Meltzer created the problem and you can pinpoint when the business shifted back to the early to mid 2000's. At that time, all of the great indie promoters weren't running anymore - Cornette, Thatcher, Alexander, Bassman, etc. New promoters started popping up who used to be smart marks and followed Dave and independent wrestling became less about making money and more about living out your fantasies.
@@al5306 No he didn’t create the problem he’s part of the problem yes but what amazes me is that everybody else still takes his word as if it is not a true word of wrestling
Damn did I write this post 😆 I always say this! The only magazines I read was PWI, Pro Wrestling and RAW and WCW magazine. Didn’t hear about Dave till like 2011-2012
Dave Meltzer lost credibility overrating those current super-athletic aerial no-selling and no psychology matches that looked like more a circus show rather than a wrestling match.
I guess you never watched hokey no selling, no psychology matches in memphis like The Christmas Creature, The Easter Bunny, Leatherface, Nightmare Freddy, and TaGar Lord of the Volcano.
Al Snow's psychology and wrestling awareness was so next level. If pushed correctly by WWE, he could have generated Roddy Piper heel type heat. A guy who could talk and looks like he should lose but somehow weasels out a win and dirties a sympathetic babyface.
When I was a kid in the 90s watching WWF and WCW, I never heard of Dave Meltzer nor did I know who he was until a couple of years ago when AEW was coming about.
Exactly! Hardly anyone gives a shit about Meltzer. "Uh...you know...things change...plans change...I have a head like a jug...uh...Bryan Alvarez is an indy worker...but...uh...he knows everything about everything...uh...I have a head like a jug...this sushi tastes good...five stars because I'm eating it in Oakland...uh...seven and three quarter stars if I were eating it inside a restaurant next to the Tokyo Dome...uh...don't tell anyone I got hair implants...I look like a gargoyle...uh...uh...uh."
Dave was an early vcr tape trader, and i think he kept records and even gave results of the matches. which were popular in the east and south. He moved to northern California. Being in California that kind of thing wasn't a big deal to me so I had never heard of him until recently
Who would of thought that a guy who talked to a mannequin head and got it over is this articulate. Al Snow is an amazing talent who never got the recognition he deserves.
It sounds like people who listen to music critics before they buy some music . I don’t care what a person who I don’t know thinks . The band hopefully makes music for their fans or for what they like themselves
Yeah and they have a lot of false finishes I mean when some wrestler would do their finisher u knew the match is over but now they do too many false finishes
The sad thing is with todays wrestling is that wrestlers (mostly the AEW lot) are more concerned on what rating Meltzer will give them so they cater the matches to his preference with Britt Baker being a main example when the leaked audio was released of her discussing what star rating she hoped Meltzer would give it after he lights out match
Britt Baker saying something so moronic is enough to make me not want to buy a ticket to anything that she's on. I normally mind my manners when around wrestlers, yet I would have no problem asking Miss Baker why she thinks star ratings in a rag read by less than one per cent of fans in the Anglophonic world is so important.
Here's what youre getting wrong my friend. Modern talent arent WRESTLERS, theyre SPORTS ENTERTAINERS. Go ask any male cheerleader and theyll tell you all about their favorite WWE guy or indie darling. No in-between. Their wrestling knowledge starts and stops in the early 2000s, which is fucking ridiculous considering it's been around for more than a FULL CENTURY in the US.
There are a lot of Dave Meltzer fans out there, promoters and podcasters as well. Some are fans of Dave Meltzer just having a successful career in general.
Al Snow literally sounds like a Turian from Mass Effect. I feel like if you ask him about wreslting he'll go "Can it wait for a bit? I'm in the middle of some calibrations"
Hogan vs Andre was literally David vs Goliath and it's mythical the way it was shot. The camera angles mad Andre look enormous and every piece of offense Hogan got in looked earned.
Literally? No. Hogan was never a David. Not even against Andre. Maybe a decade before they met at WM it could have been billed as David vs Goliath but by the time they threw down Andre was diminishing in size due to the effects of his gigantisism and age. Keep in mind that Andre came long before they could do proper thyroid surgery for giants, the same surgery Paul Wight had that extended his career and life.
@@FnRenner You clearly are too young to talk about this subject, lol. Andre was booked and portrayed as a monster and yes, Hogan was booked as the David in the feud. The best example and what you probably never saw, was the Saturday Night's Main Event immediately before the show, were Andre throws Hogan out of the Battle Royale with ease and comes across as a monster. This also was because everybody else did a tremendous job, from the moment all wrestlers just stopped and just stood there watching as Hogan and Andre ran into each other and had their staredown to Lenny Poffo doing a bladejob just to sell the head butt from Andre, it was great work all around. Even during the match, the first big scene portrayed Hogan as David, when he failed to Slam Andre and he nearly won the match right there (which was used for the re-match, there was a lot of good scripting going on) It says a lot that Meltzer originally rated it minus 4 stars, he never understood pro wrestling and he always was a clueless work rate mark, who thinks doing 100 moves per minute is better than all the in-ring psychology, selling and crowd play Hogan showcased, doing only a limited, but impactful and logical wrestling moves to get the absolute maximum out of the crowd.
@@John.Flower.Productions The saying has always been David and Goliath. Nobody gives a shit about crap religion and what is stated in a badly written novel full of plot holes, especially since countless versions of said novel exist.
I'm 50 years old so I was around and very familiar with when Metlzer actually started being a name on peoples lips. Meltzer made a career spreading information that was hard to confirm many times so it never went past that. When he started, technology was Nowhere near as mainstream and widespread as it is now, so HE was the authority because HE was the goof who kept forcing himself into the arenas sneaking in behind the scenes pretending to be something he wasn't.. and in wrestling.. thats the mindset anyways. He was a bit of a shrew back then even. Today where information is so readily available to anyone really , Meltzers whole career of 'embellishing facts' and' injecting personal narratives' has becomes so commonplace for HIM, it comes out clearly in his articles and HE is just a smut peddler at this point, Many productions and individuals out there just regurgitating the typical smut they've always done because there unfortunately still IS a demographic FOR it and it is those who keep perpetuating the garbage that Metlzer does because the younger up and comers look UP to the older veterans like a kid brother to an older brother and look for them to give them assurances that will keep them safe, BUT Meltzer only cares about himself, Like CM Punk, Like Hulk Hogan .. They just keep constantly taking and taking...
The funny thing is that even back then if you were in the know and if you had the credible sources available, you'd knew that Meltzer was just nonsense. His PPV numbers for example are always wrong and were debunked already in the 80's by Kagan Research, LLC and the Channels magazine for the TV industry. His match ratings? Laughably subjective. The fact that guys like Kurt Angle never got a 5 star rating shows it as much as his absurd overrating of All Japan in the 90's or New Japan since 2013 (over 60 5+ star matches, usually involving his boy toys Omega, Osprey and Okada) His inside news? In the 80's it certainly helped that he was actually working for the WWF. But even then he more often than not fell for fake news and blatant lies (like the Wrestlemania 3 attendance myth, he fell hook, line and sinker for a guy working for WCW when he reported the "shocking" 78,000 fairy tale)
I was agreeing with you on your post until you had to ruin it by mentioning Hulk Hogan in the same breath as that shit bag Dave Meltzer. Hulk Hogan didnt become the greatest wrestling personality because of the BS you heard from Meltzer himself, because you just sounded like Meltzer at the end. So go back and edit your comment and maybe you will receive more thumbs up like a Dave Meltzer 5-star rating.
All due respect to Al Snow, but he's confusing the map for the place, here. If Hogan/Andre drew the house for Mania 3, that means their match had the best build-up. That doesn't mean it's the best match. By the same logic, the last Star Wars trilogy is a better set of movies than The Godfather trilogy. Does Al Snow believe that, as well? It's a total fallacy. If someone believes that Hogan/Andre was a better match because of a hotter crowd, the bodyslam being a more iconic moment, etc. then that's totally valid and I can respect that, but purely going off of which match was a bigger draw doesn't really make rational sense.
The difference is that the fans appreciated the outcome of the Hogan/Andre match. The success of the last SW trilogy was due to inflation and hype from the previous successes. The evidence is in the merchandise, the new tril figs/games/ and other tie ins were a colossal fail. HH and Andre still drew massive numbers were they went. You clearly are missing important details to gauge a true success.
The goof admitted in his interview with Chris Van Vliet that he rates matches based on if he likes the style of wrestling or not. In other words, he doesn't actually evaluate the matches on a level playing field. If you don't flip around like a coked-out spider monkey your match is never getting a five-star rating from him.
This is why I love hearing Al Snow speak on wrestling. I believe that Steamboat vs Savage is to this day the greatest match I have ever seen(just my opinion but I was bout ten years old when it happened). BUT!!! I totally get and understand what Snow is saying here bout Andre Vs hogan. Great points as usual from Al Snow. Also does Al Snow eat lit cigarettes for breakfast?? Hahaha
Wrestling was better when the marks were in the audience not in the ring. Dutch was spot on. It's bizarre like wrestler's nowadays don't realize they're in a business
so here's the thing... idk why the hell so many people treat meltzer's opinion like the bible. he is a human being and has opinions and biases. people need to realize that. his takes aren't worth more than anybody else's... on the other hand having been in the business doesn't automatically make your opinions worth more either. see ryback... or half of aew's roster^^ also I disagree with al on one thing: the mindset of "more money = better" is fair enough but I'm glad not everybody thinks like that.
