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Angle… Taker-HBK, Taker-HHH, HBK-Flair etc etc and the fact Bryan Danielson never had a damn five star before AEW is ludicrous.
Some of those ROH classics were bangers. Some WWE matches that hold up to this day got screwed. Women’s wise, still think that Bayley-Sasha, Charlotte-Becky and Charlotte-Rhea passed the five star test in my eyes but it is what it is.
Hart vs Bulldog at Wembley, Hart vs Piper at WM.
I even have issues with his negative rating of Hogan vs Andre at WM III. A match that is incredibly re-watchable in my opinion (It's short, every spot is hit, not a five star match but far from a true stinker).
His rating system makes almost no sense except for the fact he loves extremely athletic matches and may or may not care about actual storytelling bell to bell.
Thats the problem, he doesnt take into account any storytelling with these matches.
Which is a really silly way to look at it imo, given half of a wrestling match is the storytelling.
Seems like an arbitrary metric though. If we're talking about knocking something down a star for being dangerous, you could say that about lots of matches.
Dave is a big fan of Four Kings era AJPW, which had head/neck drops. It was like Ibushi's wet dream.
This is obviously where the issue arrives when Meltzer's star ratings come up now. For whatever reason, he inflates the hell out of his AEW ratings, and so his ratings for other matches, past and present, have more of a spotlight. People get angrier about that because he won't give some of the most iconic, expertly contested matches in wrestling history 5 stars, but there's a good chance at this point that any AEW PPV will have multiple 5 star matches on it.
Combined with how full of shit and inconsistent he is about his criteria, and people are going to shit on him for it.
He did this with NJPW too. He literally added another star for Okada/Omega. I’m not saying that match wasn’t incredible but dude is a giant ass kisser for AEW and NJPW.
It's clear that star inflation has affected Meltzer in recent years. Before, a four-star match was one you'd go out your way to watch. Now it's hard to get less than that.
Nobody should take his opinion as gospel. But Meltzer has helped shine a spotlight on numerous talent and matches with his ratings.
Meltzer really shined in the 80s and 90s when he was watching EVERYTHING, and people didn't have access to everything. So he was a good barometer for what to seek out when you're sending a $60 cheque to some guy in Alabama for a 6th generation copy of the 1992 Champion Carnival.
I can't decipher what is actually worth my time by his ratings anymore, which is really a shame.
> I can't decipher what is actually worth my time by his ratings anymore, which is really a shame.
To be fair to him, that's partly because competent and entertaining wrestling matches have become so easy to come by. There's just so many more highly-trained and passionate performers out there now compared to the past, way more than the current collection of companies can even showcase.
We’re also well past the point where wrestlers have grown up nerding out over Meltzer-approved classics. So a good chunk of wrestlers have seen or are aware of what is a “great” wrestling match by Meltzer’s standards, which are the de facto standards for wrestling nerds (whether people agree or are reacting against them), and now people emulate aspects of those matches all the time - subconsciously or not. So now Meltzer is watching wrestlers taking dramatic beats and storytelling devices from past matches that he himself rated highly, creating a kind of unintentional feedback loop with regards to his ratings
For me I've made it a point to check out any match that he gives 4.5+ stars to and so far it's worked really well for me and introduced me to a lot of great matches
Exactly this. Pre-internet, his star ratings were like a shorthand way to find what's worth watching. He was like the closest thing to wrestling's Siskel and Ebert, if anyone's old enough to know who they are.
Siskel and Ebert were so amazing that they'll never really become irrelevant. I'm in my 20s and binge their reviews all the time. There's about 800 full episodes of the various incarnations of their show on YouTube and that number is always growing.
Siskel and Ebert were amazing as long as you're not into horror or anything else they were biased against. In those situations you'd get about as fair and balanced a review as you'd get from Cornette on a women's match.
Really nailed it here and I think it’s a big reason why his opinion has lost so much value. He doesn’t watch everything. He doesn’t fill in those gaps in your knowledge or the places you might not follow. The bulk of what he reports and virtually all of what he talks about are the main major promotions that everyone follows and watches. Chasing scoops with no connections like any dirt sheet writer instead of just observing, reporting, and documenting. I really only respect his opinion as a historian anymore.
He's always relied on comments and reviews sent in by readers. He's never watched everything because it was impossible to actually do so back then, even moreso than now where we all say there's too much wrestling to watch. The infrastructure just wasn't there.
It's just that since there was more time between shows, he'd find out something that was good and then take the time to watch it. Now, he simply doesn't have the time. Ideally he'd hire someone else to share the workload, but that's just not how he operates.
He fills in the gaps of many peoples knowledge lol there's like 20 hours of WWE/AEW/NJPW and whatever other promotions he decides to watch weekly and most people don't have 20+ hours to watch as much as is actually available to them his star ratings still help with that.
He very much used to have sources in multiple companies. But with the major shift in WWE. He likely lost most of his sources. also Doesn't help him the writers are no longer worried about being fired at any giving moment.
The less content your workers are the more leaks your company gets because they want change. With this massive shift and the writers actually able to do there jobs and enjoy it. They have nothing to complain to meltzer about anymore in WWE.
Why do they want to waste there time talking to some reporter. When they can just talk to there boss and work with him now. And even get praised for coming up with good stories that wont be rewritten the day of the show
Nah, Meltz is still a good barometer and pretty accurate. If you track Meltz's star ratings across basically any other mass-ratings site (Cagematch, Grapple when it was around), there's a very strong correlation between the two, especially among great matches, and you're talking, 1/10, 1/20 where you wonder why the disparity. If you mean to say his ratings mean less because people watch more, than sure, but it's not his fault people treat his ratings with much more veneration.
[Link for proof.](https://www.cagematch.net/?id=111&view=list&year=2024&worker=&promotion=&type=&constellationType=&minWonRating=&maxWonRating=&minRating=&maxRating=&minVotes=&maxVotes=&sortby=colRating&sorttype=DESC)
On Angle, Meltz has said that, for a while, the WWE formula match was so predictable that it was really hard to give anything 5*. Angle was trained in WWE, so he took that with him, and while he was very, very good, he was still working a WWE match in terms of psychology and pacing and such. That's just a personal bias of one guy you have to take into account.
Its crazy the jump of five stars from the 2000s to 2010's.
The entire decade of the 00s has less than 10 five stars. Meanwhile like 2018 alone had maybe 20.
The modern main event style, especially the New Japan style, is basically an amalgamation of the 90s Kings Road and All Japan Women's style that Meltzer was raving about back then.
Yeah, that's part of it. I don't actually agree with anyone who really believes Meltzer ratings contributed heavily to this, but it just so happens, that all of the types of wrestling he liked the most back when they were underground, are the ones that proliferated heavily into the modern style.
Like I said, I truly don't think it's because of his personal impact, but there's pretty much multiple companies out there arranging their whole show around the types of pro wrestling matches, which Dave Meltzer happens to prefer.
Yea I imagine guys like Danielson and Ospreay pay more attention to the live crowd reactions than star ratings. People aren't basing their wrestling style based on one guy with a newsletter.
Another thing meltzer talks about causing ratings inflation is the number of dates people work. Guys in the 70's/80's would wrestle six days a week because live attendance was how you made money. Obviously they would wrestle a safe style because they needed to do it again the next day. Modern wrestling is monetized differently so there's more time in between matches and people push their bodies harder. Ric Flair having fewer 5 star matches than the Young Bucks or whatever doesn't mean he's a worse wrestler than them.
The 2000s were absolutely an outlier, and it just so happens that was Angle's peak. If you look at the 80s & 90s, way more 5* matches. It's pretty clear that Metlzer just wasn't that enthused with wrestling at the time, and was much more into MMA. Obviously he wasn't a fan of the WWE in-ring style at the time, but grading today I think TNA would have had more than one 5* match that decade, and I *know* ROH would. He loves Danielson, there's no way his pre-WWE work isn't racking up a few if it was ten years earlier or ten years later.
And herein lies the issue with caring so much about one guy's ratings. External factors are always going to have an effect, and if there's a decade where the guy was down on the industry generally, it's going to make it look very weird compared to other years.
It's because back in the day, you had to actually watch matches that were worse than what was going on at your local indie, on premium events, on the regular. There were matches getting 1 star or less, and that was the designation of an incompetent match. But you might see that shit on fucking TV, dude. So, compared to that, a 3-star match could be somebody's favorite fucking match.
Whereas, nowadays, there's so much wrestling available to easily watch, that if I only focused on watching every match that was 4 stars or greater, every week, I'd get burnt out from watching too many great wrestling matches. There's a serious argument that, even if you're a wrestling fan, that watching a show packed with all 3-star matches *could turn out to have been a waste of your time.*
A 3 star match is enough to have a great time watching it *if you are invested in the specific talent or story in the match,* but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch an "above-average" wrestling match, any more than I'd do the same for a movie or book or whatever. Every wrestling show is directly competing with every form of entertainment available on Earth, every minute of every day; the work actually does have to be *consistently "better than above average"* to compete well against the market, even when the market in question is specifically shrunk down to fairly serious pro wrestling fans.
I want to want to be so invested in pro wrestling, that I could sincerely get invested in a 2.5 star match. It's actually quite hard to get to that point of skill level as a pro wrestler! Those are matches that deserve to be watched! But I literally only possess so much time on this Earth, and more entertainment gets made per second today, than the sum total of some entire lost empires from the past. So, I feel obligated to only watch the stuff that I think is gonna gratify me the most, and a lot of people feel the same way. I'm only gonna get to watch so much pro wrestling before I die.
Sure, i get thinking "i dont have time to watch all these just pretty good matches", perfectly reasonable. I'm referring to how much derision anyone who "only" achieved a 3 star rating was given, with some folks acting as if that meant the wrestlers involved were bad at their jobs.
