Frank Deford, a 50-year veteran of Sports Illustrated, once labeled Meltzer the most accomplished reporter in sports journalism.
“You could cover the Vatican or State Department,” Deford said recently, “and not do as good a job as Dave Meltzer does on wrestling.”
For nearly 30 years, Dave Meltzer has published the
Wrestling Observer Newsletter, featuring weekly behind the locker room door insight into the business of professional wrestling.
How far reaching has Meltzer's impact been? In one famous incident, Hulk Hogan, frustrated by what he perceived as consistently negative coverage in the publication,
burned a copy of the newsletter during a live Pay-Per-View event.
posted by The Gooch
on May 15, 2013 -
14 comments
Wrestling Out Of The Olympics - The Gods Must Be Crazy Mad
The whole lucrative sham of it all was exposed once again this week when the executive board of the IOC — Informal Motto: "Me Some Too, Yes?" — recommended that wrestling be dropped as an Olympic sport in the 2020 Summer Games, which are supposed to be held in Istanbul, Tokyo, or Madrid, depending on whose checks clear first, I believe. According to the board, wrestling is no longer a "core sport" in the Olympics and it will have to petition for inclusion in 2020 along with, and I am not making this up, sport climbing and wakeboarding. This is terrific. Why don't we just hold the Olympics in an REI outlet store somewhere?
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Mar 19, 2013 -
94 comments
"
Video Game Character Wrestling is a
Twitch channel run by a guy named Bazza. He said earlier how when he first ran it like a month ago, he 'was happy he got 50 viewers, maybe he could get 50 the next time too', and it just fucking exploded, with an average of 2000-3000 viewers in recent matches," (
Via this Something Awful thread). Video Game Character Wrestling is an improbable live-action
machinima spectacle which pits AI controlled versions of major game characters (and some real-ish personalities) against one another in a brawl for it all.
[more inside]
posted by codacorolla
on Dec 17, 2012 -
11 comments
'By most accounts, Bill Walton stands well over seven feet tall. But during his NBA career, Walton always insisted that he was 6'11" because he didn't want to be considered a freak. When I read that fun fact in David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game, it hit a chord. I've been doing the exact same thing as Walton for my entire adult life. I'm not as tall as Walton. I'm not even one of the less-than-70 seven-footers in my age bracket in the U.S. But I'm close. Another quarter-inch, and I'd pass the seven-foot barrier. But anytime anyone asks my height, I say that I'm 6'11". I don't mention the extra three quarters of an inch. People don't need to know about that.
In any case, I'm still pretty fucking tall. And being pretty fucking tall is
a weird thing to wrap your head around.' [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Aug 17, 2012 -
121 comments
Secrets of Pro Wrestling (1987)
What happens when these two wrestlers get a raw deal from their chosen profession? They don't get mad, the get even! (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
Trailer)
[more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Apr 29, 2012 -
19 comments
25 years ago today, the professional wrestling boom sparked by the Captain Lou Albano/Cyndi Lauper "Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection" reached its zenith with
WrestleMania III - whose attendance record of 93,173 for a live indoor "sporting" event in North America stood until 2010. The match between "Macho Man" Randy Savage and Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat is prized by aficionados as one of the greatest in wrestling history.
Look into the videoscope! [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Mar 29, 2012 -
73 comments
"Punk-artist-anthropologist Cameron Jamie has made three documentaries on violence; I’ve read about them all and seen
just this one." The author speaks of "Kranky Klaus," LA-born artist Jamie's peek into the Austrian folkloric character
Krampus, a sort of photo-negative of Santa Claus who comes on Christmas to punish bad children.
[more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie
on Jun 18, 2011 -
12 comments
"
As a child, there was nothing to me more fantastic than than the M.U.S.C.L.E. toys. I don't know if it's just my love for the weird, or the fact that I like pro-wrestling that makes it so special to me, but there's something about a guy from outer space with a fin on his head who would fight against a walking, talking urinal.
That's right, a urinal." In the US, they were known as Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere, or
M.U.S.C.L.E., but they were
basically bendable plastic duplicates of
Kinkeshi, a line of
collectable erasers from Japan. More than peachy-salmon colored minifigs, they were based on the world of
Kinnikuman, which started as
manga in 1979, then
an anime series, and
more, and
more, and
more...
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 8, 2010 -
45 comments
Stu Hart passes away. Anyone who's been more than mildly interested in professional wrestling understands his contribution to the sport. He was father to Bret Hart and the late Owen Hart. He's trained more men than I care to begin to count.
posted by Lusy P Hur
on Oct 16, 2003 -
6 comments