In another interview Al did say Dave is one of the best workers in this industry. When guys like Bruce Pritchard mention some of the guys give Dave false info on purpose just to work him
Al just broke down, the unfortunate direction where the wres business is. Today's wrestlers and fans believe in a star rating, or a analysis on "great matches"
5:44 - This is why fans calling out "botches" pisses me off so much... not everything is supposed to look perfect every single time, but "smart" fans have gotten so used to these guys doing choreographed spots that now if something accidentally appears to seem real you get a "You Fked Up" chant. Fans wouldn't notice botches if everything looked a little more organic, and more simple bumps were sold more often. Sure, fans know that a simple body slam doesn't really kill a guy, but thats the ENTIRE point of being a pro... you find a way to make it seem real that is simple enough for somebody to realize that it hurts and build from there. a guy could fckin stub his toe walking to the ring, and it could be the story of the match, if these guys understood how to make things matter.
What about the idea that Hogan/Andre was the match that drew the house, but on the day of the show, the most exciting match to watch was Savage/Steamboat? Seems to make sense to me. Look, Tom Cruise might be the reason you go see Mission Impossible, but that doesn't mean his performance in the movie is automatically the best of all the actors. It's anticipation vs. execution, and those things can be very different. Also, it's disingenuous to say Hogan/Andre was the only reason for that huge attendance. I really like Al (despite the terrible quality of his voice in these shoots), but his logic is flawed here.
I agree. If Hogan vs Andre had been the sole reason for the big house, they would've had the same match at WMIV with the same attendance. Like I've said elsewhere, Andre wasn't even the most hated heel on the card. WMIII was a hit due to several matches, not just one. Roddy Piper vs Adrian Adonis was built for months on end. Ricky Steamboat vs Randy Savage was pushed heavily as a feud. The Danny Davis saga began before the _previous_ WrestleMania, when Davis screwed Santana out of the IC title in February 1986. There were _several_ matches that drew massive heat. By all rights, WMVI with The Warrior vs Hogan on top should've outdrawn WMIII with Hogan vs Andre. The outcome to The Warrior vs Hogan was less certain, and The Warrior was a much more interesting opponent, plus it had the novelty of being face versus face. Additionally, it really _was_ the first time that the two had met in a regular singles match (no revisionist history required). So, why didn't WMVI outdraw WMIII? Look at the undercard for WMVI, and you'll see my point. Show me Piper vs Adonis. Show me The Bulldogs and Santana vs The Hart Foundation and Danny Davis. Show me Savage vs Steamboat. WMVI was essentially a one-match show. WMIII had several matches that had fans chomping at the bit. Of course, we can't expect Snow to understand any of this.
Andre and Hogan had the best match. It was the most talked about back then. People enjoyed Savage vs. Steamboat but it wasn't the best match that night.
Al has such an eloquent answer. There is a lot of important knowledge and wisdom in his answer that shows his years of experience in the wrestling business. Well done sir.
I understand what Al is saying here, but I remember the build up to WM3 and I was probably just as interested in the Hogan /Andre match, as I was the Steamboat/Savage match. Maybe even more because Ricky was getting revenge for Savage crushing his larynx and almost ending his career.
the problem is that you're speaking for yourself instead of looking at the big picture - Ricky/Macho didn't draw 93k+ to WM3, they didn't sell the merch or the figures or the cartoons, or anything else. Hogan and Andre did. Watch the crowds, there is no comparison to the hype Hogan had compared to Ricky/Macho. Everyone on the card is important but who people pay to see means everything in the wrestling business. If you think about the woes of wrestling today the matches Meltzer loves has ruined whatever realism wrestling had back then.
Revisionist history. Hogan can't wrestle, Andre couldn't move. Who drew the house, who blew the roof off the place? Macho and Steamboat are great just like everyone else on the card but people are trying to rewrite wrestling.
Or could it be that we don’t know the minds of the thousands of people who decided to buy a ticket to the Superdome that day to say who was the bigger draw? Perhaps Wrestlemania had established itself as a big enough event that many people would buy the ticket regardless. How many people were convinced to go because they saw two matches on the card that were of interest, whereas one wasn’t enough to justify it? Who knows? Al still makes a valid point about the change in mindset, even if the WMIII example is all pure supposition.
@@jumbothompson Except Hogan could wrestle. He knew how to work the crowd, he knew how to sell when he needed to. Just because he didn't have 5star rated matches that slap, piss, shit, fart, and cum doesn't mean he wasn't a good wrestler. Remember, wrestling is fake. The only thing real is the money and the miles.
@@jumbothompson Keep coping. No one cared who could move and who couldn't in that match, bud. If you do less and get more, you're a genius. If you do more and get less, you're an idiot.
In regards to the inspiring to be Hogan/Andre thing, I remember several years back WWE had this package where current wrestlers talked about matches that made them want to be a wrestler so you had many "mid" talent and low level main event people answering with things like Steamboat/Savage, some said the HBK/Razor ladder match or even Eddie/Rey from Halloween Havoc. There were a bunch of "work rate" matches like that named by those wrestlers but the one person that said Hogan/Andre was John Cena the biggest star in the company and one of the biggest in the past 25 years.
Yep so sick of wrestler's being complete marks for "work rate" matches. Fact is, characters make money not what's in the ring . BTW love a good wrestling match but it's a tiny part of wrestling. No surprise it was Cena say what you will about him he's one of the smartest men in wrestling ever and it's last true main event star
Makes sense which is why John Cena is the last true STAR of wrestling with crossover appeal and who everyone knows. Although you could say Brock is but Brock doesn't even give a shit most of the time.
I hate to bring up the Punk Elite situation but that’s a good example of The younger guys not having the let’s draw excess money mind set as opposed to “hey let’s do a match so a fan can give us 5 stars”
Nah, Snow is just rambling a lot of bullshit. Meltzer is irrelevant. Ask people why they don't watch wrestling. Nothing to do with Meltzer. Hardly anybody knows who the bloody hell he is. Snow wouldn't tell you this, yet he was part of the Attitude Era which was ultimately counterproductive to the business. I called it back at the time. I said that even though the Attitude Era was popular, those fans won't stay around. They'll pop a few times for people falling from cages, they'll go nuts when a wrestler is powerbombed through a table, they'll cheer the wrestler who threatens to kill his employer in the middle of the ring, but then what? Nowhere else to go. Wrestling sold for decades as a basic affair of two men or two women wrestling in the ring. Promoters became greedy, tried to one-up one another, and a lot of old school fans left--and they started leaving around the time of the Attitude Era. Notice how WWE's ratings didn't spiral through the roof when WCW shut its doors. A lot of those WCW fans, myself included, didn't care for what WWE was doing. A glance here, a glance there, but ultimately, we decided not to bother with WWE.
Hogan/Andre had a story that people could invest in, that's why they drew the house. Savage/Steamboat was a good match, but there weren't people invested in their story as much and fans didn't know how good the match would be. Hogan/Andre worked for the live crowd; they did as much as they had to do with the limitations they had and had the crowd invested every second. That is what wrestling is, that's why it's a great wrestling match.
Most people back then definitely knew that Savage vs. Steamboat would deliver. Both guys by then had numerous classic matches, Savage especially was firing on all cylinders in 1987 (especially against Tito Santana, some really great matches there) and we don't need to talk about Steamboat, he had legendary matches all the way back to the 70's. But still, everybody and the vast majority of those 663,000 households bought Wrestlemania solely for Hogan vs. Andre, everything else is revisionist history.
@@ShadowAngel-lt8nw You can't know how good a match will be until it airs. You can PREDICT that it'll be good and you can ASSUME that it'll be good, but you can never actually KNOW. People thought Syles/Nakamura would be a great match at WrestleMania and it sucked. People thought Sheamus/Bryan would be a great match, it ended in 18 seconds. Matt/Jeff was a let down, as was Edge/Orton, Lesnar/Ambrose, Goldberg/Lesnar WM 20, etc.
I think another change was guaranteed contracts. In the 80s and up to mid 90's you got paid of the house. The more tickets you sold, the better the house shows were doing, the more you got paid. Now guys have guaranteed 200k, 500k, million dollar contracts and to them it doesn't matter if they sell 6k tickets or 20k. Theyre still going to be paid the same amount. So why bother attracting new fans or doing angles so the next time they're in the same city the fans come again? Let me poo the boys in the back and Dave instead.
That is the difference between wrestling and sports entertainment. Today they are actors who worry more about the "critics" like Meltzer than the fans in attendance. Back in the day, they were wrestlers trying to draw folks and make money.