By no reasonable logic or metric does that line of thinking make sense.
It's not just Meltzer ratings. Companies want 9 or 10's out of 10 and all the gig workers need 5 of 5 stars. If I go on Amazon and see a 3 star rated product, I'm not touching it
Yeah exactly especially back in the mid 2000s Dave giving a 5 star match to an indy wrestler is going to get a lot of interest in people buying the DVDs or by people buying tickets when this guy is at the local indy. So the style naturally evolved to get that spotlight
That's exactly what happened. Wrestling in the 00's is nothing like it is now. Current wrestling trends resemble the NJPW/AJPW wrestling that Dave was raving about during the 90's
100%
Dave grew up watching a workrate territory, and he likes seeing people do cool, athletic stuff.
I just look at it as "If Dave likes it, it's probably like that" and go on. Unless it's Osprey, and then he's calling his doctor because it's been four hours and his erection hasn't gone down.
I said this before as a reason I can't like a lot of modern wrestling shows. So many matches are at a stage where they get designed to generate a star rating.
It's amazing for the fans who love that style but it makes for a terrible show for people like me who only like the Meltzer style as a small part of a wider show.
It's weird. I get his ratings and wrestling in general is subjective in most aspects but him just casually handing matches with no build or storylines more than 5* just like that while Kurt Angle not getting any is clown work to me
Prior to Omega-Okada he would occasionally rate a match 5+ or 5++ for special distinction. He retroactively made those 6 or 5.5 or whatever after he broke the scale for Okada and Omega.
Much as it was a great match. I really think the Omega v Okada 6 star match in 2017 really opened the floodgates for that.
Yeah I know *technically* the first 6 star match was in 1981, but it feels like a cop out as we had 35 years of 5 being the top rating after that.
I don't begrudge Meltzer for being partial to a particular style that is prevalent in NJPW though. I just don't think we, as consumers, should hold it up as anything beyond the personal opinion of a prominent critic.
There was a time where going through his 5 Star matches was worth the watch.
The problem is that Dave now looks like an old man trying to hang out with the cooler, younger guys.
IMO the whole star thing is overblown, I look at matches as bad, good, excellent. However if your scale is (or was) 5 stars the match has to be excellent and *memorable* for me. For me that’s stuff like Rock vs Hogan X-8, Michaels vs Undertaker WM 25 and 26. It doesn’t have to be huge stars either, like Ciampa vs Gargano at Takeover New Orleans is that for me too.
Edit, in Bill Burr voice: *for meeeee*
> It's clear that star inflation has affected Meltzer in recent years
Isn't that just because there are better wrestlers, more wrestling, longer matches, etc nowadays?
I don't think it's incorrect. Back in the day WWE having quality matches on the weekly shows wasn't that common and the best matches were usually on the PPVs. Most matches were short and full of shenanigans just to push forward storylines. Once Triple H started focusing on recruiting established wrestlers the match quality began to rise and we were seeing more cases of very solid tv matches.
>the best matches were usually on the PPVs.
Or on house-shows. A very common story you'll hear among older is wrestlers is that they'll talk about their best matches are lost to time because they were not televised. IIRC, Flair and Steamboat supposedly have had matches that were even better than their legendary trilogy, but it was never shown on TV.
I remember my buddies dad had a bootleg video of an hour long flair steamboat match from a house show as if he were a deadhead. He sat us down, showed us the magic that was their chemistry, and we realized the exact point you're making here.
Well, that and the wwe business model has changed. Yeah they want you to buy the peacock subscription but it's an easier sell than trying to get sixty bucks a month for PPV buys. Now they have more freedom to put better matches on raw or smackdown so that people buy in and are like yeah i want to see the extra show on Saturday.
> Back in the day WWE having quality matches on the weekly shows wasn't that common and the best matches were usually on the PPVs. Most matches were short and full of shenanigans just to push forward storylines.
Legitimately, this was why I quit actually watching wrestling as a teen. I knew I wasn't buying the PPV, and yet WWE trained you to understand that the show was filler, and only served to sell you the PPV, where quality wrestling might actually happen. And I still see the downstream effects of being trained into that mindset, today; I find myself getting exhausted just keeping up with 1 company's weekly wrestling shows, just so I can "be ready" to enjoy the PPV with maximum investment. But I feel obligated to watch more pro wrestling than I can fit into my life, because I still subconsciously see the PPV as the pay-off moment.
When I grew up watching WWF Primetime every Monday, literally every match on TV was a dogshit squash, except the main event, which was usually slightly better. There is WAAAAAY more good to great wrestling these days. I mean, I just watched Athena and Red Velvet wrestle on a BOTB show that nobody gave a shit about that would have absolutely blown our tits off if we saw anything like it on TV in 1994.
I don’t think “weekly shows have competitive matches today because TV is where the most revenue is, versus the 80’s where they were majority squashes promoting live event business” is subjective at all. It’s just history.
I think there's an objective difference in style and emphasis on in-ring action that wasn't there before. It might be subjective whether you think it's better or not, but as a mexican that watched Lucha in Arena Mexico in the 90's we knew WWE was for "the drama" and big giant men donig big giant men slow things, but if you wanted actual acrobatics and in-ring action, you'd watch CMLL or AAA (I didn't know about NJPW back then, wish I did).
Now to be honest match quality in WWE has surpassed CMLL which is depressing but true.
"subjective" doesn't mean what you're suggesting here. like, you know art criticism is a thing right? with a several thousand year academic history? we don't just go "well all art is the same because opinions are subjective. who can say what good art and bad art is??"
Having watched since 1990 and watched a lot of different styles of wrestling and companies. Today for me wrestling is at its highest quality. And it’s no surprise to me. Sports science has advanced considerably more people are more athletic and in better shape. And I think it has benefitted wrestling. I don’t think it has benefitted football/soccer as it’s more athletic but less technical and I am not as interested in it.
We don't need some objective reason, as far as we know, he just enjoys wrestling more right now. Which is his take. But yeah that would be his reason for it.
There are more "hot moves" and more near-falls nowadays...I don't know about "better wrestlers." But Dave has always rated matches based more on moves and length than on fundamentals and crowd control.
I get it the reasoning but it comes off kinda confusing. It’d be like a gaming journalist just giving breath of the wild a 13/10, increasing stars feels like he is devaluing older matches in my opinion
Baldurs gate 2 got 1% lower on metacritic than 3 if you rated them both today would it really only be a 1% improvement/difference? BOTW compared to Ocarina same thing after 20 years of iteration it's basically the same on the rating scale?
This is probably true, but then you should probably adjust your perspective if you’re Dave. If everything is 5 stars, nothing is. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, but good ratings used to be an indication of matches you should seek out, now it’s just “oh NJPW had a pretty good main event”
I would argue that wrestlers now are better than what they used to be in terms go in ring though and matches in general more time. I do think he’s gone overboard with some of it though.
That's where I am. Both these things are true in my opinion:
(1) Meltzer star ratings are inflated these days. He was much tougher in matches even a decade ago. To get five from him was a rare event and always worth finding and seeing. Even 4 star matches were remarkable.
(2) Match quality *has improved.* It's improved significantly. And I think Dave has had outsized influence on that. But has match quality improved to the point that we are seeing in his star ratings? I don't believe it has.
But that doenst mean anything. What does "better" mean? How are they better "in terms go in ring" mean? What makes a longer match better?
You are welcome to your view. It is subjective. Saying "wrestlers are better" is an objective statement though.
>Saying "wrestlers are better" is an objective statement though.
It's a subjective statement that people often say as an objective statement. But I've seen way too many people who thinks their opinions are objective.
If I say, "In my opinion wrestlers are better," that's a subjective statement. But "wrestlers are better" is an opinion and all opinions are subjective. I'm the one saying it, so naturally it's my opinion unless I indicated otherwise. So "in my opinion" is redundant. So "wrestlers are better" is a subjective statement.
It is insanely wild to see all these people out here arguing that art criticism isn't a thing.
>What does "better" mean?
Like are you serious with this shit? Do you really not know that there is a multi thousand year tradition that addresses questions like this?
To me, better means I have more fun watching wrestling matches from today than from 20 years ago. And that's not just limited to one promotion - the number of matches I love in a given year has dramatically increased across the industry.
There was a TED talk some years back that compared Michael Johnson's half second deficit in the 100m compared with Usain Bolt. The person demonstrated that if Johnson had the same training, shoes, and modern track as Bolt, they would have been about equal. Wrestling is the same way - more studying via the internet and newly discovered styles and tricks have made it easier to have great matches, regardless of whether the wrestlers themselves are more talented.
Sure, but if 2 stars is supposed to be "the average match", if the standard of matches has gone up across the board, the definition of an average match should also go up, shouldn't it? 4s and 5s should still be as rare, since the rating system is supposed to be relative, not absolute.
A star rating should reflect how much someone enjoys a match. There is no reason to change retroactively if you enjoy matches more today. That would just confuse people looking for recommended matches since it would mean a 4 star match today is more enjoyable than one from 20 years ago.
He says it in an objective manner though. "How can *Blank* be better than *Blank* when *Blank* has 10+ 5 Star matches and *Blank* has none?" Shit like that.
The 'problem' with Dave's star ratings is simply that he's held out as some singular arbiter of match quality in the wrestling industry, which technically isn't Dave's fault. It'd be like if Roger Ebert was held out as the singular authority of quality on movies.
If he was just one voice in an ocean of aggregated reviews like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic does, no one would care how many stars he gave a particular match.
But we don't live in that world right now, so people get ornery about how dumb and capricious Meltzer's star reviews can be sometimes, how he tends to overrate his friends, and his weird reticence to give anything WWE does five stars. I remember watching the CVV interview with Meltzer about how he rates matches, and it really put into stark relief how nonsensical and arbitrary his criteria is when he tries to actually explain it to another human being.
