I don't know if Dave has a shitty phone or if Bryan's audio setup is that good, but he sounds like a different person when he does shows in person as opposed to via phone.

I'd bet almost any amount of money that Dave still uses a flip phone. Assuming, of course, that he's not using a Zach Morris-era cell phone.

I still use a flip phone

Most of Japan uses flip phones still. They were incredibly popular over there and a lot of people still haven't made it over to iphones yet.

I fucking hate Iphones. (just wanted to get that out, for not specific reason)

I'm in Korea and many little children that can't even be 10 years old have their parents' old Samsung Galaxy S or S2 or whatever. Everybody has got a freaking huge phone and even so, many girls add these huge Hello Kitty protectors on top of them.

Meltzer told a story on his Twitter about this match:

 

The story:

I was at this match in Nagoya with 14,999 other people.

 

Funk is going crazy after, saying he's going to kill Hansen & Brody way deep in the stands running over people left and right.

 

Totally in the zone, sees me, maniac, "I'll kill you Hansen, I'll kill you Brody," looks at me "I'll see you for dinner."

 

Later that night I'm at dinner, a bunch of teenage girls come up all excited. Run up to me and show me their hand.

 

"Dave" is written in magic marker. They grab me and drag me to another restaurant in town where Terry & Dory were.

 

Keep in mind, Nagoya is not some little town, it's a major city like a Philadelphia.

 

If you watch the 1983 Funks vs. Gordy & Hansen match, those girls were the Terry Funk cheerleaders crying like crazy at the end.

Terry Funk invented text messaging

I am wondering how the girls found Dave. I could listen to Funk stories all day all night long.

For as much as Dave would stand out in Japan given his build and being foreign that's still mindboggling.

For as much as Dave would stand out in Japan given his build and being foreign that's still mindboggling.

Remember too that this was Japan in the early 80's, where there were like 1% of the foreigners there now.

Yeah but Japan also has around 2 restaurants per capita, especially in the cities. So, unless Dave was eating right next to the venue (which is possible), finding him would seem rather difficult. Unless Dave had told Terry something like what hotel he was staying at.

There's another version of this story where he wakes up without a kidney.

For as much as Dave would stand out in Japan given his build and being foreign that's still mindboggling.

Remember too that this was Japan in the early 80's, where there were like 1% of the foreigners there now.

 

Dave Meltzer - the sex machine enigma gaijin.

Yeah but Japan also has around 2 restaurants per capita, especially in the cities. So, unless Dave was eating right next to the venue (which is possible), finding him would seem rather difficult. Unless Dave had told Terry something like what hotel he was staying at.

That. Nagoya is a HUGE city. Ponder trying to find someone in a US suburb of 50K people with say 100+ food joints. That's my city, with is a fly on the ass of the Los Angeles metro. I get that he's one of the few gaijin in the city at that point. But think about running around to 100+ food joints in a small burb even if you have a picture of me, with my beard + age range + being non-asian narrowing things within my city that might help me stand out just a little bit. It would still take hours, during which time I'd be done with my food and back home.

 

They had to have been some clue on where to find him. My guess is that the missing part of the story is that Dave was at the hotel restaurant or eating dinner at a place close to the hotel that Terry and/or the other gaijin wrestlers recommended.

Yeah but Japan also has around 2 restaurants per capita, especially in the cities. So, unless Dave was eating right next to the venue (which is possible), finding him would seem rather difficult. Unless Dave had told Terry something like what hotel he was staying at.

When people talk about Nagoya, they really mean the central Nagoya area around the station. Most of the restaurants are street level and in a grid area, if in fact they went everywhere looking for him.

In my experience "within a grid around a central train station in a big Japanese city" narrows it down to about 10^7 restaurants. But my experience is somewhat limited.

Fair enough, but it's flat and an actual grid not like Shinjuku or Ikebukuro, which would be impossible to find anyone. Mind you, unless Dave was with a Japanese person, he probably had dinner at some western style restaurant which would narrow it down.

There's another version of this story where he wakes up without a kidney.

No, it was without an appendix, but with an unused Vader-Takada ticket.

Fair enough, but it's flat and an actual grid not like Shinjuku or Ikebukuro, which would be impossible to find anyone. Mind you, unless Dave was with a Japanese person, he probably had dinner at some western style restaurant which would narrow it down.

On two trip to Japan with him, Dave and I rarely ate at western style restaurants. The majority of occasions that we did were things like:

 

* Ribera's

 

Just a thing for a gaijin fanboy to do in that era

 

* getting dragged out to a western play by puroresu reporters

 

They all wanted to go to an Italian place at the end of the 1996 G1, and who were we to argue

 

Dave loved Japanese joints when I went with him, and was more than comfortable going to Chinese places that Wally would take us to, or Korean BBQ that the wrestlers would like.

 

When we were in Nagoya, after our adventures finding a hotel (which I've described a few times over the years), once we found one and dropped our gear in the room, it was back out on the streets walking around until we found one open and from the dishes in the window looked to have stuff we'd like. In fact, I think Nagoya may have been where I wasn't hungry (behind smart enough to pack some grub/snacks for the show/rides), but Dave was. He felt like sushi, we found a place, and he munched out.

 

It's possible that Dave was more narrow in what he would eat in 1984 than in 1995-96, but that's not really the Dave I know. He was pretty open to trying a variety of things, while I was the more narrow / picky one.

 

So my point...

 

If they were randomly looking for us in 1995 without knowing the hotel, they would have been screwed. Even knowing the hotel, we could go into any sort of joint to eat.

 

Hence my comment above: Dave may have been eating at the hotel if they served food, or was at a place the wrestlers recommended.

I meant more in terms of being able to order than being adventurous. Even accounting for window displays and menus with pictures, choose and point limits your options pretty dramatically. "Funk sent some girls to pick me up from the hotel" isn't the way Dave told the story. It doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility that if they knew roughly where he was going to be then they could have found him. They could've gone around asking all the restaurant staff in the streets if they'd seen him, for example. The story must have stuck with Dave for all these years for a reason. #wemustgettothebottomofthis

Dave didn't go into details all.

 

"I was eating. Teenyboppers showed up and dragged me to Funk."

 

That said, I think I'm probably the only one on this board that has eaten a meal with Dave, let alone several dozen and knows how he went about it. I mean, while I enjoy your "he probably had dinner at some western style restaurant" spot since it so perfectly fits clueless gaijin who only eat western shit while in Japan, I kind of felt the need to point out that it was... you know... bullshit on how Dave eats in Japan.

Well, fuck I'm glad we've got the straight story on how Dave eats in Japan.

Glad to help you from portraying him wrong.

They all wanted to go to an Italian place at the end of the 1996 G1, and who were we to argue?

John, what kind of seats did you and Dave have for the G1 shows? Would you be visible in the crowd on any of the taped cards?

I've eaten a meal with Dave.

 

Perkins Restaurant.

 

Somewhere in Tennessee.

 

I remember Dave drinking Grapefruit Juice. I don't recall what he ate.