The big issue with Meltzer is he has to a certain generation positioned himself as a journalist of shorts but the reality is he isn't at best Meltzer is a tabloid journalist which most of if not all the time makes stuff or tells half truths. But in the era before you had wrestlers, officials, and people who ran the wrestling companys Dave was in a very small group of people that reported this so one knew any better. Nowadays we may not have all the facts or most of the facts but you can listen to most podcasts on older subjects and start to piece things together yourself if you throw your bias out the window especially if these podcasts are run by people who where there. As far as the match rating system goes it's all subjective what call a great match may be different than Dave likes, or even someone else. The simple fact of the matter no one is hired and kept in a company based on Dave's match rating system it's based on how well they draw you can look at most of the all time greats and probably be suprised how few five star matches they have yet all of them drew tons of fans, sold out arenas, and made big companies lots of money. It's just like pro sports most athletes don't care what Steven A. Smith, Skip Bayless. or Max Kellerman have to say because they don't decide their paychecks, team owners do. The moment wrestlers start to realize things like that the business as a whole might start to pickup and do constant business similar to the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression eras.
There's a radio show up here that airs every Sunday that gives 15 minutes at the start of their 2nd hour to Dave Meltzer and they take every thing he says as gospel
I can’t see how anyone could disagree with everything he’s saying. I’m 46 years old. I grew up in the Hogan and Flair era, then stayed a big fan through Monday Night Wars era. It wasn’t until the CM Punk indie influenced, match over-analyzing era hit that I lost interest. I have no interest in watching little guys who never played organized sports and would rather play video games than go to the gym, do a hundred spots a match and invent new ones every other day. The suspension of disbelief isn’t even a goal anymore of pro wrestling. Todays fans are only concerned with how good of a “worker” a guy or gal is and how good of a match they can have, with that being decided by just the wrestlers themselves. It’s a kind of selfishness, where they see the success of the show as how well they satisfy themself when wrestling, and not how well they satisfy the box office, the promoters and the fans. My only interest in pro wrestling these days os listening to interviews like this and Jim Cornette’s podcast
The fact that Meltzer has never given any Kurt Angle match 5 stars but he constantly gives Kenny Omega's matches and Young Bucks matches 6 and 7 stars tells you everything you need to know about him. The FACT is neither Omega nor the Young Bucks could lace Angle's boots. None of Omega's matches with Okada come close to Angle/Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 21 or Bret Hart/Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13 but he is so obsessed with sucking up to the likes of Omega and the Young Bucks and trying to please their fans it is laughably pathetic
He hits in intelligence vs wisdom. Wisdom is only gained through experience, intelligence shortens the time to wisdom but it's not substitute for experience
Al has said this before and its stupid. If a wrestling match's value is only how much money it draws, then main events are the only great wrestling matches. And its idiotic to think only the main event draws the house. The best match is the match fans liked the most AFTER the main event is over.
And in most cases that is still the main event. Take Starrcade 1996 as an example. The main seller was Hogan vs.Piper. Objectively the best match was obviously Ultimo Dragon vs. Dean Malenkor. But what did people talk about after the show? It wasn't Malenko and Ultimo, nobody gave a shit, everybody was just talking about the shocking fact that Piper just defeated Hogan. Same with Hogan vs. Andre Same with Rock vs. Hogan Same with countless other examples, where other matches were "better" (for workrate marks at least) on the card, but ultimately it was the main event that drew and got people talking afterwards (and yes, i know Rock vs. Hogan wasn't the main event but it obviously was the match that drew)
@@ShadowAngel-lt8nw Bad example because the rest of that Starrcade card was awful. I've been to live cards and watched countless shows. More often than not, there's a show stealer better than the main event. And most hardcore fans debate what the best match of the night was. You can call them "workrate marks" but they are the main wrestling audience. The main event draws but that doesn't mean it delivers a good match. Only old school wrestling fans have this nihilist, uber capitalist idea about art. Imagine if the best movies ever were just the top grossing ones. Its beyond stupid.
@@ltopomcfly5583 Starrcade 1996 was awful? Dragon vs. Malenko? Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Rey? (i mean, come on, two of the greatest cruiserweights ever for the first time in one ring) Even Jarrett vs. Benoit was shockingly good, despite Jeff. Eddie vs. DDP was also fun, albeit pointless as there was no proper buildup but it showed DDP was on his path to the main event. Are we talking about the same show? Are you confusing it with Starrcade 1997 which was all around horrible?
@@ShadowAngel-lt8nw a crowd in 1996 wouldn't give a shit about most of these people no matter how good the matches were. but you're now proving my point that matches are judged by lasting entertainment value and not how many fans they draw. A shitty main event can draw but turn OFF fans and kill business. Al Snow ignorantly ignores the fact main eventers also draw based on the state of the business and outside economic factors. He projects his own politics on wrestling. And he still ignores the fact people, especially kids, ARE drawn by midcard and undercard wrestlers. I didn't give a shit about Hogan as a kid but I loved the Bushwackers and Savage.
I have to respectfully disagree with Al Snows take on Wrestlemania 3. Having the best match on a show and having the match that drew are two different things. I’ve seen many boxing matches and MMA fights where the undercard match or Co-Main event were better matches than the main event
This is where I think Al is wrong. The best match of the show is not the match that sold that show; it is the match that sells the NEXT show. Hogan vs Andre did not sell Wrestlemania 3. What sold Wrestlemania 3 was the Battle Royal before Wrestlemania 3 where Andre split open Lanny Poffo's head (blade, of course). That was the match that made Andre not just a huge guy, but rather a vicious, scary huge guy. That was the best match of that night because it was the match that sold WM3. The other match that sold WM3 was the match where Savage used the bell on Steamboats throat. People wanted to see the comeback. So what match in WM3 sold the next show? When people tuned in after WM3 was over, it was not to see what was going to happen next with Hogan or Andre; it was to find out what would happen next with Savage or Steamboat. That is why Savage vs Steamboat was the best match of the night.
1 man's opinion doesn't make something fact & Meltzer is no different to the hundreds of reviewers who have popped up on UA-cam, they're laymans, not experts, it's just someone's opinion, not fact & should be taken as that
al is correct. the monday after wrestlemania 3 in my school all anyone was talking about was hogan slamming andre and king kong bundy squashing a midget no one was saying wow did you see that 5 star match savage and steamboat had 😂
Shows how much you know. The kids at my school talked a lot about Steamboat versus Savage. Likewise, kids talked about Piper versus Adonis, and the fluke win by Danny Davis. Another match that kids talked about was Hercules versus Billy Jack. Yes, Hogan versus Andre was discussed, that's obvious, yet we didn't dismiss those others. If you want a match that nobody discussed much if at all, take you pick from The Can-Ams versus Muraco and Orton, The Dream Team versus The Fabulous Rougeaus, or Reed versus Koko.
There is an old interview with "Uncle Dave" and Ole Anderson and Dave is so smug its unbelievable. Like or hate Ole he has forgotten more about wrestling then "Uncle Dave" will ever know. Al hit the nail on the head here knowledge and information are 2 different things.
Oh, I've heard the clip to which you refer. "Is there a question in there?" Meltzer is a friggin' moron. He doesn't understand that the job of an interviewer is to ask a question and step aside. Six figures per year from being a dirt sheet writer? So what? Meltzer had his foot in the door of the mainstream sports reporting business. There is a _ridiculous_ amount of money to be made from announcing football and basketball. If Meltzer could've done those things, he would have done them.
My only issue with what Al says here is Hogan and Andre delivered on the spectacle of the build up to that match, which made it great but often times you can have a great build up with a dud delivery. Therefore at some point you could also fall out of favor with fans if you don’t deliver the good match/spectacle from all the build up to which a person could still end up not caring after being fooled multiple times. A great build to an epic match/spectacle (because I consider one in the same), is wrestling to its perfection and that has definitely been lost in consistency. I know people have enjoyed the Bloodline stuff but even that seems like an outlier without everything on the card or elsewhere pulling its weight.
Scott Steiner once said that he didn't invent those crazy moves (Frankensteiner, Steiner Screwdriver) to impress the fans, he did them to please himself. He needed to keep himself amused in the ring, so he did those things to challenge himself. It doesn't matter if the wrestler is trying to please himself or the fans, it's the finished product that matters. The fans _didn't know_ that Steiner was being self-indulgent, all they saw was a man doing moves that blew them away. Looking at Snow, I _guarantee_ you that he was being more than a little bit self-indulgent with his J.O.B. Squad crap--a gimmick aimed deliberately at less than one per cent of the viewership. Snow did it to amuse himself, regardless of the fact that most people watching didn't understand wrestling lingo. Same with his Head gimmick. Didn't matter to Snow that him winning matches in under four minutes with a blow from a mannequin's head looked stupid on the same card where someone might survive a chair shot to the head, a Rock Bottom through the announcers' table, simultaneous beatings from three other wrestlers, and then go on to win the match after suffering 15 minutes of abuse. The difference is that The Frankensteiner looked awesome, people paid to see it. Nobody paid to see a man win a match by smacking his opponent with a mannequin's head. Same motivation, self-indulgence, yet each example with a different result.
The first time I saw an Al Snow shoot I really felt like it was insightful and a different perspective...a few years on he comes across as a curmudgeonly old man who's been giving the exact same single interview for years.
Al has always been very stubborn and honest about his opinions. One of his biggest gripes is terminology and it's misuse. Yet some of this is based on Al's opinion of the definition of the word(s) and not what the word(s) are more known for/accepted nowadays and even during his time. Best Match for him is the Draw or Main Event because they got the asses in seats and people paying via stuff like Pay-Per-View. Best Match for many including others within the business themselves is the most entertaining, believable, or best story telling. (Even during Al's time too.) Those two definitions and viewpoints don't normally add up to the same answer. For Al, the Main Event could be a Screw Job, the Finger Point of Doom, or a quick School Boy Roll Up for the 1, 2, 3 and it would be the Best Match on the Card. Yet for the majority of people (including other wrestlers/employees in the back) this Match would have sucked and felt like it cheated the fans.