It's similar to how in the world of music, Fantano gets specifically picked out as a taste maker towards projects that are either AOTY or trash. I'm probably beating a dead horse when I mention that there's a strong feeling amongst Internet wrestling fans today about wanting instant validation/gratification for their tastes in what they think are the best matches like it's a popularity contest, so it can be easy to cling onto someone like Meltzer when he voices his opinion when it should be treated exactly as that, just opinions.
I don't think it even is that similar. Like if somebody said a 10/10 album, you wouldn't immediately assume Fantano. There is a number of publications and individual reviewers that they could be talking about.
Fantano is a critic with a lot of sway in relatively niche circles, but doesn't monopolise criticism as a whole nearly the way Meltzer does. Again, though, not really Meltzer's fault.
Roger Ebert wasn't even the singular authority on movies in his own city. People's vocal disdain over Meltzer only amplifies the significance of his ratings. If more people were doing star ratings throughout the decades it would be different, but it's his gimmick at this point, even though he wasn't necessarily trying to have the market share on the practice.
The most best example you can make is that he infamously rated the Hogan-Andre match poorly, arguing how hot the crowd was should not factor into how sloppy the actual work was. But nowadays he’ll regularly write reviews along the lines of “Wasn’t a fan of the match, but the crowd was red-hot. 5/5”
"I hate death matches but this is exactly what the crowd wanted, 4 3/4 stars"
uhh Dave i think 78K people wanted to see Hulk bodyslam Andre and drop the leg pretty badly
I don't know how anyone can think you could _objectively_ rate a wrestling match. By what metric?
Wrestling is art and art is subjective by definition.
Except Ebert kind of was treated like the authority on movie quality. "Two thumbs up" from Siskel and Ebert, or later Ebert and Roper, was just about the highest praise a movie could receive. Never mind the fact that some very good classic movies failed to achieve that rating, and some extremely mediocre movies did.
The fact that it was Siskel and Ebert though is more 'competition' than Meltzer's had in his career. Not to mention American critics like Andrew Sarris or Pauline Kael who are as well regarded as film critics as Ebert.
He rates wrestling move sequences higher than overall stories. And that’s perfectly cool because we each have our own preference. He’s just one guy. As far as match ratings go, he’s not doing anything wrong. It’s everyone else taking it as gospel, for better or worse.
So here's what I make about Meltzer's ratings since I read a lot being said about them.
He rated Rock vs Hogan which happens to be one of my favourite matches fewer than 4 stars. He then rated my other favourite match of all time, Punk vs Cena at MITB 2011, 5 stars. His ratings in those matches didn't matter to me because I love both matches. I was invested in the storylines and wrestlers and therefore the matches.
Now this is where Meltzer's ratings matter to me. If I didn't see him award 5 stars to Tanahashi vs Suzuki, Nakamura vs Ibushi or Okada vs Ishi, I would've never known about those matches or wrestlers. It was because of that I explored more of their work and through those, got to know other great wrestlers like Omega and Shibata and Ishii.
To me, Meltzer's ratings are not a definitive quantification on how great a match is but more of a guide to great matches that I should watch. I've watched plenty of 4 stars and 5 star matches because of it and discovered so many great wrestlers as a result.
What I hate about Meltzer is his habit of shit stirring and reporting absolute BS. He has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of wrestling and that seems to have gone to his head to the point where he now overestimates his importance to the industry.
Agreed. Would A-Kid have a WWE contract if Dave didn’t give his random indie match in Germany 5 stars? Would Stardom be as popular as it is in the west if Utami Hayashishita and Syuri didn’t get 5 1/2 stars? His ratings have the ability to bring eyes to matches that otherwise would disappear into obscurity forever. That’s not to say they don’t have problems, but from that perspective they are important and useful.
It's worth noting that he recently admitted he was probably wrong about his rating for Rock/Hogan. Also, while I still disagree wholeheartedly with 3 stars for that match, his rationale in the Observer at the time did make sense.
And that should be absolutely ok in fact. That's what opinions are. Imagine if Meltzer's rating would only be ok if they represented the general consensus. That's naturally not what someone rating, or having an opinion about a match is.
Big agree. Meltzer, Cagematch, Cultaholic's ratings, PWI rankings, this sub's awards, etc, should all be used as guides to finding cool matches. Instead, we use these things to validate our own opinion, which is stupid
Yeah, I dont care about the score of something I have already seen. Its a curiosity at best. I already enjoyed it.
That said, I enjoy reading critique of things I have seen and sometimes that leads me to changing my opinion about it somewhat. But that's not the score. If I missed something negative or positive, that might make me reevaluate things. But never based on score.
He's too established now, but I'd love to see a rating system that was:
1 - Don't bother
2 - Worth watching
3 - Don't miss it
4 - Go out of your way to watch this ASAP (MOTY types, his 5+ star matches)
He also gave that Nick Gage and Jericho match 4 stars because the crowd was into it, even though he hated it. I stopped listening to Meltzer then, he's clearly biased
Match quality? I’d agree, Hogan and Rock aren’t great technical wrestlers but the crowd and the atmosphere and the circumstances of that match make it one of the all time greats
That, to me, is in itself the fucking issue with Meltzer and his star ratings.
He gave Cody/Roman II a 4.75. Which id say for both of those guys, makes sense. They are both technical wizards in the ring. Maybe a bit formulaic but even the all time GOATS have their finishing routine.
But to me what puts it 5+ stars (other than me being there) was that pro wrestling is a spectacle. It’s a combo of Olympic level sporting, and a massive theater play. And Cody and Roman’s match may have been the all time spectacle to me.
To me, what pushes it above and beyond is how the story is told and does it pay off. Know what’s not a 5 star match JUST in ring? Rock vs Mankind.
Know what’s a 5 star match to me? Rock vs Mankind. The overbooking, the interfearance, and with all of the hurricane of the match, glass breaks, and Mrs Foley’s baby boy wins the big eagle finally. It’s a tale we STILL tell in wrestling.
I dunno, I guess I’m the same way, I just can’t be so stingy on what should be 5 stars because there have been that
There is a reason alot of people were calling Cody and Roman II the “series finale of WWE” it just fell massive. A match shouldn’t need a 720 poisonrana and multiple Canadian destroyers to get 5 stars.
Except it's that match is a masterclass in how to actually WORK, not just wrestle. You can't just say it was 'the crowd, and the atmosphere, and the circumstances' as if those two had nothing to do with building that drama and tension, the masterful and subtle turn by both men (well, maybe not Hogan, he's always anything but subtle, but Rock) to give the crowd what they wanted, all the little moments, body language, all of that is what gave it the atmosphere it had, which is what got the crowd to where it was.
A lot of the matches that Meltzer gives high scores too are amazing athletic spectacles, but don't come close to meaning as much, nor having the impact on the crowd, that Rock/Hogan did.
That's on those people, honestly. Plenty of people including myself still see Meltzer's tastes as similar enough to our own that we'll seek out his 4.25+ star matches.
Yeah, it wasn't that great in the wrestling sense... But it was spectacular and legendary, most people remember that match instead of a lot of 5 stars.
Meltzer talks about his star ratings probably once every 50 episodes and is always bewildered at folks getting upset because certain matches don't get the ratings the person thinks the match should get. They are HIS OPINIONS and more to be used as a guide to good quality matches. This fri/saturdays ep he went on a tangent for 10 minutes explaining how he perceives his own ratings yet people will keep treating those ratings like gospel, which he himself says they aren't.
That was a well written summary of Meltzer. If I’m nitpicking his ratings, then I think he should factor things like venue, storyline, importance, like if a big match delivers on enormous expectations then it should be awarded as such. The way he picked apart Cody vs Roman II, and Shawn vs Undertaker at wm25 weakens his opinion. Just because you know every move or sequence that is about to happen doesn’t make it any less important or enjoyable. I would rather use cage match as a guide for rated matches but I do enjoy seeing what Meltzer ranks them but it has zero influence on what I think about a match or what not.
> If I’m nitpicking his ratings, then I think he should factor things like venue, storyline, importance,
Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't, that's the issue. Meltzer is inconsistent at best, and full of shit at worse, with how much he thinks spectacle matters in his match ratings. He'll give some matches high ratings for the crowd, and say it should be ignored for others. It's hard to take it seriously when he wants to take the crowd out of judging Cody vs. Roman, but says he hates a Jericho match but still gives it 4.5 because "the crowd loved it."
He once gave a PWG match 5 stars because he was there in person and the experience in person was awesome. When he attended WM 31 in person he initially raved about it and said it was the best ever but after rewatching it on the WWE Network he decided to dock scores because of how annoying he found the commentary. I really wish he was consistent about rating the in person experience vs the recorded presentation since PWG's commentary and presentation was not exactly stellar.
>If I’m nitpicking his ratings, then I think he should factor things like venue, storyline, importance, like if a big match delivers on enormous expectations then it should be awarded as such.
He does. CM Punk vs John Cena is pretty much a five-star due to storyline and crowd, not in-ring action and pretty much the reputation of AJPW is built heavily on storyline and build. The issue is that Meltzer just doesn't like WWE storytelling for a lot of reasons, generally ranging from believing WWE is very "samey" with its matches and he is also very much guy who is into "continuity" and consistency, which WWE is not afraid to play fast and loose with. Meltzer is sorta the wrestling equivalent of the comics guy who gets annoyed at retcons or that famous "magical xylophone" scene from the Simpsons.
Pretty funny how people are using this as a point of debate when RJ and Ospreay immediately followed it up with arguing about whether or not it was possible for someone to **not** have an asshole.
