should be allowed to Enjoy Things without being troubled by becoming aware of the existence of criticism of them

Dunno if the proliferation of shit-tier wrestling news websites whose content is all aggregated re-reporting has muddied the water a bit

Edited November 7, 2019 by Firebreaker Chip

[Hagan]

4 hours ago, MORELOCK said:

The "CM Punk to return to Chicago RAW" debacle is probably the most egregious off the top of my head.

And that's just the thing - people keep saying Dave is good about corrections and retractions, but I'm struggling to think of any official ones that occurred prior to this week. I do see a lot of "Plans changed/source was wrong/Dave was just speculating/Newzsites misquoted him" excuses.
 

"People that don't like Meltzer's bastardized version of reporting are likely to be Trumpers" is one of the most idiotic things I've ever seen on this board, and a great example of the tactics Meltzer fanboys use to blindly defend everything that he says and does. There are people on the left that appreciate and understand what real journalism is - including not sending stories to print if the source/information is suspect.

Have we officially thrown out the "no politics" rule on this board? These conversations get unnecessarily personal enough without going there. Since we're making these unflattering comparisons, the people that are suggesting that we extract Dave's news and reject his opinions sound like the Fox News people insisting there's a discernible line between their news and opinions. His opinions have peppered his news for the entirety of his career - it's the main reason it's difficult for me to view him as an actual journalist.

Oh, just to clarify my post - I think all journalism needs to be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. These are people with blind spots and ideologies who get misled at best and act maliciously at worst. Dave is about as credible as anything else you'll read these days. Dave issuing a retraction puts him about ten steps above a lot of the national media, actually. 

However, it is fair to say that it's very easy in this climate to pile on and discredit journalists if they get things wrong and people blindly believing WWE employees every time they tow some company line is definitely a bold strategy. 

In regards to Dave - so much of the shit he gets does ultimately boil down to people not reading or people selectively listening to clips. The CM Punk one is a great example. Bischoffs dumb "Mabel is the third man" money grab is another.  

Also, throwing out the "plans change" stuff as a way to discredit is a really poor argument when EVERY single person who ever comes out of WWE confirms how common that is and how last minute a lot of the booking is. 

Also, in January - when Dave like lists every Mania match or starts positing on six months of business strategies - people realize that they LITERALLY have people who are supposed to call and loop him in. This idea that Dave has just been willy-nilly making up WWE stuff for years or that like Chris Jericho was his only source is pretty silly. 

I dunno - I read the Observer every week. There's not a lot that's wrong or off in there. Honestly, there's hardly any.  I don't really listen to the shows so can't speak to that. Dave def has a habit of maybe not thinking before he speaks or he rambles out theories out loud.

Also, if anything the benefit of the Observer has always been more for analysis and news rather than "spoilerz."

I don't know - I mean, we all came to wrestling and following wrestling news at different times and era. I remember a time when Al Isaacs told us that Yokuzuna was joining the Hart Foundation every week or Scott Keith would literally just make up stuff on message boards that people would run with for years. Dave getting a story wrong for what 12 hours and issuing a correction really isn't that big a deal and says more about people's misunderstanding about what a journalism is than anything.  

[Firebreaker Chip]

There is definitely a post-Tr*mp amplification of the idea that all journalists are untrustworthy shit-stirrers, but declining faith in media institutions is an ongoing thing across the board; this is not without good reason but as noted above people often aren't good judges of which bits are credible, and reflexively throw the baby out with the bathwater

Also everywhere has fucking comments and have your say shit on it now so every confused nudnik gets to indulge their need to disagree with the story underneath it for some reason

[Hagan]

24 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Gotta agree with @MORELOCK on this.  I don't think the Venn diagram between people who hate Meltzer and right-wingers is a circle or anything.  Looking at places like /r/squaredcircle or, god help me, comment sections on grapz newz sites, it seems like hating Meltzer is more of a "young person" thing than it is a MAGA thing.  Young people mistake cynicism for wisdom and, on top of that, want their own thing, not the previous generations' thing.  Put those together and you get a lot of shit-talking on conventional wisdom and things we olds normally just accept.  I mean I came up with Meltzer as the gold standard of fake fighting journalism and I accept that.  I mean, fuck, what's left when he goes?  Bryan?  Shit.  So anyway, young people want their own rasslin' reporter, not mine, so shitting on Dave is what they do to prove their bonafides.  God I hope that all made sense.

Okay - but that is what I'm getting at. There's a cognitive dissonance  between "oh Bruce Pritchard said Dave Meltzer is lying and he was there so I believe Bruce" and people just blindly accepting everything they read in the newspaper or see on their TV station of choice and seeing any political or public figure pushing back as clearly lying. . 