I love Al but he’s really just saying what every short-tempered, high level sports coach (cough**Rick Pitino**cough**Woody Hayes**cough) says about sports writers. Only difference is wrestling didn’t have to deal with serious coverage till The Observer came along.
Yes but he's not the cause of rhe massive downturn of wrestling. Quite frankly that attitude era/monday night war thing helped to end it. Many want to deny it but its true.
Al is among my favorite wrestlers, so I say this respectfully, but his argument that the best wrestling match is the one that draws the most money is simply silly. By his logic, the best wine in the world is Franzia. You know, the one in the box in the supermarket. Odd, how professional Vinters would heartily disagree, but clearly, since it's the best selling wine... Don't like that analogy? Here's another. The Monkees sold 65 million records in total and outsold the Beatles for 11 weeks straight in 1967. They aren't in the Hall of Fame. Why? If being a legendary band worthy of such an honor, or even considered "The greatest" were simply about the money they drew in, then surely they would have been among the first inductees, right? Nope. Why? Because there's a lot more to it than just the number of albums they sold or how much money they or the record company made. According to Al's logic, Taylor Swift is currently "the best" artist in 2023.
I once knew someone who had the same logic, he claimed that Def Leppard was the best band in the world, just because one of their albums sold 18 million copies, whatever it was. Okay, I must say this, I think Def Leppard are crud, I never cared for their music, but that's just my opinion. Rather hypocritically, he would then turn around and bash "pop" groups. Well, "pop" is short for "popular," right? So, by his logic, wasn't Def Leppard the biggest "pop" band in the world? I should mention that this fellow liked Bryan Adams...go figure. Few musicians are more "pop" than Bryan Adams. According to Snow, the best food in the world comes from American fast food outlets, because that's what sells the most. When you're in Japan, head straight for the golden arches, never mind that little restaurant with family recipes that have served the town well for more than 500 years. I understand that commercialism is what drives pro wrestling, yet commercialism and quality should not be confused. Additionally, one can make the argument that Savage vs Steamboat pushed Savage to the next level. Twelve months after WrestleMania III, it was Savage who walked out of WrestleMania IV with the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Savage vs Steamboat helped in building the future of the company. Snow ignores that point entirely.
@@markv1274 Exactly. Its just like the "Whats the best band?" question. The answer is "Music is entirely subjective, and that kind of question doesnt have a single answer."
I’m curious how that tracks when they’re often getting part-timers or mostly retired wrestlers coming in for guest spots (The Rock, Austin, Lesnar, Goldberg, etc) that are absolutely the draw of the night, even if they don’t have a match. Would they be considered the best segment still, by those in the business?
I agree with Al on the fact that wrestling fans and wrestlers in general are too obsessed with one pundit, but at the same time someone can't just "be" Andre or "be" Hogan. There are a lot of factors that go into being a draw that go beyond the performer's abilities to charm a crowd and sell a show. A big fly in the ointment is that larger than life spectacle just doesn't exist anymore. WWE's had giants come and go, some better in every aspect of the business than Andre, and they never reached his appeal or aura because we already had Andre and his legacy and mystique was very well protected. I think for the past 20 some odd years Vince has hand picked a Hogan and pushed them to their fullest potential, and whether it was Cena or Roman, they've never reached the height of a Bruno, Andre, Austin, Rock, or Hogan because perceptions of wrestling have changed and the old formula just isn't as potent because of it. Then you have the anomalous talent that comes along, gets over on their own merit, and then WWE either doesn't want to or doesn't know how to bottle their lightning. It's nuts how many guys I see in both major companies that I think would've been stars 30-to-40 years ago that just wont break because the dynamics of wrestling have changed, and from a business perspective, they've changed for the worse. I don't know how to fix that, I'm not sure anyone does, but that change certainly isn't coming from either company.
I lost all respect for meltzer when he handed out 5 star ratings to wrestlers just so they'd talk to him, his opinions on wrestling can no longer be trusted because of that
I first took note of him when I was 9 years old in 1995. Whenever I'd go to the supermarkets with my mom there was a magazine section and I'd thumb through the wrestling magazines. I was a Hogan fan and I remember seeing a Wrestling Observer and reading this guy talk all kinds of shyt about Hogan and calling him by his government name. I looked for who was writing it.. Dave Meltzer. Disliked him ever since.
I was 4 years old in 1994 when I heard of Dave Meltzer. I pretty much ignored everything Meltzer said other than his AJPW (All Japan) coverage. "Dr. Death" Steve Williams was/is my favorite wrestler, but in 1994 I was also a big fan of Hulk Hogan and Toshiaki Kawada (big Japanese guy who had charistma, could be funny, & feuded with Andre The Giant and Stan Hansen). By the mid 2000s when AJPW was sold, Meltzer became the smark that he is today with the flippy skinny-fat stuff.
I thought the Meltzer criticism would go another way. Savage-Steamboat was one of the best matches ever, but Meltzer didn't rate it 5 stars! While Will Ospreay has had 26 5 star matches. Not to knock Ospreay, but Meltzer's ratings are pretty inconsistent. I actually like the star rating system, I just think there should be more critics doing it so "5 star match" isn't synonymous with Meltzer's opinion. Snow, Cornette, and others who know their shit should rate matches too. You wouldn't call a movie "a 4 star movie" just because Ebert thinks it is. You'd have to specify which critic gave it 4 stars.
Al is pretty consistent with this school of thought.
That's why he's a great teacher
"There is a distinct difference between information and knowledge" is a great take away that goes beyond just wrestling.
Melzer isnt the problem. Fans and leaders in wrestling using Melzer as a primary measure of success is the problem.
All of it is a problem
Meltzer created the problem and you can pinpoint when the business shifted back to the early to mid 2000's. At that time, all of the great indie promoters weren't running anymore - Cornette, Thatcher, Alexander, Bassman, etc. New promoters started popping up who used to be smart marks and followed Dave and independent wrestling became less about making money and more about living out your fantasies.
@@al5306nailed it
@@al5306 No he didn’t create the problem he’s part of the problem yes but what amazes me is that everybody else still takes his word as if it is not a true word of wrestling
Same here. I actually never heard of Meltzer until I started watching UA-cam shoots. Only magazine I ever read about pro wrestling was PWI.
@@adamluce1901 thanks for the info Karen. I'll take your word for it.
Damn did I write this post 😆 I always say this! The only magazines I read was PWI, Pro Wrestling and RAW and WCW magazine. Didn’t hear about Dave till like 2011-2012
Same and wen I Google who he was I was fairly disappointed
AEW wrestlers are performing for Meltzer and their nerd fans.
Dave Meltzer lost credibility overrating those current super-athletic aerial no-selling and no psychology matches that looked like more a circus show rather than a wrestling match.
I guess you never watched hokey no selling, no psychology matches in memphis like The Christmas Creature, The Easter Bunny, Leatherface, Nightmare Freddy, and TaGar Lord of the Volcano.
@@jasmith26 Leatherface and Nightmare Freddy, are you talking about the comedy hardcore wrestlers in IWA Japan?
@@albalog2449 No, he talked about Jerry Lawlers old promotion.
Dave's mag was ALWAYS a fan's opinion. It's people thinking that Dave's opinion has any relevance to the business that is the problem.
Al Snow's psychology and wrestling awareness was so next level. If pushed correctly by WWE, he could have generated Roddy Piper heel type heat. A guy who could talk and looks like he should lose but somehow weasels out a win and dirties a sympathetic babyface.
Listening to Al talk wrestling, is always fascinating, and informative. He is so knowledgeable and articulate.
agreed! sometimes, its hard for me to accept he is the guy with the head and did all that fun stuff in the attitude era.
It was actually, really hard to get through this video. He went on and on.
He's been repeating himself for 10 years.
@@jacoby5440 Snow is nowhere nearly as smart as many people think he is. If he were in a debate with timed rounds, he'd lose very easily.
@@nustde00 Same here, I still remember when he was Lance Cassidy! But he knows his stuff!
Corny and Brian had an analysis of Meltzer being interviewed by Chris Van Vliet. Uncle Dave double talked himself into a hole.
He’s inconsistent and contradicts himself a lot is what I got out of the interview
This was the most brilliant analysis of what Dave Meltzer actually is, a glorified fan
When I was a kid in the 90s watching WWF and WCW, I never heard of Dave Meltzer nor did I know who he was until a couple of years ago when AEW was coming about.
I had heard of him…but already knew not to care…
I knew what I LIKED…
Exactly! Hardly anyone gives a shit about Meltzer. "Uh...you know...things change...plans change...I have a head like a jug...uh...Bryan Alvarez is an indy worker...but...uh...he knows everything about everything...uh...I have a head like a jug...this sushi tastes good...five stars because I'm eating it in Oakland...uh...seven and three quarter stars if I were eating it inside a restaurant next to the Tokyo Dome...uh...don't tell anyone I got hair implants...I look like a gargoyle...uh...uh...uh."