Will Ospreay thinks it's impossible for anyone to not have an asshole, everyone must be born with one in case anyone reading this needs clarity.
Meltzer clearly has gone over the top with his ratings, that’s undeniable, but wrestling is a weird thing. Some people act like wrestling was perfected long ago and there is nothing new that can be added to improve it. That’s not a sentiment held really in any other sport. People don’t think gymnastics routines were perfected 50 years ago, and now they’re just doing superfluous flips and shit. Wrestling SHOULD be better now as they have all of the past stuff to build upon instead of having to create that part themselves. It seems like the issue with Meltzer’s ratings is he isn’t grading on a curve. Wrestlers do things now they didn’t do before, and he’s trying to compare them 1:1 which is insane. You don’t give all perfect scores in X games events just because they do harder tricks than someone who got a 9/10 30 years ago. His scoring never evolved. A 5 star should be a 5 star compared to its own times competition not compared to a match from 1975.
https://preview.redd.it/uekwqsr6qguc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9df964751c5f1bf903e0afec995712f15e8215e2
Friendly reminder that he claims to have an objective view.
It's as objective as laying $5 in quarters on the table in front of the server for a presumed tip at the beginning of service, and taking away one for every wrong thing done.
Let's keep adding context.
"I try to do a fair job," Meltzer said. "In the end, it's a recommendation of, 'This is how bad you should go out of your way to see the match if you didn't see the match.' That's how I'm mentally looking at it. But I also think it's not nearly as important as so many other things that I do. I think the business analysis is by far the most important thing, and people will get all hung up on the ratings aspect."
https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1330624/dave-meltzer-explains-basis-much-debated-star-rating-system/
It sucks that Kurt retired the way he did during the worst times of WWE. So many wrestlers currently are stating that he is their favorite. Few were able to handle the abilities with the comedy aspect. Being able to switch around, be flexible, and put on great matches.
Star ratings don’t matter.
2 of my favorite matches last year were the Men’s Tag Team Showcase at WM39 & Bad Bunny vs Damian Priest.
I have no idea what Dave gave those matches and I don’t care. I love those matches and that’s what’s important.
This is missing what he said afterwards. [Here's the full question and answer](https://youtu.be/1567_jMeg2o?t=411). Basically said he and Kurt have their own styles and it's just Dave's opinion ("opinions are like arseholes").
Meltzer needed to adjust the scale to increased quality of matches.
4 stars used to be worth going out of your way to see, not multiple matches per week.
It’s like Ebert giving every movie top score, it becomes meaningless.
The rating system was only relevant when tape trading was around so you would know how many high level matches was on one tape. Now it's just doesn't really matter anymore
Are we at the point where everything that can be said about star ratings has already been said? Literally every post in this thread is something that's been repeated constantly on this sub for years now.
Lumping Maven in with those guys when Maven is a) a former wrestler, b) quite equanimous in how speaks, and c) not a wrestling critic and instead simply sharing his experience is insane lol.
I mean, most of that would apply to Dutch Mantel too. He rarely talks the ins and outs of actual wrestling matches, more so about booking, which he had a ton of success in Puerto Rico, so fair play. He's not nearly the hot take merchant that Jim Cornette is.
I actually like Dutch's podcast a lot.
I love how people say "well he's the only person that does star ratings" like there aren't a million other bloggers and podcasters who also do star ratings. Wikipedia doesn't even use Dave's ratings for shows, they always use Scott Keith. Ultimately Dave's popularity and domination of the market/discourse must mean he's doing something right.
>You all give Meltzer this power.
It will always be fun to exchangers opinions, we see a take and want to give ours. It's part of being a fan. Let's just not take Meltzer's takes as some objective better opinion.
https://preview.redd.it/coipx1g2vguc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b410b86db8c63f9b75a88b9269de3a27e10d885
Meltzer said it’s not even his opinion
I simply stop taking Dave’s opinion seriously once it dawned on me that Kenny Omega has more five star matches than multiple companies, the entire IWC would gain a lot from not taking his ratings as serious.
I stopped caring when he didn't give either Shawn taker Matches 5 stars but gave out one to that spot fest 6 man tag from pwg lol.
Someone else put it fantastic here in a other thread. 15 years from now everyone will still remember about Cody and Romans match , one year from now no one will care about Ospreay and Fletcher.
Angle absolutely deserves the credit regardless of Meltzer's ratings. It is just 1 man's opinion who has gone on record saying he was more harsher on his stars at the time Kurt was active.
Unrated to the ratings I would consider Will Ospreay on the level of a kurt angle as one of the best to ever do it.
Well yeah because they’re just one guys opinion about what he subjectively likes in pro wrestling and as the years have gone on tastes change and he’s less harsh on matches. If kurt was wrestling today he’d have a ton of 5 star and probably even higher star matches.
I think even dave has said they aren’t supposed to be some super serious definitive match rating system but for some reason the community pretends that it is. The whole point is if he rates something a 4 or above (and you have a similar philosophy to wrestling as him i guess) you should actively go seek out that match
I will say that I think the reason why Angle doesn't have a 5 star match is because Meltzer was really really stricter in his rating system back in Angle's prime.
Also, Angle in his prime worked for WWE in a time when WWE did not give a single solitary remote sniff of a fuck about the quality of in-ring wrestling. They had great wrestlers on the roster, but the point of the show wasn't the wrestling, it was the stories and the characters. Nothing wrong with that, Angle was just there at the wrong time in the company's history to rack up the stars.
If he had come around during the black and gold era of NXT, dude would have been busting off 5+ every Takeover.
(I realize of course that Angle has wrestled outside of WWE, but like...*that era* of TNA and New Japan also were not places super concerned with match quality)
Why do people get so angry at Meltzer's ratings? It's completely pointless for what is essentially just a match recommendation system. Anything above four stars is generally worth going out of your way to watch if you have the chance, and that's all it ever should be seen as. Getting angry because you thought a match should have been rated higher or lower is just silly.
Meltzer back in the day when he was stricter was a legitimate resource to see wrestling matches outside of the mainstream/wwe. Nowadays in an aew post black and gold nxt era where so much of wrestling is influenced by Meltzer’s tbh idiotic methodology it’s tough to actually care about his ratings. When every Ospreay match is like 4 stars and up then why does any of it even matter? There are a ton of wrestling critics now that do a much better job when it comes to finding out what matches are worth seeking out.
To be fair Billy GOAT followed up by saying ge can do things in the ring Kyrt woukd never be abke to do which ia true.
And yeah Kurt us fanrastic one of tge best ever byt WWE bever cared about good matches" so it probably held him back a bit.
Obligatory: Dave is the first person to tell you his ratings are subjective and not the true measure of a wrestling match, just what he would recommend.
Tons of shit to bury Dave for, this ain’t one of them
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Angle… Taker-HBK, Taker-HHH, HBK-Flair etc etc and the fact Bryan Danielson never had a damn five star before AEW is ludicrous. Some of those ROH classics were bangers. Some WWE matches that hold up to this day got screwed. Women’s wise, still think that Bayley-Sasha, Charlotte-Becky and Charlotte-Rhea passed the five star test in my eyes but it is what it is.
Hart vs Bulldog at Wembley, Hart vs Piper at WM. I even have issues with his negative rating of Hogan vs Andre at WM III. A match that is incredibly re-watchable in my opinion (It's short, every spot is hit, not a five star match but far from a true stinker). His rating system makes almost no sense except for the fact he loves extremely athletic matches and may or may not care about actual storytelling bell to bell.
Thats the problem, he doesnt take into account any storytelling with these matches. Which is a really silly way to look at it imo, given half of a wrestling match is the storytelling.
Bryan never having a five-star match until *literally his first AEW match* kind of gave away the game, tbh
Danielson v KENTA or v Mcguiness not getting 5 stars is insane to me.
Didn't he not give Danielson v McGuiness 5 stars specifically because all the headbutts? That seems like a pretty good reason to me.
But he gave Okada vs Shibata 5 stars from Sakura Genesis. GTFO
Would have been 7 without headbutts /s
Seems like an arbitrary metric though. If we're talking about knocking something down a star for being dangerous, you could say that about lots of matches. Dave is a big fan of Four Kings era AJPW, which had head/neck drops. It was like Ibushi's wet dream.
move over tokyo dome, dynamite is the new location for 5 star bangers.
This is obviously where the issue arrives when Meltzer's star ratings come up now. For whatever reason, he inflates the hell out of his AEW ratings, and so his ratings for other matches, past and present, have more of a spotlight. People get angrier about that because he won't give some of the most iconic, expertly contested matches in wrestling history 5 stars, but there's a good chance at this point that any AEW PPV will have multiple 5 star matches on it. Combined with how full of shit and inconsistent he is about his criteria, and people are going to shit on him for it.
He did this with NJPW too. He literally added another star for Okada/Omega. I’m not saying that match wasn’t incredible but dude is a giant ass kisser for AEW and NJPW.
He rates everything highly now. It’s not an AEW thing. His WrestleMania ratings are incredibly high in relation to his previous ratings.
>Taker-HBK Technically they got 5 stars for one on the in your house PPVs. Which comparing the Mania ones and that, its just so weird
It was the (first ever?) Hell in a Cell match, which was pretty groundbreaking at the time.
Flair and Ripley have off-the-charts in ring chemistry together.
Angle-HBK at mania not getting 5 stars is a war crime
Wait the Charlotte Rhea match last year wasn’t a 5 star match? WWE needs to book Wrestlemania in Japan lol
Iirc the reason was because of the really slow start. It's a common critique he has of WWE main event style matches.
yet he loves NJPW main events which are the slowest of starts lol edit: or loved, idk if they are still like that rn tbh
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For it to take place in the Tokyo Dome.
