Color me surprised that Dave considers Rock/Angle/Taker to be the best triple threat match in WWE history. I figured he'd almost certainly go with Benoit/HHH/HBK or Lesnar/Rollins/Cena.

20 hours ago, fxnj said:

Are there any pics of Dave's physique since that pic that went viral a few years ago? If he still looks like that, I'd be pretty confident in saying that he's at least on TRT, which is basically low-dose steroids that's prescribed by a doctor. Pretty much impossible to be that ripped at his age without some help.

Here's a video of him at last weekend's Starrcast (got to 14:55 if the time video doesn't load there).

 

To be honest, I have no clue why Dave taking any PED (if he did/does) would matter to anyone. If Bischoff said that on Twitter as an insult, that's a pretty lame attempt at one imo.

 

Here's Dave at Starrcast.

Draw your own conclusions.

Looks natural to me. He's lean, but doesn't have much size. Makes me think that older pic could have just been a product of lighting/camera angles. I agree that it is dumb to accuse him of taking gear when he looks like that.

Dave looks in good shape for a guy in his 50's who has basically always been in good shape. I think it's been brought up here before, but Dave looking like Dave is probably 20% of why he got sources in the first place. 

We dd it guys, we hit Peak Stupid. Just saw the Twitter account for the Wrestling reality podcast try to concern troll people in to going after Dave's "sponsors" for saying the people who continually go after him with wrong information have learning disabilities. 

I've never felt more embarrassment for humankind as a species. 

Trying to find out who  Meltzer's "sponsors" doesn't make sense to begin with is nutty to begin with.   I mean unless they expect someone from Ring of Honor or the Bullet Club is it is not. 

Meltzer did delete the tweet that caused the mess which is something he doesn't really do no matter how offensive it is.  

On 9/8/2018 at 3:50 AM, NintendoLogic said:

Color me surprised that Dave considers Rock/Angle/Taker to be the best triple threat match in WWE history. I figured he'd almost certainly go with Benoit/HHH/HBK or Lesnar/Rollins/Cena.

Same. I'm pretty sure that he rated the latter two matches higher than Rock/Angle/Taker too. Unless he has re-watched them and his opinion has changed. 

Meltzer just called Akira Taue "way overrated", which surprised me. Has he always been low on him?

He's said for a long time that wrestlers who toured All Japan thought he was one of the harder guys to get a good match out of.

He's both underrated (by Meltz, in this case) and overrated (by the "he's as good or better than the other Four Pillars" crowd). There has been points when he was actively bad when he was teaming with Jumbo or Kawada up to 95 (after that point, not so much anymore). His best stuff in NOAH is terrific, but overrated in the sense of it's been often portrayed as him "carrying overrated Kobashi/ broken Misawa", when it was clearly not the case.

For instance, I just watched the infamous (and great) Kobashi title defense from 2004. Taue's best performance since the Nagata match. Yet, people are confusing the fact that he looked great and better than Kobashi and the fact that the story of the match was him looking great and better than Kobashi, while Kobashi had to give a more subtle, understated performance of a guy who was exhausted by his title reign and had to hang by a thread and use an killer death spot at the end to escape his fate. It has been described by some as "Taue carried Kobashi to a great match and reigned his worst head-dropping tendencies", while in reality, Taue was great at what he did, being a terrific offensive worker, but Kobashi actually made the match really great because of his performance and psychology.

So this week Dave said (or wrote, I'm not sure) this:

Quote

Let’s just say that the next few months are going to be very interesting. Some early contract offers made have raised some concern to go along with the issues mentioned in last week’s issue. While there is a lot of pride here for the quality of the matches stemming from the Kobe and Long Beach shows during what is usually the post-G-1 down period, and the great reaction to G-1 and its business success, but the new regime (Harold Meij and new General Manager Michael Craven) is very different and not experienced in dealing with wrestlers.