Dave was an early vcr tape trader, and i think he kept records and even gave results of the matches. which were popular in the east and south. He moved to northern California. Being in California that kind of thing wasn't a big deal to me so I had never heard of him until recently
@@mthom0861 all you need to know is that his, and little Alvarez’s knees are BADLY callused from the unforgiving tile floors of the AEW showers
Who would of thought that a guy who talked to a mannequin head and got it over is this articulate. Al Snow is an amazing talent who never got the recognition he deserves.
It sounds like people who listen to music critics before they buy some music . I don’t care what a person who I don’t know thinks . The band hopefully makes music for their fans or for what they like themselves
He's right these new wrestlers are boring and certainly aren't performing for the audience.
Yeah and they have a lot of false finishes I mean when some wrestler would do their finisher u knew the match is over but now they do too many false finishes
@@lupillosanchez6620 yeah I've noticed this. I stopped watching regularly about 11-12 years ago now but watch some ppvs and other things casually.
@@hayesc0 yeah you know the Canadian destroyer it was a finisher but now everybody does it like a regular move
The sad thing is with todays wrestling is that wrestlers (mostly the AEW lot) are more concerned on what rating Meltzer will give them so they cater the matches to his preference with Britt Baker being a main example when the leaked audio was released of her discussing what star rating she hoped Meltzer would give it after he lights out match
Britt Baker saying something so moronic is enough to make me not want to buy a ticket to anything that she's on. I normally mind my manners when around wrestlers, yet I would have no problem asking Miss Baker why she thinks star ratings in a rag read by less than one per cent of fans in the Anglophonic world is so important.
Here's what youre getting wrong my friend. Modern talent arent WRESTLERS, theyre SPORTS ENTERTAINERS. Go ask any male cheerleader and theyll tell you all about their favorite WWE guy or indie darling. No in-between. Their wrestling knowledge starts and stops in the early 2000s, which is fucking ridiculous considering it's been around for more than a FULL CENTURY in the US.
There are a lot of Dave Meltzer fans out there, promoters and podcasters as well. Some are fans of Dave Meltzer just having a successful career in general.
Al Snow literally sounds like a Turian from Mass Effect.
I feel like if you ask him about wreslting he'll go "Can it wait for a bit? I'm in the middle of some calibrations"
Hogan vs Andre was literally David vs Goliath and it's mythical the way it was shot. The camera angles mad Andre look enormous and every piece of offense Hogan got in looked earned.
Literally? No. Hogan was never a David. Not even against Andre. Maybe a decade before they met at WM it could have been billed as David vs Goliath but by the time they threw down Andre was diminishing in size due to the effects of his gigantisism and age. Keep in mind that Andre came long before they could do proper thyroid surgery for giants, the same surgery Paul Wight had that extended his career and life.
@@FnRenner You clearly are too young to talk about this subject, lol. Andre was booked and portrayed as a monster and yes, Hogan was booked as the David in the feud. The best example and what you probably never saw, was the Saturday Night's Main Event immediately before the show, were Andre throws Hogan out of the Battle Royale with ease and comes across as a monster. This also was because everybody else did a tremendous job, from the moment all wrestlers just stopped and just stood there watching as Hogan and Andre ran into each other and had their staredown to Lenny Poffo doing a bladejob just to sell the head butt from Andre, it was great work all around.
Even during the match, the first big scene portrayed Hogan as David, when he failed to Slam Andre and he nearly won the match right there (which was used for the re-match, there was a lot of good scripting going on)
It says a lot that Meltzer originally rated it minus 4 stars, he never understood pro wrestling and he always was a clueless work rate mark, who thinks doing 100 moves per minute is better than all the in-ring psychology, selling and crowd play Hogan showcased, doing only a limited, but impactful and logical wrestling moves to get the absolute maximum out of the crowd.
@@ShadowAngel-lt8nwwell stated
None of you know shjt, since David was not the one who slew Goliath.
Elhanan slew Goliath, not David.
@@John.Flower.Productions The saying has always been David and Goliath. Nobody gives a shit about crap religion and what is stated in a badly written novel full of plot holes, especially since countless versions of said novel exist.
Holy crap Al Snow is turning into Ted DiBiase.
You're right. He looks more like DiBiase than Al Snow.
Does that mean that we can expect Snow to fleece churchgoers of their hard-earned money?
I'm 50 years old so I was around and very familiar with when Metlzer actually started being a name on peoples lips.
Meltzer made a career spreading information that was hard to confirm many times so it never went past that.
When he started, technology was Nowhere near as mainstream and widespread as it is now, so HE was the authority because HE was the goof who kept forcing himself into the arenas sneaking in behind the scenes pretending to be something he wasn't.. and in wrestling.. thats the mindset anyways.
He was a bit of a shrew back then even.
Today where information is so readily available to anyone really , Meltzers whole career of 'embellishing facts' and' injecting personal narratives' has becomes so commonplace for HIM, it comes out clearly in his articles and HE is just a smut peddler at this point,
Many productions and individuals out there just regurgitating the typical smut they've always done because there unfortunately still IS a demographic FOR it and it is those who keep perpetuating the garbage that Metlzer does because the younger up and comers look UP to the older veterans like a kid brother to an older brother and look for them to give them assurances that will keep them safe, BUT Meltzer only cares about himself, Like CM Punk, Like Hulk Hogan ..
They just keep constantly taking and taking...
The funny thing is that even back then if you were in the know and if you had the credible sources available, you'd knew that Meltzer was just nonsense. His PPV numbers for example are always wrong and were debunked already in the 80's by Kagan Research, LLC and the Channels magazine for the TV industry.
His match ratings? Laughably subjective. The fact that guys like Kurt Angle never got a 5 star rating shows it as much as his absurd overrating of All Japan in the 90's or New Japan since 2013 (over 60 5+ star matches, usually involving his boy toys Omega, Osprey and Okada)
His inside news? In the 80's it certainly helped that he was actually working for the WWF. But even then he more often than not fell for fake news and blatant lies (like the Wrestlemania 3 attendance myth, he fell hook, line and sinker for a guy working for WCW when he reported the "shocking" 78,000 fairy tale)
Meltzer is a clown
You lost me there at CM Punk.
I was agreeing with you on your post until you had to ruin it by mentioning Hulk Hogan in the same breath as that shit bag Dave Meltzer. Hulk Hogan didnt become the greatest wrestling personality because of the BS you heard from Meltzer himself, because you just sounded like Meltzer at the end. So go back and edit your comment and maybe you will receive more thumbs up like a Dave Meltzer 5-star rating.
Al tells it like it is. He's always a good listen.
Who as a fan back in the day actually cared about Meltzer?
Never even heard of the dude until I started watching these things.
I didn't even know who he was until after I stopped watching wrestling.
@@lmrbeerbellyl Exactly! Now his name pops up everywhere. No wonder wrestling is the shits.
Yep
Never did. He was rude 12 years ago on social and argued with 15 year old kids. He's a walking midlife crisis.
All due respect to Al Snow, but he's confusing the map for the place, here. If Hogan/Andre drew the house for Mania 3, that means their match had the best build-up. That doesn't mean it's the best match.
By the same logic, the last Star Wars trilogy is a better set of movies than The Godfather trilogy. Does Al Snow believe that, as well?
It's a total fallacy.
If someone believes that Hogan/Andre was a better match because of a hotter crowd, the bodyslam being a more iconic moment, etc. then that's totally valid and I can respect that, but purely going off of which match was a bigger draw doesn't really make rational sense.
The difference is that the fans appreciated the outcome of the Hogan/Andre match. The success of the last SW trilogy was due to inflation and hype from the previous successes. The evidence is in the merchandise, the new tril figs/games/ and other tie ins were a colossal fail. HH and Andre still drew massive numbers were they went. You clearly are missing important details to gauge a true success.
The goof admitted in his interview with Chris Van Vliet that he rates matches based on if he likes the style of wrestling or not. In other words, he doesn't actually evaluate the matches on a level playing field. If you don't flip around like a coked-out spider monkey your match is never getting a five-star rating from him.
This is why I love hearing Al Snow speak on wrestling.
I believe that Steamboat vs Savage is to this day the greatest match I have ever seen(just my opinion but I was bout ten years old when it happened). BUT!!! I totally get and understand what Snow is saying here bout Andre Vs hogan. Great points as usual from Al Snow.
Also does Al Snow eat lit cigarettes for breakfast?? Hahaha
Wrestling was better when the marks were in the audience not in the ring. Dutch was spot on. It's bizarre like wrestler's nowadays don't realize they're in a business
Al’s voice got more and more warbling as the interview went on, it’s an incredibly soothing voice that could put a baby to sleep
Its pretty crazy how one guys opinion on a subject is the center of so much controversy
Al needs his own podcast.
yeah call it the snow show
@@OldSlyEyesExcellent Title!
He's on Russo's show every week discussing similar topics
With that voice I don’t think so
so here's the thing... idk why the hell so many people treat meltzer's opinion like the bible. he is a human being and has opinions and biases.
people need to realize that. his takes aren't worth more than anybody else's...
on the other hand having been in the business doesn't automatically make your opinions worth more either. see ryback... or half of aew's roster^^ also I disagree with al on one thing: the mindset of "more money = better" is fair enough but I'm glad not everybody thinks like that.