[Casey]

44 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Gotta agree with @MORELOCK on this.  I don't think the Venn diagram between people who hate Meltzer and right-wingers is a circle or anything.  Looking at places like /r/squaredcircle or, god help me, comment sections on grapz newz sites, it seems like hating Meltzer is more of a "young person" thing than it is a MAGA thing.  Young people mistake cynicism for wisdom and, on top of that, want their own thing, not the previous generations' thing.  Put those together and you get a lot of shit-talking on conventional wisdom and things we olds normally just accept.  I mean I came up with Meltzer as the gold standard of fake fighting journalism and I accept that.  I mean, fuck, what's left when he goes?  Bryan?  Shit.  So anyway, young people want their own rasslin' reporter, not mine, so shitting on Dave is what they do to prove their bonafides.  God I hope that all made sense.

Okay boomer.

[Elsalvajeloco]

15 minutes ago, Hagan said:

In regards to Dave - so much of the shit he gets does ultimately boil down to people not reading or people selectively listening to clips. The CM Punk one is a great example. Bischoffs dumb "Mabel is the third man" money grab is another.  

I was listening to the new 83 weeks about When Worlds Collide yesterday. I understand where Eric is coming from. Being the #3 promotion doesn't mean a whole lot if the #1 has a virtual monopoly over everything. Also, Dave got happy over the early success of UWFi in that same time period and we see how quickly that crashed. However, Conrad's point was that based on how volatile wrestling was at that point and how the business was declining or plateaued for both WCW and WWF, being able to do PPVs and have decent gates in the US at that point is nothing just brush off. Eric is talking about they didn't have TV. If you're getting on Meltzer and Alvarez all the time about being Monday morning quarterbacks and only being smart in hindsight, you can't say they didn't have TV when at the time you had no fucking idea if they would get TV. You didn't even follow the product. Keep in mind, this is also a time when people probably felt there needed to be great change in the wrestling landscape in North America. Even though Meltzer was too optimistic, you could see why he would be happy a new player arrived on the scene.

[Log]

1 hour ago, Hagan said:

I don't know - I mean, we all came to wrestling and following wrestling news at different times and era. I remember a time when Al Isaacs told us that Yokuzuna was joining the Hart Foundation every week... 

Ha!  Isaacs site (was it Scoops Central?) was one of the first wrestling news sites I came upon.  That poor dude is forever to be known for his Yokozuna prediction that never came true no matter how much he stuck to it week after week after week, etc.

[odessasteps]

Some of us started getting our news from the Apter mags. 

[Craig H]

The selective listening aspect of Dave is probably the thing I hate the most. Most of the time the shit that gets posted on wrestling newz websites or twitter or r/sc is someone taking one thing Dave said on WOR or when he calls in to WOL and turning that into a rumor and then people turn around and say "Dave is always wrong" or "Dave makes shit up" or whatever. If Dave reports on news or booking plans, it's coming from someone. With many wrestlers and other personalities moving on we know those sources leaking shit were people like JR, Bret Hart, Heyman, likely Austin, Jericho, and others or we can make an educated guess for who they were. Were they always right? Of course not.

I think the other thing that bugs me the most is how much people say Dave hates WWE or he just wants WWE to go away or whatever. Dave needs WWE to be successful. Dave also defends WWE more than most people. Hell, most of the time, he's a lot like Greggulator on here where Dave is just trying to defend or find the silver lining in the absolute dumbest shit that's on WWE.

Dave certainly isn't without fault. Listening to him talk is like nails down a chalkboard, he clearly lives in a bubble (not as much as Bryan anyway), he lacks the ability to understand humor or sarcasm, he misunderstands obvious social cues and norms, and stuff like that is what drives people to say that he's on some kind of spectrum. His opinions are often trapped in this mindset that everything should be like NJPW (see his criticism of AEW Dynamite from last week) and so his booking ideas often don't make sense in the US. However, he does provide useful insight into the business, he's probably the best wrestling business analyst that's out there that isn't Mookieghana (DVDVR represent), he avoids going to the depths Bix often goes to, his match analysis is pretty decent, and he's about the most reliable person out there when it comes to news because he's the one with the most sources. 

[Hagan]

Yup and also I mean....Dave literally likes more wrestling than anyone. Dude praises WWE, NXT, AEW, NJPW, watches lucha, loves old style, new style etc. It's like people get mad Meltzer isn't more bitter and curmudgeonly. "Fuck you for liking stuff" is such an odd take, especially with how negative most fandom is. 

[nate]

On the subject of Scoops, whatever happened to Chris Hyatte?