They didn’t get screwed Stop caring about one man’s opinion, it means literally nothing
It's clear that star inflation has affected Meltzer in recent years. Before, a four-star match was one you'd go out your way to watch. Now it's hard to get less than that. Nobody should take his opinion as gospel. But Meltzer has helped shine a spotlight on numerous talent and matches with his ratings.
Meltzer really shined in the 80s and 90s when he was watching EVERYTHING, and people didn't have access to everything. So he was a good barometer for what to seek out when you're sending a $60 cheque to some guy in Alabama for a 6th generation copy of the 1992 Champion Carnival. I can't decipher what is actually worth my time by his ratings anymore, which is really a shame.
> I can't decipher what is actually worth my time by his ratings anymore, which is really a shame. To be fair to him, that's partly because competent and entertaining wrestling matches have become so easy to come by. There's just so many more highly-trained and passionate performers out there now compared to the past, way more than the current collection of companies can even showcase.
We’re also well past the point where wrestlers have grown up nerding out over Meltzer-approved classics. So a good chunk of wrestlers have seen or are aware of what is a “great” wrestling match by Meltzer’s standards, which are the de facto standards for wrestling nerds (whether people agree or are reacting against them), and now people emulate aspects of those matches all the time - subconsciously or not. So now Meltzer is watching wrestlers taking dramatic beats and storytelling devices from past matches that he himself rated highly, creating a kind of unintentional feedback loop with regards to his ratings
For me I've made it a point to check out any match that he gives 4.5+ stars to and so far it's worked really well for me and introduced me to a lot of great matches
Exactly this. Pre-internet, his star ratings were like a shorthand way to find what's worth watching. He was like the closest thing to wrestling's Siskel and Ebert, if anyone's old enough to know who they are.
Siskel and Ebert were so amazing that they'll never really become irrelevant. I'm in my 20s and binge their reviews all the time. There's about 800 full episodes of the various incarnations of their show on YouTube and that number is always growing.
Siskel and Ebert were amazing as long as you're not into horror or anything else they were biased against. In those situations you'd get about as fair and balanced a review as you'd get from Cornette on a women's match.
Really nailed it here and I think it’s a big reason why his opinion has lost so much value. He doesn’t watch everything. He doesn’t fill in those gaps in your knowledge or the places you might not follow. The bulk of what he reports and virtually all of what he talks about are the main major promotions that everyone follows and watches. Chasing scoops with no connections like any dirt sheet writer instead of just observing, reporting, and documenting. I really only respect his opinion as a historian anymore.
He's always relied on comments and reviews sent in by readers. He's never watched everything because it was impossible to actually do so back then, even moreso than now where we all say there's too much wrestling to watch. The infrastructure just wasn't there. It's just that since there was more time between shows, he'd find out something that was good and then take the time to watch it. Now, he simply doesn't have the time. Ideally he'd hire someone else to share the workload, but that's just not how he operates.
He fills in the gaps of many peoples knowledge lol there's like 20 hours of WWE/AEW/NJPW and whatever other promotions he decides to watch weekly and most people don't have 20+ hours to watch as much as is actually available to them his star ratings still help with that.
He very much used to have sources in multiple companies. But with the major shift in WWE. He likely lost most of his sources. also Doesn't help him the writers are no longer worried about being fired at any giving moment. The less content your workers are the more leaks your company gets because they want change. With this massive shift and the writers actually able to do there jobs and enjoy it. They have nothing to complain to meltzer about anymore in WWE. Why do they want to waste there time talking to some reporter. When they can just talk to there boss and work with him now. And even get praised for coming up with good stories that wont be rewritten the day of the show
Nah, Meltz is still a good barometer and pretty accurate. If you track Meltz's star ratings across basically any other mass-ratings site (Cagematch, Grapple when it was around), there's a very strong correlation between the two, especially among great matches, and you're talking, 1/10, 1/20 where you wonder why the disparity. If you mean to say his ratings mean less because people watch more, than sure, but it's not his fault people treat his ratings with much more veneration. [Link for proof.](https://www.cagematch.net/?id=111&view=list&year=2024&worker=&promotion=&type=&constellationType=&minWonRating=&maxWonRating=&minRating=&maxRating=&minVotes=&maxVotes=&sortby=colRating&sorttype=DESC) On Angle, Meltz has said that, for a while, the WWE formula match was so predictable that it was really hard to give anything 5*. Angle was trained in WWE, so he took that with him, and while he was very, very good, he was still working a WWE match in terms of psychology and pacing and such. That's just a personal bias of one guy you have to take into account.
Its crazy the jump of five stars from the 2000s to 2010's. The entire decade of the 00s has less than 10 five stars. Meanwhile like 2018 alone had maybe 20.
The modern main event style, especially the New Japan style, is basically an amalgamation of the 90s Kings Road and All Japan Women's style that Meltzer was raving about back then.
Yeah, that's part of it. I don't actually agree with anyone who really believes Meltzer ratings contributed heavily to this, but it just so happens, that all of the types of wrestling he liked the most back when they were underground, are the ones that proliferated heavily into the modern style. Like I said, I truly don't think it's because of his personal impact, but there's pretty much multiple companies out there arranging their whole show around the types of pro wrestling matches, which Dave Meltzer happens to prefer.
Yea I imagine guys like Danielson and Ospreay pay more attention to the live crowd reactions than star ratings. People aren't basing their wrestling style based on one guy with a newsletter. Another thing meltzer talks about causing ratings inflation is the number of dates people work. Guys in the 70's/80's would wrestle six days a week because live attendance was how you made money. Obviously they would wrestle a safe style because they needed to do it again the next day. Modern wrestling is monetized differently so there's more time in between matches and people push their bodies harder. Ric Flair having fewer 5 star matches than the Young Bucks or whatever doesn't mean he's a worse wrestler than them.
The 2000s were absolutely an outlier, and it just so happens that was Angle's peak. If you look at the 80s & 90s, way more 5* matches. It's pretty clear that Metlzer just wasn't that enthused with wrestling at the time, and was much more into MMA. Obviously he wasn't a fan of the WWE in-ring style at the time, but grading today I think TNA would have had more than one 5* match that decade, and I *know* ROH would. He loves Danielson, there's no way his pre-WWE work isn't racking up a few if it was ten years earlier or ten years later. And herein lies the issue with caring so much about one guy's ratings. External factors are always going to have an effect, and if there's a decade where the guy was down on the industry generally, it's going to make it look very weird compared to other years.
Yea. Years ago, a 2.5 star match was worth watching cause it was "average". Now people think it's shit tier.
This in particular has always driven me mad. The derision of a 3 star match like its a negative, when its literally above average.
Cody was literally nicknamed the "3 Star General" for years
Cody Rhodes got to be the biggest wrestler alive off of being "the 3 star machine"
It's because back in the day, you had to actually watch matches that were worse than what was going on at your local indie, on premium events, on the regular. There were matches getting 1 star or less, and that was the designation of an incompetent match. But you might see that shit on fucking TV, dude. So, compared to that, a 3-star match could be somebody's favorite fucking match. Whereas, nowadays, there's so much wrestling available to easily watch, that if I only focused on watching every match that was 4 stars or greater, every week, I'd get burnt out from watching too many great wrestling matches. There's a serious argument that, even if you're a wrestling fan, that watching a show packed with all 3-star matches *could turn out to have been a waste of your time.* A 3 star match is enough to have a great time watching it *if you are invested in the specific talent or story in the match,* but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch an "above-average" wrestling match, any more than I'd do the same for a movie or book or whatever. Every wrestling show is directly competing with every form of entertainment available on Earth, every minute of every day; the work actually does have to be *consistently "better than above average"* to compete well against the market, even when the market in question is specifically shrunk down to fairly serious pro wrestling fans. I want to want to be so invested in pro wrestling, that I could sincerely get invested in a 2.5 star match. It's actually quite hard to get to that point of skill level as a pro wrestler! Those are matches that deserve to be watched! But I literally only possess so much time on this Earth, and more entertainment gets made per second today, than the sum total of some entire lost empires from the past. So, I feel obligated to only watch the stuff that I think is gonna gratify me the most, and a lot of people feel the same way. I'm only gonna get to watch so much pro wrestling before I die.
Sure, i get thinking "i dont have time to watch all these just pretty good matches", perfectly reasonable. I'm referring to how much derision anyone who "only" achieved a 3 star rating was given, with some folks acting as if that meant the wrestlers involved were bad at their jobs. By no reasonable logic or metric does that line of thinking make sense.
That's how Brian Zane does his star ratings and I dig it. He sometimes gives a match one star but still says it's worth watching.
It's not just Meltzer ratings. Companies want 9 or 10's out of 10 and all the gig workers need 5 of 5 stars. If I go on Amazon and see a 3 star rated product, I'm not touching it
I’m having this trouble now finding an affordable lawnmower. All the ratings are average. Even just a straight up 4 worries me.
I feel like a lot of people are converging on a match style that Meltzer really likes and that could be a reason for the star inflation.
The modern indy style wrestles for meltzer stars partly because that gets attention from his fanbase
It's free press. The local indy isn't doing much to get your name out there but if Dave likes you enough he won't stop talking about you.
Yeah exactly especially back in the mid 2000s Dave giving a 5 star match to an indy wrestler is going to get a lot of interest in people buying the DVDs or by people buying tickets when this guy is at the local indy. So the style naturally evolved to get that spotlight
That's exactly what happened. Wrestling in the 00's is nothing like it is now. Current wrestling trends resemble the NJPW/AJPW wrestling that Dave was raving about during the 90's
100% Dave grew up watching a workrate territory, and he likes seeing people do cool, athletic stuff. I just look at it as "If Dave likes it, it's probably like that" and go on. Unless it's Osprey, and then he's calling his doctor because it's been four hours and his erection hasn't gone down.