In another interview Al did say Dave is one of the best workers in this industry.
When guys like Bruce Pritchard mention some of the guys give Dave false info on purpose just to work him
I love Al Snow with the minga shake head 😅
Fully agree on Al Snow here. I might not always agree fully but I will say this interview gives a clear showcase of the mindset of the business.
Al just broke down, the unfortunate direction where the wres business is. Today's wrestlers and fans believe in a star rating, or a analysis on "great matches"
Honestly, Meltzer is the "best worker" in professional wrestling. Never taken a single bump and made millions of dollars.
Nope he's not in wrestling he's in fantasy land rating every young bucks match million stars
@@alexandergeorgiev74 Is he getting paid? Remember that is the most important thing.
Millions?
Are you certain?
Look at how many subscribers Meltzer has.
If Meltzer makes millions, then Steve Crowder must own half of Kuwait.
@@markv1274 He has had his "dirt sheet" for a very long time. Surely he has made a million dollars from it over its entire run.
True. Meltzer also has bigger biceps than 80 percent of the flippy boys that he loves these days.
5:44 - This is why fans calling out "botches" pisses me off so much... not everything is supposed to look perfect every single time, but "smart" fans have gotten so used to these guys doing choreographed spots that now if something accidentally appears to seem real you get a "You Fked Up" chant.
Fans wouldn't notice botches if everything looked a little more organic, and more simple bumps were sold more often. Sure, fans know that a simple body slam doesn't really kill a guy, but thats the ENTIRE point of being a pro... you find a way to make it seem real that is simple enough for somebody to realize that it hurts and build from there.
a guy could fckin stub his toe walking to the ring, and it could be the story of the match, if these guys understood how to make things matter.
What about the idea that Hogan/Andre was the match that drew the house, but on the day of the show, the most exciting match to watch was Savage/Steamboat? Seems to make sense to me. Look, Tom Cruise might be the reason you go see Mission Impossible, but that doesn't mean his performance in the movie is automatically the best of all the actors. It's anticipation vs. execution, and those things can be very different. Also, it's disingenuous to say Hogan/Andre was the only reason for that huge attendance. I really like Al (despite the terrible quality of his voice in these shoots), but his logic is flawed here.
I agree. If Hogan vs Andre had been the sole reason for the big house, they would've had the same match at WMIV with the same attendance. Like I've said elsewhere, Andre wasn't even the most hated heel on the card. WMIII was a hit due to several matches, not just one. Roddy Piper vs Adrian Adonis was built for months on end. Ricky Steamboat vs Randy Savage was pushed heavily as a feud. The Danny Davis saga began before the _previous_ WrestleMania, when Davis screwed Santana out of the IC title in February 1986. There were _several_ matches that drew massive heat.
By all rights, WMVI with The Warrior vs Hogan on top should've outdrawn WMIII with Hogan vs Andre. The outcome to The Warrior vs Hogan was less certain, and The Warrior was a much more interesting opponent, plus it had the novelty of being face versus face. Additionally, it really _was_ the first time that the two had met in a regular singles match (no revisionist history required). So, why didn't WMVI outdraw WMIII?
Look at the undercard for WMVI, and you'll see my point. Show me Piper vs Adonis. Show me The Bulldogs and Santana vs The Hart Foundation and Danny Davis. Show me Savage vs Steamboat. WMVI was essentially a one-match show. WMIII had several matches that had fans chomping at the bit.
Of course, we can't expect Snow to understand any of this.
Andre and Hogan had the best match. It was the most talked about back then. People enjoyed Savage vs. Steamboat but it wasn't the best match that night.
Al has such an eloquent answer. There is a lot of important knowledge and wisdom in his answer that shows his years of experience in the wrestling business. Well done sir.
Meltzer shoulda got his 'residency' from Stu. "Eh..if I a put pressure here now...eh...ur eyes ll pop eh...outa ur skull".
I understand what Al is saying here, but I remember the build up to WM3 and I was probably just as interested in the Hogan /Andre match, as I was the Steamboat/Savage match. Maybe even more because Ricky was getting revenge for Savage crushing his larynx and almost ending his career.
the problem is that you're speaking for yourself instead of looking at the big picture - Ricky/Macho didn't draw 93k+ to WM3, they didn't sell the merch or the figures or the cartoons, or anything else. Hogan and Andre did. Watch the crowds, there is no comparison to the hype Hogan had compared to Ricky/Macho. Everyone on the card is important but who people pay to see means everything in the wrestling business. If you think about the woes of wrestling today the matches Meltzer loves has ruined whatever realism wrestling had back then.
Revisionist history. Hogan can't wrestle, Andre couldn't move. Who drew the house, who blew the roof off the place? Macho and Steamboat are great just like everyone else on the card but people are trying to rewrite wrestling.
Or could it be that we don’t know the minds of the thousands of people who decided to buy a ticket to the Superdome that day to say who was the bigger draw? Perhaps Wrestlemania had established itself as a big enough event that many people would buy the ticket regardless. How many people were convinced to go because they saw two matches on the card that were of interest, whereas one wasn’t enough to justify it? Who knows?
Al still makes a valid point about the change in mindset, even if the WMIII example is all pure supposition.
@@jumbothompson Except Hogan could wrestle. He knew how to work the crowd, he knew how to sell when he needed to. Just because he didn't have 5star rated matches that slap, piss, shit, fart, and cum doesn't mean he wasn't a good wrestler. Remember, wrestling is fake. The only thing real is the money and the miles.
@@jumbothompson Keep coping. No one cared who could move and who couldn't in that match, bud. If you do less and get more, you're a genius. If you do more and get less, you're an idiot.
In regards to the inspiring to be Hogan/Andre thing, I remember several years back WWE had this package where current wrestlers talked about matches that made them want to be a wrestler so you had many "mid" talent and low level main event people answering with things like Steamboat/Savage, some said the HBK/Razor ladder match or even Eddie/Rey from Halloween Havoc. There were a bunch of "work rate" matches like that named by those wrestlers but the one person that said Hogan/Andre was John Cena the biggest star in the company and one of the biggest in the past 25 years.
Yep so sick of wrestler's being complete marks for "work rate" matches. Fact is, characters make money not what's in the ring . BTW love a good wrestling match but it's a tiny part of wrestling. No surprise it was Cena say what you will about him he's one of the smartest men in wrestling ever and it's last true main event star
Makes sense which is why John Cena is the last true STAR of wrestling with crossover appeal and who everyone knows. Although you could say Brock is but Brock doesn't even give a shit most of the time.
Cena sucks.
I hate to bring up the Punk Elite situation but that’s a good example of
The younger guys not having the let’s draw excess money mind set as opposed to “hey let’s do a match so a fan can give us 5 stars”
I love listening to Snow, such a smart wrestling guy
As usual, I'll hit the nail right on the head. No one could explain the situation in modern wrestling any better than that
Nah, Snow is just rambling a lot of bullshit. Meltzer is irrelevant. Ask people why they don't watch wrestling. Nothing to do with Meltzer. Hardly anybody knows who the bloody hell he is. Snow wouldn't tell you this, yet he was part of the Attitude Era which was ultimately counterproductive to the business. I called it back at the time. I said that even though the Attitude Era was popular, those fans won't stay around. They'll pop a few times for people falling from cages, they'll go nuts when a wrestler is powerbombed through a table, they'll cheer the wrestler who threatens to kill his employer in the middle of the ring, but then what? Nowhere else to go. Wrestling sold for decades as a basic affair of two men or two women wrestling in the ring. Promoters became greedy, tried to one-up one another, and a lot of old school fans left--and they started leaving around the time of the Attitude Era. Notice how WWE's ratings didn't spiral through the roof when WCW shut its doors. A lot of those WCW fans, myself included, didn't care for what WWE was doing. A glance here, a glance there, but ultimately, we decided not to bother with WWE.
I wasn't sure where Meltzer came from, thought he was just a big insurance guy. Thank you for clearing that up, Al!!!
Hogan/Andre had a story that people could invest in, that's why they drew the house. Savage/Steamboat was a good match, but there weren't people invested in their story as much and fans didn't know how good the match would be.
Hogan/Andre worked for the live crowd; they did as much as they had to do with the limitations they had and had the crowd invested every second. That is what wrestling is, that's why it's a great wrestling match.
Most people back then definitely knew that Savage vs. Steamboat would deliver. Both guys by then had numerous classic matches, Savage especially was firing on all cylinders in 1987 (especially against Tito Santana, some really great matches there) and we don't need to talk about Steamboat, he had legendary matches all the way back to the 70's.
But still, everybody and the vast majority of those 663,000 households bought Wrestlemania solely for Hogan vs. Andre, everything else is revisionist history.
@@ShadowAngel-lt8nw You can't know how good a match will be until it airs. You can PREDICT that it'll be good and you can ASSUME that it'll be good, but you can never actually KNOW.
People thought Syles/Nakamura would be a great match at WrestleMania and it sucked. People thought Sheamus/Bryan would be a great match, it ended in 18 seconds. Matt/Jeff was a let down, as was Edge/Orton, Lesnar/Ambrose, Goldberg/Lesnar WM 20, etc.