There may be economics that we’re not aware of, but there was a lot about the U.S. expansion with enthusiasm, between the new dojo and running a regular California and West Coast second circuit (which I don’t think would have been a good idea) and the pull back from there, and other changes. But it feels like a lot has changed in the last 30 days. Craven, who is believed to be the head of talent relations as well as international expansion, may be the most unpopular guy among the wrestlers with the new regime. Craven I believe was the Tech Business Director at Hays Japan, managing technology recruitment for a company and had worked in IT recruitment for 20 years. He has lived in Japan since 1998, coming from the U.K. and has been involved in developing many of the top senior level technology executives in Asia.

The initial reaction was that the feeling was that he talks down to the wrestlers and made strange comments and they know he has no background in wrestling, which is a very unique industry. Morale with the company was very high as you could tell by any interviews with the talent, particularly during G-1 where the level of work had led to high pride across the board with the feeling they were doing the best matches in the world and producing the best overall product. Now the morale is more weird than anything, with more uncertainty about what will happen next and less confidence than with the old administration. Another person noted that the new team has gotten off to a rough start and that all the wrestlers, both Japanese and American, are talking about how they feel like they are seen as workers in a factory assembly line as opposed to high level athletes or entertainers.

The excitement so many had for working here has taken a hit. It’s really a bad time for that with the goal of international expansion and that fun vs. WWE money was a key to a lot of people, but if you lower the fun aspect, that changes the equation, and basically we’re coming in on the single most interesting and important contract season since New Japan started garnering some international growth. There are people who in the past had never even considered WWE who are thinking about it, and others who were completely committed to staying who are probably still leaning that way, but are considering the WWE option.

Which clearly reads as something The Elite crew fed to him for whatever reason (put pressure on New Japan, wink at WWE or just fucking around with fans like they do every years when their negotiations come up).

And then Tama Tonga tweets this

 

 

I love this kind of fuckery

Yeah it looks like the Elite crew is stirring shit up, which is funny because they are proclaiming a united front when there's no way Omega would walk away from his spot as the face of their expansion efforts. 

For what it's worth, Dave on WOR said it went beyond the Elite and specifically mentioned "people you would never expect to leave."

Just now, NintendoLogic said:

For what it's worth, Dave on WOR said it went beyond the Elite and specifically mentioned "people you would never expect to leave."

Yano about to make the jump !

Imagine Yano being The Miz's new protégé!

Damn, Harold Meij is actually Jim Herd.

Not sure if we can post stuff from reddit, but this whole story upped the fuckery levels even more Meji himself said Craven (the guy Dave mentioned in his story) doesn't work for New Japan and a guy from reddit said he even got death threats. That last part sounds a little too ridiculous, but wtf.

https://www.reddit.com/r/njpw/comments/9nitw0/meij_meltzer_got_the_wrong_guy/

Meltzer getting stuff wrong when it comes to Japan isn't surprising at all. 

22 minutes ago, Makai Club #1 said:

Meltzer getting stuff wrong when it comes to Japan isn't surprising at all. 

True. Though him not even double checking this is hilarious.

11 hours ago, El-P said:

Damn, Harold Meij is actually Jim Herd.

Every victim needs a villain.  This way, Dave can pin the “blame” on someone else rather than The Elite when those guys all sign with WWE for business reasons.

46 minutes ago, Jmare007 said:

True. Though him not even double checking this is hilarious.

Even if it's a close, trusted friend, it's wise to fact check before releasing info like this. 

42 minutes ago, Zoo Enthusiast said:

Every victim needs a villain.  This way, Dave can pin the “blame” on someone else rather than The Elite when those guys all sign with WWE for business reasons.

Makes you wonder how many times this dynamic has happened before when a friend/source has been involved and they are the only corroboration/presenter of the story to Meltzer.

Why would the Elite want to leak information that would undermine their bargaining position, true or not?

55 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

Why would the Elite want to leak information that would undermine their bargaining position, true or not?

The first report doesn't undermine their bargaining position at all. It was basically "people that didn't think about leaving might think about it now", which could lead to them getting better offers so they would stay. Or push WWE to make them a good offer to finally convince them to jump ship.