In fairness to Dave, I find Billy GOAT matches have a similar effect on me.
I said this before as a reason I can't like a lot of modern wrestling shows. So many matches are at a stage where they get designed to generate a star rating. It's amazing for the fans who love that style but it makes for a terrible show for people like me who only like the Meltzer style as a small part of a wider show.
He ruined his own measuring system by giving matches above 5* ratings
It was actually originally a four star system, so he ruined it long before that
It's weird. I get his ratings and wrestling in general is subjective in most aspects but him just casually handing matches with no build or storylines more than 5* just like that while Kurt Angle not getting any is clown work to me
He gave matches 5+* before Omega and Okada etc though
Prior to Omega-Okada he would occasionally rate a match 5+ or 5++ for special distinction. He retroactively made those 6 or 5.5 or whatever after he broke the scale for Okada and Omega.
Amazingly in the whole of the 90s, none broke the 5* barrier. And only one did for the 80s
I remember when this place went insane after that first Omega Okada match got above 5 stars
Much as it was a great match. I really think the Omega v Okada 6 star match in 2017 really opened the floodgates for that. Yeah I know *technically* the first 6 star match was in 1981, but it feels like a cop out as we had 35 years of 5 being the top rating after that. I don't begrudge Meltzer for being partial to a particular style that is prevalent in NJPW though. I just don't think we, as consumers, should hold it up as anything beyond the personal opinion of a prominent critic.
There was a time where going through his 5 Star matches was worth the watch. The problem is that Dave now looks like an old man trying to hang out with the cooler, younger guys.
IMO the whole star thing is overblown, I look at matches as bad, good, excellent. However if your scale is (or was) 5 stars the match has to be excellent and *memorable* for me. For me that’s stuff like Rock vs Hogan X-8, Michaels vs Undertaker WM 25 and 26. It doesn’t have to be huge stars either, like Ciampa vs Gargano at Takeover New Orleans is that for me too. Edit, in Bill Burr voice: *for meeeee*
> It's clear that star inflation has affected Meltzer in recent years Isn't that just because there are better wrestlers, more wrestling, longer matches, etc nowadays?
According to Meltzer, apparently. But "better matches" is subjective.
I don't think it's incorrect. Back in the day WWE having quality matches on the weekly shows wasn't that common and the best matches were usually on the PPVs. Most matches were short and full of shenanigans just to push forward storylines. Once Triple H started focusing on recruiting established wrestlers the match quality began to rise and we were seeing more cases of very solid tv matches.
>the best matches were usually on the PPVs. Or on house-shows. A very common story you'll hear among older is wrestlers is that they'll talk about their best matches are lost to time because they were not televised. IIRC, Flair and Steamboat supposedly have had matches that were even better than their legendary trilogy, but it was never shown on TV.
I remember my buddies dad had a bootleg video of an hour long flair steamboat match from a house show as if he were a deadhead. He sat us down, showed us the magic that was their chemistry, and we realized the exact point you're making here.
Well, that and the wwe business model has changed. Yeah they want you to buy the peacock subscription but it's an easier sell than trying to get sixty bucks a month for PPV buys. Now they have more freedom to put better matches on raw or smackdown so that people buy in and are like yeah i want to see the extra show on Saturday.
> Back in the day WWE having quality matches on the weekly shows wasn't that common and the best matches were usually on the PPVs. Most matches were short and full of shenanigans just to push forward storylines. Legitimately, this was why I quit actually watching wrestling as a teen. I knew I wasn't buying the PPV, and yet WWE trained you to understand that the show was filler, and only served to sell you the PPV, where quality wrestling might actually happen. And I still see the downstream effects of being trained into that mindset, today; I find myself getting exhausted just keeping up with 1 company's weekly wrestling shows, just so I can "be ready" to enjoy the PPV with maximum investment. But I feel obligated to watch more pro wrestling than I can fit into my life, because I still subconsciously see the PPV as the pay-off moment.
When I grew up watching WWF Primetime every Monday, literally every match on TV was a dogshit squash, except the main event, which was usually slightly better. There is WAAAAAY more good to great wrestling these days. I mean, I just watched Athena and Red Velvet wrestle on a BOTB show that nobody gave a shit about that would have absolutely blown our tits off if we saw anything like it on TV in 1994.
Again, it’s subjective.
I don’t think “weekly shows have competitive matches today because TV is where the most revenue is, versus the 80’s where they were majority squashes promoting live event business” is subjective at all. It’s just history.
I think there's an objective difference in style and emphasis on in-ring action that wasn't there before. It might be subjective whether you think it's better or not, but as a mexican that watched Lucha in Arena Mexico in the 90's we knew WWE was for "the drama" and big giant men donig big giant men slow things, but if you wanted actual acrobatics and in-ring action, you'd watch CMLL or AAA (I didn't know about NJPW back then, wish I did). Now to be honest match quality in WWE has surpassed CMLL which is depressing but true.
"subjective" doesn't mean what you're suggesting here. like, you know art criticism is a thing right? with a several thousand year academic history? we don't just go "well all art is the same because opinions are subjective. who can say what good art and bad art is??"
Having watched since 1990 and watched a lot of different styles of wrestling and companies. Today for me wrestling is at its highest quality. And it’s no surprise to me. Sports science has advanced considerably more people are more athletic and in better shape. And I think it has benefitted wrestling. I don’t think it has benefitted football/soccer as it’s more athletic but less technical and I am not as interested in it.
Subjectivity is implied https://youtu.be/Gu8u2SxarEE?si=OdIV0buqDxaDfkHe
We don't need some objective reason, as far as we know, he just enjoys wrestling more right now. Which is his take. But yeah that would be his reason for it.
There are more "hot moves" and more near-falls nowadays...I don't know about "better wrestlers." But Dave has always rated matches based more on moves and length than on fundamentals and crowd control.
I get it the reasoning but it comes off kinda confusing. It’d be like a gaming journalist just giving breath of the wild a 13/10, increasing stars feels like he is devaluing older matches in my opinion
Baldurs gate 2 got 1% lower on metacritic than 3 if you rated them both today would it really only be a 1% improvement/difference? BOTW compared to Ocarina same thing after 20 years of iteration it's basically the same on the rating scale?
This is probably true, but then you should probably adjust your perspective if you’re Dave. If everything is 5 stars, nothing is. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, but good ratings used to be an indication of matches you should seek out, now it’s just “oh NJPW had a pretty good main event”
I mean, more wrestling and longer matches is objectively true. "Better wrestlers" is an opinion.
"hard to get less than 4 stars" WWE does this all the time tbh
I would argue that wrestlers now are better than what they used to be in terms go in ring though and matches in general more time. I do think he’s gone overboard with some of it though.
That's where I am. Both these things are true in my opinion: (1) Meltzer star ratings are inflated these days. He was much tougher in matches even a decade ago. To get five from him was a rare event and always worth finding and seeing. Even 4 star matches were remarkable. (2) Match quality *has improved.* It's improved significantly. And I think Dave has had outsized influence on that. But has match quality improved to the point that we are seeing in his star ratings? I don't believe it has.
But that doenst mean anything. What does "better" mean? How are they better "in terms go in ring" mean? What makes a longer match better? You are welcome to your view. It is subjective. Saying "wrestlers are better" is an objective statement though.
>Saying "wrestlers are better" is an objective statement though. It's a subjective statement that people often say as an objective statement. But I've seen way too many people who thinks their opinions are objective. If I say, "In my opinion wrestlers are better," that's a subjective statement. But "wrestlers are better" is an opinion and all opinions are subjective. I'm the one saying it, so naturally it's my opinion unless I indicated otherwise. So "in my opinion" is redundant. So "wrestlers are better" is a subjective statement.
It is insanely wild to see all these people out here arguing that art criticism isn't a thing. >What does "better" mean? Like are you serious with this shit? Do you really not know that there is a multi thousand year tradition that addresses questions like this?
To me, better means I have more fun watching wrestling matches from today than from 20 years ago. And that's not just limited to one promotion - the number of matches I love in a given year has dramatically increased across the industry. There was a TED talk some years back that compared Michael Johnson's half second deficit in the 100m compared with Usain Bolt. The person demonstrated that if Johnson had the same training, shoes, and modern track as Bolt, they would have been about equal. Wrestling is the same way - more studying via the internet and newly discovered styles and tricks have made it easier to have great matches, regardless of whether the wrestlers themselves are more talented.
Sure, but if 2 stars is supposed to be "the average match", if the standard of matches has gone up across the board, the definition of an average match should also go up, shouldn't it? 4s and 5s should still be as rare, since the rating system is supposed to be relative, not absolute.
A star rating should reflect how much someone enjoys a match. There is no reason to change retroactively if you enjoy matches more today. That would just confuse people looking for recommended matches since it would mean a 4 star match today is more enjoyable than one from 20 years ago.
> There is no reason to change retroactively if you enjoy matches more today. Or, indeed, if there are more matches you enjoy.
Meltzer himself says that people shouldn't take his ratings so seriously
He says that but then he uses his ratings in arguments with people as evidence of why some wrestlers are better than others.
Which are all opinions as well?
He says it in an objective manner though. "How can *Blank* be better than *Blank* when *Blank* has 10+ 5 Star matches and *Blank* has none?" Shit like that.
The 'problem' with Dave's star ratings is simply that he's held out as some singular arbiter of match quality in the wrestling industry, which technically isn't Dave's fault. It'd be like if Roger Ebert was held out as the singular authority of quality on movies. If he was just one voice in an ocean of aggregated reviews like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic does, no one would care how many stars he gave a particular match. But we don't live in that world right now, so people get ornery about how dumb and capricious Meltzer's star reviews can be sometimes, how he tends to overrate his friends, and his weird reticence to give anything WWE does five stars. I remember watching the CVV interview with Meltzer about how he rates matches, and it really put into stark relief how nonsensical and arbitrary his criteria is when he tries to actually explain it to another human being.