I love listening to al,I like how he breaks it down for all to understand
I think another change was guaranteed contracts. In the 80s and up to mid 90's you got paid of the house. The more tickets you sold, the better the house shows were doing, the more you got paid.
Now guys have guaranteed 200k, 500k, million dollar contracts and to them it doesn't matter if they sell 6k tickets or 20k. Theyre still going to be paid the same amount. So why bother attracting new fans or doing angles so the next time they're in the same city the fans come again? Let me poo the boys in the back and Dave instead.
It's sad to say that wrestling was more fun to watch back when most of the TV shows were filled with squash matches. But it was.
That is the difference between wrestling and sports entertainment. Today they are actors who worry more about the "critics" like Meltzer than the fans in attendance. Back in the day, they were wrestlers trying to draw folks and make money.
Exactly. It's a parody. Wrestlers pretending to be wrestlers.
There is Clip of Ole Anderson arguing with Meltzer lol
The big issue with Meltzer is he has to a certain generation positioned himself as a journalist of shorts but the reality is he isn't at best Meltzer is a tabloid journalist which most of if not all the time makes stuff or tells half truths. But in the era before you had wrestlers, officials, and people who ran the wrestling companys Dave was in a very small group of people that reported this so one knew any better. Nowadays we may not have all the facts or most of the facts but you can listen to most podcasts on older subjects and start to piece things together yourself if you throw your bias out the window especially if these podcasts are run by people who where there. As far as the match rating system goes it's all subjective what call a great match may be different than Dave likes, or even someone else. The simple fact of the matter no one is hired and kept in a company based on Dave's match rating system it's based on how well they draw you can look at most of the all time greats and probably be suprised how few five star matches they have yet all of them drew tons of fans, sold out arenas, and made big companies lots of money. It's just like pro sports most athletes don't care what Steven A. Smith, Skip Bayless. or Max Kellerman have to say because they don't decide their paychecks, team owners do. The moment wrestlers start to realize things like that the business as a whole might start to pickup and do constant business similar to the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression eras.
Al nailed it.
There's a radio show up here that airs every Sunday that gives 15 minutes at the start of their 2nd hour to Dave Meltzer and they take every thing he says as gospel
He’s 100% right. Never thought of it like AL said. Listen to Tully, Arn, R& R Express, etc…they all talk about how much money they drew.
Short answer is he's the best paid mark out there.
Meltzer is the Criminal Justice Professor that has never done an "8 Hour Tour" .....
Dang. Al is so right. Every match now is false finishes and kick outs. Hogan and Andre was boring compared to that. But I get it what he’s saying
I can’t see how anyone could disagree with everything he’s saying. I’m 46 years old. I grew up in the Hogan and Flair era, then stayed a big fan through Monday Night Wars era. It wasn’t until the CM Punk indie influenced, match over-analyzing era hit that I lost interest. I have no interest in watching little guys who never played organized sports and would rather play video games than go to the gym, do a hundred spots a match and invent new ones every other day. The suspension of disbelief isn’t even a goal anymore of pro wrestling. Todays fans are only concerned with how good of a “worker” a guy or gal is and how good of a match they can have, with that being decided by just the wrestlers themselves. It’s a kind of selfishness, where they see the success of the show as how well they satisfy themself when wrestling, and not how well they satisfy the box office, the promoters and the fans. My only interest in pro wrestling these days os listening to interviews like this and Jim Cornette’s podcast
If I really needed to listen to a 5 star match ratings, I would actually be accepting if it comes for Al Snow.
Hearing Al Snow call Uncle Dave a well informed FAN while on auto-tune is hilarious!
The New England Journal of Medical Science should be offended by being compared to the Observer lmao
Absolutely great take by Al on the difference between information and knowledge
The fact that Meltzer has never given any Kurt Angle match 5 stars but he constantly gives Kenny Omega's matches and Young Bucks matches 6 and 7 stars tells you everything you need to know about him. The FACT is neither Omega nor the Young Bucks could lace Angle's boots. None of Omega's matches with Okada come close to Angle/Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 21 or Bret Hart/Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13 but he is so obsessed with sucking up to the likes of Omega and the Young Bucks and trying to please their fans it is laughably pathetic
This is a really great nuanced take
There was a card in 1983 that featured Savage vs. Steamboat and Hogan vs. Andre?
Metzler never laid down for grandmaster sexay
He hits in intelligence vs wisdom. Wisdom is only gained through experience, intelligence shortens the time to wisdom but it's not substitute for experience
Totally agree
Al Snow is a great listen.
Amen brother.
For the worse? Why the question mark?
That's a definitive statement.
Al has said this before and its stupid. If a wrestling match's value is only how much money it draws, then main events are the only great wrestling matches. And its idiotic to think only the main event draws the house. The best match is the match fans liked the most AFTER the main event is over.
And in most cases that is still the main event. Take Starrcade 1996 as an example. The main seller was Hogan vs.Piper. Objectively the best match was obviously Ultimo Dragon vs. Dean Malenkor. But what did people talk about after the show? It wasn't Malenko and Ultimo, nobody gave a shit, everybody was just talking about the shocking fact that Piper just defeated Hogan.
Same with Hogan vs. Andre
Same with Rock vs. Hogan
Same with countless other examples, where other matches were "better" (for workrate marks at least) on the card, but ultimately it was the main event that drew and got people talking afterwards (and yes, i know Rock vs. Hogan wasn't the main event but it obviously was the match that drew)
@@ShadowAngel-lt8nw Bad example because the rest of that Starrcade card was awful. I've been to live cards and watched countless shows. More often than not, there's a show stealer better than the main event. And most hardcore fans debate what the best match of the night was. You can call them "workrate marks" but they are the main wrestling audience. The main event draws but that doesn't mean it delivers a good match. Only old school wrestling fans have this nihilist, uber capitalist idea about art. Imagine if the best movies ever were just the top grossing ones. Its beyond stupid.
@@ltopomcfly5583 Starrcade 1996 was awful? Dragon vs. Malenko? Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Rey? (i mean, come on, two of the greatest cruiserweights ever for the first time in one ring) Even Jarrett vs. Benoit was shockingly good, despite Jeff. Eddie vs. DDP was also fun, albeit pointless as there was no proper buildup but it showed DDP was on his path to the main event.
Are we talking about the same show? Are you confusing it with Starrcade 1997 which was all around horrible?
@@ShadowAngel-lt8nw a crowd in 1996 wouldn't give a shit about most of these people no matter how good the matches were.
but you're now proving my point that matches are judged by lasting entertainment value and not how many fans they draw. A shitty main event can draw but turn OFF fans and kill business. Al Snow ignorantly ignores the fact main eventers also draw based on the state of the business and outside economic factors. He projects his own politics on wrestling.
And he still ignores the fact people, especially kids, ARE drawn by midcard and undercard wrestlers. I didn't give a shit about Hogan as a kid but I loved the Bushwackers and Savage.
I have to respectfully disagree with Al Snows take on Wrestlemania 3. Having the best match on a show and having the match that drew are two different things. I’ve seen many boxing matches and MMA fights where the undercard match or Co-Main event were better matches than the main event
Well said
This is where I think Al is wrong. The best match of the show is not the match that sold that show; it is the match that sells the NEXT show.
Hogan vs Andre did not sell Wrestlemania 3. What sold Wrestlemania 3 was the Battle Royal before Wrestlemania 3 where Andre split open Lanny Poffo's head (blade, of course). That was the match that made Andre not just a huge guy, but rather a vicious, scary huge guy. That was the best match of that night because it was the match that sold WM3.
The other match that sold WM3 was the match where Savage used the bell on Steamboats throat. People wanted to see the comeback.
So what match in WM3 sold the next show? When people tuned in after WM3 was over, it was not to see what was going to happen next with Hogan or Andre; it was to find out what would happen next with Savage or Steamboat.
That is why Savage vs Steamboat was the best match of the night.
Al might be one of the best minds in the business
The same man who formed The J.O.B. Squad, had a t-shirt that said "Pin Me, Pay Me!", and hit his opponents with a mannequin's head.
I think la knight cares more about being a draw than a 5 star match.
Thanks Al, Hulk and Andre had the best and most iconic match.
Damn straight!
1 man's opinion doesn't make something fact & Meltzer is no different to the hundreds of reviewers who have popped up on UA-cam, they're laymans, not experts, it's just someone's opinion, not fact & should be taken as that
al is correct. the monday after wrestlemania 3 in my school all anyone was talking about was hogan slamming andre and king kong bundy squashing a midget no one was saying wow did you see that 5 star match savage and steamboat had 😂
Shows how much you know. The kids at my school talked a lot about Steamboat versus Savage. Likewise, kids talked about Piper versus Adonis, and the fluke win by Danny Davis. Another match that kids talked about was Hercules versus Billy Jack. Yes, Hogan versus Andre was discussed, that's obvious, yet we didn't dismiss those others.
If you want a match that nobody discussed much if at all, take you pick from The Can-Ams versus Muraco and Orton, The Dream Team versus The Fabulous Rougeaus, or Reed versus Koko.
@@markv1274 your comment makes zero sense shows how much i know? how would i know i didnt go to your school moron 🤣
AAgreed, never heard about the supposed awesomeness of the Ricky/Macho match until the internet days. Kids my age only talked about HH/Andre
There is an old interview with "Uncle Dave" and Ole Anderson and Dave is so smug its unbelievable. Like or hate Ole he has forgotten more about wrestling then "Uncle Dave" will ever know. Al hit the nail on the head here knowledge and information are 2 different things.
Oh, I've heard the clip to which you refer. "Is there a question in there?" Meltzer is a friggin' moron. He doesn't understand that the job of an interviewer is to ask a question and step aside. Six figures per year from being a dirt sheet writer? So what? Meltzer had his foot in the door of the mainstream sports reporting business. There is a _ridiculous_ amount of money to be made from announcing football and basketball. If Meltzer could've done those things, he would have done them.
My only issue with what Al says here is Hogan and Andre delivered on the spectacle of the build up to that match, which made it great but often times you can have a great build up with a dud delivery. Therefore at some point you could also fall out of favor with fans if you don’t deliver the good match/spectacle from all the build up to which a person could still end up not caring after being fooled multiple times. A great build to an epic match/spectacle (because I consider one in the same), is wrestling to its perfection and that has definitely been lost in consistency. I know people have enjoyed the Bloodline stuff but even that seems like an outlier without everything on the card or elsewhere pulling its weight.
Exactly 💯 Hogan Vs Andre Sold Out WM 3
I really don't get the thing about Meltzer or why people give him any more credence than the bloke down the pub
Scott Steiner once said that he didn't invent those crazy moves (Frankensteiner, Steiner Screwdriver) to impress the fans, he did them to please himself. He needed to keep himself amused in the ring, so he did those things to challenge himself. It doesn't matter if the wrestler is trying to please himself or the fans, it's the finished product that matters. The fans _didn't know_ that Steiner was being self-indulgent, all they saw was a man doing moves that blew them away.
Looking at Snow, I _guarantee_ you that he was being more than a little bit self-indulgent with his J.O.B. Squad crap--a gimmick aimed deliberately at less than one per cent of the viewership. Snow did it to amuse himself, regardless of the fact that most people watching didn't understand wrestling lingo. Same with his Head gimmick. Didn't matter to Snow that him winning matches in under four minutes with a blow from a mannequin's head looked stupid on the same card where someone might survive a chair shot to the head, a Rock Bottom through the announcers' table, simultaneous beatings from three other wrestlers, and then go on to win the match after suffering 15 minutes of abuse.
The difference is that The Frankensteiner looked awesome, people paid to see it. Nobody paid to see a man win a match by smacking his opponent with a mannequin's head.
Same motivation, self-indulgence, yet each example with a different result.
The first time I saw an Al Snow shoot I really felt like it was insightful and a different perspective...a few years on he comes across as a curmudgeonly old man who's been giving the exact same single interview for years.
He is totally right. Make the fans want to be invested. Draw money
Al has always been very stubborn and honest about his opinions. One of his biggest gripes is terminology and it's misuse. Yet some of this is based on Al's opinion of the definition of the word(s) and not what the word(s) are more known for/accepted nowadays and even during his time.
Best Match for him is the Draw or Main Event because they got the asses in seats and people paying via stuff like Pay-Per-View. Best Match for many including others within the business themselves is the most entertaining, believable, or best story telling. (Even during Al's time too.) Those two definitions and viewpoints don't normally add up to the same answer. For Al, the Main Event could be a Screw Job, the Finger Point of Doom, or a quick School Boy Roll Up for the 1, 2, 3 and it would be the Best Match on the Card. Yet for the majority of people (including other wrestlers/employees in the back) this Match would have sucked and felt like it cheated the fans.
you are literally comparing a "match" to some odd and inconsistent situations that were not designed with the same hype or payoff.
I love Al but he’s really just saying what every short-tempered, high level sports coach (cough**Rick Pitino**cough**Woody Hayes**cough) says about sports writers. Only difference is wrestling didn’t have to deal with serious coverage till The Observer came along.
Yes but he's not the cause of rhe massive downturn of wrestling. Quite frankly that attitude era/monday night war thing helped to end it. Many want to deny it but its true.
Al is among my favorite wrestlers, so I say this respectfully, but his argument that the best wrestling match is the one that draws the most money is simply silly. By his logic, the best wine in the world is Franzia. You know, the one in the box in the supermarket. Odd, how professional Vinters would heartily disagree, but clearly, since it's the best selling wine...
Don't like that analogy? Here's another. The Monkees sold 65 million records in total and outsold the Beatles for 11 weeks straight in 1967.
They aren't in the Hall of Fame. Why? If being a legendary band worthy of such an honor, or even considered "The greatest" were simply about the money they drew in, then surely they would have been among the first inductees, right? Nope. Why?
Because there's a lot more to it than just the number of albums they sold or how much money they or the record company made.
According to Al's logic, Taylor Swift is currently "the best" artist in 2023.
I once knew someone who had the same logic, he claimed that Def Leppard was the best band in the world, just because one of their albums sold 18 million copies, whatever it was. Okay, I must say this, I think Def Leppard are crud, I never cared for their music, but that's just my opinion. Rather hypocritically, he would then turn around and bash "pop" groups. Well, "pop" is short for "popular," right? So, by his logic, wasn't Def Leppard the biggest "pop" band in the world? I should mention that this fellow liked Bryan Adams...go figure. Few musicians are more "pop" than Bryan Adams.
According to Snow, the best food in the world comes from American fast food outlets, because that's what sells the most. When you're in Japan, head straight for the golden arches, never mind that little restaurant with family recipes that have served the town well for more than 500 years.
I understand that commercialism is what drives pro wrestling, yet commercialism and quality should not be confused. Additionally, one can make the argument that Savage vs Steamboat pushed Savage to the next level. Twelve months after WrestleMania III, it was Savage who walked out of WrestleMania IV with the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Savage vs Steamboat helped in building the future of the company. Snow ignores that point entirely.
@@markv1274 Exactly. Its just like the "Whats the best band?" question. The answer is "Music is entirely subjective, and that kind of question doesnt have a single answer."
I’ve never cared what Meltzer has to say. I’ve been a fan for 40 years.
I’m curious how that tracks when they’re often getting part-timers or mostly retired wrestlers coming in for guest spots (The Rock, Austin, Lesnar, Goldberg, etc) that are absolutely the draw of the night, even if they don’t have a match. Would they be considered the best segment still, by those in the business?
Myself personally as a fan I like to give feedback from a fans thought bc anything helps these days.
I agree with Al on the fact that wrestling fans and wrestlers in general are too obsessed with one pundit, but at the same time someone can't just "be" Andre or "be" Hogan. There are a lot of factors that go into being a draw that go beyond the performer's abilities to charm a crowd and sell a show. A big fly in the ointment is that larger than life spectacle just doesn't exist anymore. WWE's had giants come and go, some better in every aspect of the business than Andre, and they never reached his appeal or aura because we already had Andre and his legacy and mystique was very well protected. I think for the past 20 some odd years Vince has hand picked a Hogan and pushed them to their fullest potential, and whether it was Cena or Roman, they've never reached the height of a Bruno, Andre, Austin, Rock, or Hogan because perceptions of wrestling have changed and the old formula just isn't as potent because of it. Then you have the anomalous talent that comes along, gets over on their own merit, and then WWE either doesn't want to or doesn't know how to bottle their lightning.
It's nuts how many guys I see in both major companies that I think would've been stars 30-to-40 years ago that just wont break because the dynamics of wrestling have changed, and from a business perspective, they've changed for the worse. I don't know how to fix that, I'm not sure anyone does, but that change certainly isn't coming from either company.
I lost all respect for meltzer when he handed out 5 star ratings to wrestlers just so they'd talk to him, his opinions on wrestling can no longer be trusted because of that
Unless Meltzer is claiming he is a wrestler, Snow's metaphor doesn'tapply.
I first took note of him when I was 9 years old in 1995. Whenever I'd go to the supermarkets with my mom there was a magazine section and I'd thumb through the wrestling magazines. I was a Hogan fan and I remember seeing a Wrestling Observer and reading this guy talk all kinds of shyt about Hogan and calling him by his government name. I looked for who was writing it.. Dave Meltzer. Disliked him ever since.
I was 4 years old in 1994 when I heard of Dave Meltzer. I pretty much ignored everything Meltzer said other than his AJPW (All Japan) coverage. "Dr. Death" Steve Williams was/is my favorite wrestler, but in 1994 I was also a big fan of Hulk Hogan and Toshiaki Kawada (big Japanese guy who had charistma, could be funny, & feuded with Andre The Giant and Stan Hansen). By the mid 2000s when AJPW was sold, Meltzer became the smark that he is today with the flippy skinny-fat stuff.
I thought the Meltzer criticism would go another way. Savage-Steamboat was one of the best matches ever, but Meltzer didn't rate it 5 stars! While Will Ospreay has had 26 5 star matches. Not to knock Ospreay, but Meltzer's ratings are pretty inconsistent. I actually like the star rating system, I just think there should be more critics doing it so "5 star match" isn't synonymous with Meltzer's opinion. Snow, Cornette, and others who know their shit should rate matches too. You wouldn't call a movie "a 4 star movie" just because Ebert thinks it is. You'd have to specify which critic gave it 4 stars.
A great take from a smart wrestling guy 💪