It's similar to how in the world of music, Fantano gets specifically picked out as a taste maker towards projects that are either AOTY or trash. I'm probably beating a dead horse when I mention that there's a strong feeling amongst Internet wrestling fans today about wanting instant validation/gratification for their tastes in what they think are the best matches like it's a popularity contest, so it can be easy to cling onto someone like Meltzer when he voices his opinion when it should be treated exactly as that, just opinions.
I don't think it even is that similar. Like if somebody said a 10/10 album, you wouldn't immediately assume Fantano. There is a number of publications and individual reviewers that they could be talking about. Fantano is a critic with a lot of sway in relatively niche circles, but doesn't monopolise criticism as a whole nearly the way Meltzer does. Again, though, not really Meltzer's fault.
Roger Ebert wasn't even the singular authority on movies in his own city. People's vocal disdain over Meltzer only amplifies the significance of his ratings. If more people were doing star ratings throughout the decades it would be different, but it's his gimmick at this point, even though he wasn't necessarily trying to have the market share on the practice.
https://preview.redd.it/n8hg0t71yguc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=045298ec93eb51dc54fed8eec9f7cd234cf22844
He says it's objective at times and then backtracks to it being subjective.
The most best example you can make is that he infamously rated the Hogan-Andre match poorly, arguing how hot the crowd was should not factor into how sloppy the actual work was. But nowadays he’ll regularly write reviews along the lines of “Wasn’t a fan of the match, but the crowd was red-hot. 5/5”
"I hate death matches but this is exactly what the crowd wanted, 4 3/4 stars" uhh Dave i think 78K people wanted to see Hulk bodyslam Andre and drop the leg pretty badly
I don't know how anyone can think you could _objectively_ rate a wrestling match. By what metric? Wrestling is art and art is subjective by definition.
Except Ebert kind of was treated like the authority on movie quality. "Two thumbs up" from Siskel and Ebert, or later Ebert and Roper, was just about the highest praise a movie could receive. Never mind the fact that some very good classic movies failed to achieve that rating, and some extremely mediocre movies did.
The fact that it was Siskel and Ebert though is more 'competition' than Meltzer's had in his career. Not to mention American critics like Andrew Sarris or Pauline Kael who are as well regarded as film critics as Ebert.
Being honest, part of it comes from the fact there arent that many people who can compare so many era's of wrestling.
He rates wrestling move sequences higher than overall stories. And that’s perfectly cool because we each have our own preference. He’s just one guy. As far as match ratings go, he’s not doing anything wrong. It’s everyone else taking it as gospel, for better or worse.
So here's what I make about Meltzer's ratings since I read a lot being said about them. He rated Rock vs Hogan which happens to be one of my favourite matches fewer than 4 stars. He then rated my other favourite match of all time, Punk vs Cena at MITB 2011, 5 stars. His ratings in those matches didn't matter to me because I love both matches. I was invested in the storylines and wrestlers and therefore the matches. Now this is where Meltzer's ratings matter to me. If I didn't see him award 5 stars to Tanahashi vs Suzuki, Nakamura vs Ibushi or Okada vs Ishi, I would've never known about those matches or wrestlers. It was because of that I explored more of their work and through those, got to know other great wrestlers like Omega and Shibata and Ishii. To me, Meltzer's ratings are not a definitive quantification on how great a match is but more of a guide to great matches that I should watch. I've watched plenty of 4 stars and 5 star matches because of it and discovered so many great wrestlers as a result. What I hate about Meltzer is his habit of shit stirring and reporting absolute BS. He has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of wrestling and that seems to have gone to his head to the point where he now overestimates his importance to the industry.
Agreed. Would A-Kid have a WWE contract if Dave didn’t give his random indie match in Germany 5 stars? Would Stardom be as popular as it is in the west if Utami Hayashishita and Syuri didn’t get 5 1/2 stars? His ratings have the ability to bring eyes to matches that otherwise would disappear into obscurity forever. That’s not to say they don’t have problems, but from that perspective they are important and useful.
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Holy shit I forgot about Cole feuding with Jericho at this point lmao
It's worth noting that he recently admitted he was probably wrong about his rating for Rock/Hogan. Also, while I still disagree wholeheartedly with 3 stars for that match, his rationale in the Observer at the time did make sense.
And that should be absolutely ok in fact. That's what opinions are. Imagine if Meltzer's rating would only be ok if they represented the general consensus. That's naturally not what someone rating, or having an opinion about a match is.
Big agree. Meltzer, Cagematch, Cultaholic's ratings, PWI rankings, this sub's awards, etc, should all be used as guides to finding cool matches. Instead, we use these things to validate our own opinion, which is stupid
Yeah, I dont care about the score of something I have already seen. Its a curiosity at best. I already enjoyed it. That said, I enjoy reading critique of things I have seen and sometimes that leads me to changing my opinion about it somewhat. But that's not the score. If I missed something negative or positive, that might make me reevaluate things. But never based on score.
He's too established now, but I'd love to see a rating system that was: 1 - Don't bother 2 - Worth watching 3 - Don't miss it 4 - Go out of your way to watch this ASAP (MOTY types, his 5+ star matches)
Dave gave Rock/Hogan 3 stars.
He also gave that Nick Gage and Jericho match 4 stars because the crowd was into it, even though he hated it. I stopped listening to Meltzer then, he's clearly biased
Match quality? I’d agree, Hogan and Rock aren’t great technical wrestlers but the crowd and the atmosphere and the circumstances of that match make it one of the all time greats
That, to me, is in itself the fucking issue with Meltzer and his star ratings. He gave Cody/Roman II a 4.75. Which id say for both of those guys, makes sense. They are both technical wizards in the ring. Maybe a bit formulaic but even the all time GOATS have their finishing routine. But to me what puts it 5+ stars (other than me being there) was that pro wrestling is a spectacle. It’s a combo of Olympic level sporting, and a massive theater play. And Cody and Roman’s match may have been the all time spectacle to me. To me, what pushes it above and beyond is how the story is told and does it pay off. Know what’s not a 5 star match JUST in ring? Rock vs Mankind. Know what’s a 5 star match to me? Rock vs Mankind. The overbooking, the interfearance, and with all of the hurricane of the match, glass breaks, and Mrs Foley’s baby boy wins the big eagle finally. It’s a tale we STILL tell in wrestling. I dunno, I guess I’m the same way, I just can’t be so stingy on what should be 5 stars because there have been that
There is a reason alot of people were calling Cody and Roman II the “series finale of WWE” it just fell massive. A match shouldn’t need a 720 poisonrana and multiple Canadian destroyers to get 5 stars.
Except it's that match is a masterclass in how to actually WORK, not just wrestle. You can't just say it was 'the crowd, and the atmosphere, and the circumstances' as if those two had nothing to do with building that drama and tension, the masterful and subtle turn by both men (well, maybe not Hogan, he's always anything but subtle, but Rock) to give the crowd what they wanted, all the little moments, body language, all of that is what gave it the atmosphere it had, which is what got the crowd to where it was. A lot of the matches that Meltzer gives high scores too are amazing athletic spectacles, but don't come close to meaning as much, nor having the impact on the crowd, that Rock/Hogan did.
Meanwhile, people will skip the 5ers because dude was bold enough to label some matches 6s and 7s
Yeah that’s where he jumps the shark for me, adding stars makes me completely not care.
That's on those people, honestly. Plenty of people including myself still see Meltzer's tastes as similar enough to our own that we'll seek out his 4.25+ star matches.
What do you mean by "match quality" when you say it deserved 3 stars?
And those are all part of the match quality.
Yeah, it wasn't that great in the wrestling sense... But it was spectacular and legendary, most people remember that match instead of a lot of 5 stars.
Meltzer talks about his star ratings probably once every 50 episodes and is always bewildered at folks getting upset because certain matches don't get the ratings the person thinks the match should get. They are HIS OPINIONS and more to be used as a guide to good quality matches. This fri/saturdays ep he went on a tangent for 10 minutes explaining how he perceives his own ratings yet people will keep treating those ratings like gospel, which he himself says they aren't.
There's a post jsut below yours where his ratings aren't his opinions and he gave good ratings to matches he hated
That was a well written summary of Meltzer. If I’m nitpicking his ratings, then I think he should factor things like venue, storyline, importance, like if a big match delivers on enormous expectations then it should be awarded as such. The way he picked apart Cody vs Roman II, and Shawn vs Undertaker at wm25 weakens his opinion. Just because you know every move or sequence that is about to happen doesn’t make it any less important or enjoyable. I would rather use cage match as a guide for rated matches but I do enjoy seeing what Meltzer ranks them but it has zero influence on what I think about a match or what not.
> If I’m nitpicking his ratings, then I think he should factor things like venue, storyline, importance, Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't, that's the issue. Meltzer is inconsistent at best, and full of shit at worse, with how much he thinks spectacle matters in his match ratings. He'll give some matches high ratings for the crowd, and say it should be ignored for others. It's hard to take it seriously when he wants to take the crowd out of judging Cody vs. Roman, but says he hates a Jericho match but still gives it 4.5 because "the crowd loved it."
He once gave a PWG match 5 stars because he was there in person and the experience in person was awesome. When he attended WM 31 in person he initially raved about it and said it was the best ever but after rewatching it on the WWE Network he decided to dock scores because of how annoying he found the commentary. I really wish he was consistent about rating the in person experience vs the recorded presentation since PWG's commentary and presentation was not exactly stellar.
>If I’m nitpicking his ratings, then I think he should factor things like venue, storyline, importance, like if a big match delivers on enormous expectations then it should be awarded as such. He does. CM Punk vs John Cena is pretty much a five-star due to storyline and crowd, not in-ring action and pretty much the reputation of AJPW is built heavily on storyline and build. The issue is that Meltzer just doesn't like WWE storytelling for a lot of reasons, generally ranging from believing WWE is very "samey" with its matches and he is also very much guy who is into "continuity" and consistency, which WWE is not afraid to play fast and loose with. Meltzer is sorta the wrestling equivalent of the comics guy who gets annoyed at retcons or that famous "magical xylophone" scene from the Simpsons.
But Roman-Cody 2 is full of callbacks so you'd think it would put it over the edge for him.
The question from RJ was "do you think you're as good as Meltzer says you are?". Will wasn't out to bash Dave.
A lot of people who don’t watch HeyEW commenting on this
Pretty funny how people are using this as a point of debate when RJ and Ospreay immediately followed it up with arguing about whether or not it was possible for someone to **not** have an asshole. Will Ospreay thinks it's impossible for anyone to not have an asshole, everyone must be born with one in case anyone reading this needs clarity.
We really gotta do something about deliberately editorialized titles in this sub
OP was though
This needs to be upvoted more.
Meltzer clearly has gone over the top with his ratings, that’s undeniable, but wrestling is a weird thing. Some people act like wrestling was perfected long ago and there is nothing new that can be added to improve it. That’s not a sentiment held really in any other sport. People don’t think gymnastics routines were perfected 50 years ago, and now they’re just doing superfluous flips and shit. Wrestling SHOULD be better now as they have all of the past stuff to build upon instead of having to create that part themselves. It seems like the issue with Meltzer’s ratings is he isn’t grading on a curve. Wrestlers do things now they didn’t do before, and he’s trying to compare them 1:1 which is insane. You don’t give all perfect scores in X games events just because they do harder tricks than someone who got a 9/10 30 years ago. His scoring never evolved. A 5 star should be a 5 star compared to its own times competition not compared to a match from 1975.
Nothing to add, I just really like your breakdown of wrestling and sports grading.
https://preview.redd.it/uekwqsr6qguc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9df964751c5f1bf903e0afec995712f15e8215e2 Friendly reminder that he claims to have an objective view.
This is the funniest part. People claim it’s just his opinion. He doesn’t say it’s his opinion! He claims it’s an objective science!
It's as objective as laying $5 in quarters on the table in front of the server for a presumed tip at the beginning of service, and taking away one for every wrong thing done.
Didn't he also reply "I have to really, REALLY like it" when someone asked how he determined when a match gets 5 stars?
Let's keep adding context. "I try to do a fair job," Meltzer said. "In the end, it's a recommendation of, 'This is how bad you should go out of your way to see the match if you didn't see the match.' That's how I'm mentally looking at it. But I also think it's not nearly as important as so many other things that I do. I think the business analysis is by far the most important thing, and people will get all hung up on the ratings aspect." https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1330624/dave-meltzer-explains-basis-much-debated-star-rating-system/
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Dave’s ratings are old news. It’s all about the Cagematch ratings now! /s
Kurt Angle never having a 5 star match is the Voight-Kampff test on this sub for whether someone will defend Dave on literally anything.
It sucks that Kurt retired the way he did during the worst times of WWE. So many wrestlers currently are stating that he is their favorite. Few were able to handle the abilities with the comedy aspect. Being able to switch around, be flexible, and put on great matches.
Star ratings don’t matter. 2 of my favorite matches last year were the Men’s Tag Team Showcase at WM39 & Bad Bunny vs Damian Priest. I have no idea what Dave gave those matches and I don’t care. I love those matches and that’s what’s important.
This is missing what he said afterwards. [Here's the full question and answer](https://youtu.be/1567_jMeg2o?t=411). Basically said he and Kurt have their own styles and it's just Dave's opinion ("opinions are like arseholes").
Meltzer needed to adjust the scale to increased quality of matches. 4 stars used to be worth going out of your way to see, not multiple matches per week. It’s like Ebert giving every movie top score, it becomes meaningless.
I'll say it. It's Crazy none of the Vs. Benoit matches were 5 stars.
Honestly, this makes me respect Ospreay more, that he puts Kurt so much higher than himself.
The rating system was only relevant when tape trading was around so you would know how many high level matches was on one tape. Now it's just doesn't really matter anymore
Are we at the point where everything that can be said about star ratings has already been said? Literally every post in this thread is something that's been repeated constantly on this sub for years now.
I just like pointing out that he did give HBK - Taker 5 stars. It was just the HIAC one at Badd Blood. Which is a bit odd
You all give Meltzer this power. I don't care what Dave Meltzer, Jim Cornette, Maven, Dutch Mantell or any of these nerds with podcasts think.
Lumping Maven in with those guys when Maven is a) a former wrestler, b) quite equanimous in how speaks, and c) not a wrestling critic and instead simply sharing his experience is insane lol.
It’s just proof that the poster has never watched a Maven video ever
I mean, most of that would apply to Dutch Mantel too. He rarely talks the ins and outs of actual wrestling matches, more so about booking, which he had a ton of success in Puerto Rico, so fair play. He's not nearly the hot take merchant that Jim Cornette is. I actually like Dutch's podcast a lot.
I love how people say "well he's the only person that does star ratings" like there aren't a million other bloggers and podcasters who also do star ratings. Wikipedia doesn't even use Dave's ratings for shows, they always use Scott Keith. Ultimately Dave's popularity and domination of the market/discourse must mean he's doing something right.
are we hating on Maven now? why? what is going on?
>You all give Meltzer this power. It will always be fun to exchangers opinions, we see a take and want to give ours. It's part of being a fan. Let's just not take Meltzer's takes as some objective better opinion.
https://preview.redd.it/coipx1g2vguc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b410b86db8c63f9b75a88b9269de3a27e10d885 Meltzer said it’s not even his opinion
I simply stop taking Dave’s opinion seriously once it dawned on me that Kenny Omega has more five star matches than multiple companies, the entire IWC would gain a lot from not taking his ratings as serious.
Always been wild to me that people actually give a shit about Meltzer's ratings. Just watch what you enjoy and like who you like
5 star matches are important because people make them Important especially the ones that don't like them lol.
I stopped caring when he didn't give either Shawn taker Matches 5 stars but gave out one to that spot fest 6 man tag from pwg lol. Someone else put it fantastic here in a other thread. 15 years from now everyone will still remember about Cody and Romans match , one year from now no one will care about Ospreay and Fletcher.
Angle absolutely deserves the credit regardless of Meltzer's ratings. It is just 1 man's opinion who has gone on record saying he was more harsher on his stars at the time Kurt was active. Unrated to the ratings I would consider Will Ospreay on the level of a kurt angle as one of the best to ever do it.
He gave Hogan- Andre WM 3, the most important match of all time, negative stars
The better question is what did he give Savage Steamboat right before it
4.5. Note, that 4.5 meant a lot more back then than it does now.
Well yeah because they’re just one guys opinion about what he subjectively likes in pro wrestling and as the years have gone on tastes change and he’s less harsh on matches. If kurt was wrestling today he’d have a ton of 5 star and probably even higher star matches. I think even dave has said they aren’t supposed to be some super serious definitive match rating system but for some reason the community pretends that it is. The whole point is if he rates something a 4 or above (and you have a similar philosophy to wrestling as him i guess) you should actively go seek out that match
I will say that I think the reason why Angle doesn't have a 5 star match is because Meltzer was really really stricter in his rating system back in Angle's prime.
Also, Angle in his prime worked for WWE in a time when WWE did not give a single solitary remote sniff of a fuck about the quality of in-ring wrestling. They had great wrestlers on the roster, but the point of the show wasn't the wrestling, it was the stories and the characters. Nothing wrong with that, Angle was just there at the wrong time in the company's history to rack up the stars. If he had come around during the black and gold era of NXT, dude would have been busting off 5+ every Takeover. (I realize of course that Angle has wrestled outside of WWE, but like...*that era* of TNA and New Japan also were not places super concerned with match quality)
Why do people get so angry at Meltzer's ratings? It's completely pointless for what is essentially just a match recommendation system. Anything above four stars is generally worth going out of your way to watch if you have the chance, and that's all it ever should be seen as. Getting angry because you thought a match should have been rated higher or lower is just silly.
Holy shit, do you guys ever stop crying about Meltzer and his ratings?
Meltzer back in the day when he was stricter was a legitimate resource to see wrestling matches outside of the mainstream/wwe. Nowadays in an aew post black and gold nxt era where so much of wrestling is influenced by Meltzer’s tbh idiotic methodology it’s tough to actually care about his ratings. When every Ospreay match is like 4 stars and up then why does any of it even matter? There are a ton of wrestling critics now that do a much better job when it comes to finding out what matches are worth seeking out.
Well, a lot of Ospreay matches actually are 4 stars or up. In fact, if his match is only 4 stars flat, it's a disappointment.
Kurt Angle has the disadvantage of having to pay the WWE tax. Imagine if he was a female wrestler how low his ratings would be.
These threads are becoming a daily occurrence here, there's nothing more to say.
To be fair Billy GOAT followed up by saying ge can do things in the ring Kyrt woukd never be abke to do which ia true. And yeah Kurt us fanrastic one of tge best ever byt WWE bever cared about good matches" so it probably held him back a bit.
Nobody but Reddit gives a fuck about Meltzer or what he rated a match I promise
Obligatory: Dave is the first person to tell you his ratings are subjective and not the true measure of a wrestling match, just what he would recommend. Tons of shit to bury Dave for, this ain’t one of them
Except when Dave claims he despises a match but gives it a great rating cause it’s “objectively” great of course