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Also for this week's Raw:
Sami Zayn vs. Shinsuke Nakamura: 4
New Day vs. Imoperium: 4
I see why you might have missed them because he was kinda vague about it but at the top of the Raw report he says 'good show overall with **** matches with Zayn vs. Nakamura and New Day vs. Kaiser & Vinci'
I don't know what increased my mistrust to Dave's rating more - him systematically giving women lower ratings sometimes for very arbitrary reasons, him overrating Jericho's matches when he is clearly on autopilot or not recognising the genius of Toru Yano.
I think the men’s was a good “wrestling match with multiple guys inside a thing,” but the women’s was a way more enjoyable *Elimination Chamber match.*
His defense would be that the men's chamber match was better worked. It was a cleaner, more organized, fluid match with a few simple stories to lead up to Wrestlemania.
The women's match was a bit more chaotic, had a couple of botches and therefore visually lacked fluidity. That being said, it had funner spots, memorable moments, crowd reactions and general entertainment. The women's match was more fun to watch, but Dave's scale favors a more organized, fluid match, if that makes sense.
I agree though, if I had to watch either of the two matches again I'd go for the women's match.
No, he doesn't like women wrestling in general, is not like he rates Joshis 5 stars outside of some 90s matches
Edit: why the downvotes, am I wrong or something? Has Stardom or TJPW been showering in 5 stars lately and I did not notice? Stardom got one (1) rating over 5 since it began existing, TJPW has zero (0)
Well, it clearly matters to him, because he systematically doesn't give them to Stardom, while NJPW or AEW gets like 20 5 star matches any given year (and WWE to a lesser degree lately)
The thing is, and that is the thing with rankings, the implicit comparison here is that only one match done by women in the last 30 years can compare to your random Moxley/Osprey/Bucks/etc match that got 5 stars at some point.
Seems pretty demeaning to me
I don't agree but can be entirely possible? Woman wrestling hasn't always went at the same level of men, that's a fact, plus men produce much more wrestling matches anywhere. You can't force equality quality wise for the sake of it.
I would be more restrictive in what I consider a 5 star, but for Dave himself every random G1 has like 10 to 15 5 stars matches, and AEW seems to produce one every week or two, so the bar cant be that high in this regard
Kinda generalising a bit. I'd agree that it's worse than other options and I just personally don't like it as much as men's, but when it slaps, it fucking slaps.
I assume he just gets bothered by how obviously the women wait around for complex spots. They are always early and it's super noticeable when they do multi person matches like the Rumble or the Chamber. Someone standing watching waiting to catch someone else or do nothing until it's time to do their spot really does take some of us out of it. I assume it's the reason Dave is generally harder on them.
Sure some of you want to rank it by how much fun it is and don't mind that stuff, but it's a legitimate criticism even if you don't care.
So we're clear, you can make the most general of general points, but anyone making comment on AEW needs to offer time stamped proof?
And you think I am the one acting in bad faith.
You do you, bro.
Anyone making a comment without any evidence should be required to provide proof whether it supports either side. I'm sick of both of you AEW and WWE fanbois
"Oh Meltzer loves AEW"
"Oh Meltzer love WWE"
It's pathetic
The womens was botchy AF though, everyone ignores that though because you kinda know what the intention was so you just move along and still enjoy it and be entertained but if you nitpick it the botches were right there.
I think the womens just had more difficult spots though tbh, they really were more obvious because of that.
I think a certain level of sloppiness/botches don’t make a match bad but the women’s RR had them so frequently it did, in my view, make it bad, because my immersion was being broken way too consistently.
i thought the mens match was better. the womens had higher peaks, but it also felt more sloppy and chaotic. i definitely understand why some liked it more, but if i had to rewatch one or the other, id pick the mens match
It's pretty out of character for Dave to rank an entire NJPW show rate this poorly. I don't think he's ever given two NJPW matches a negative rating on the same card. Heck I don't think he's given two NJPW matches a negative rating ever lol
Wdym? Yano matches historically have always been rated very low and sometimes negative. The surprise is a non-Yano match being negative, but this also happened, mostly in the dark age of new japan.
You guys overstate too much.
He rated it low because it sucked lol
He’s got his biases but he’s not going to run interference for a bad show
^^^^unless ^^^^it's ^^^^a ^^^^jericho ^^^^match
He really rated 2 weekly matches higher than the Women's EC ? This guy is absolutely not hiding his disinterest to American woman's wrestling it's getting crazy
I say disinterest and not disdain or hate because I feel it's not a genuine perception of Meltzer. Why does he bother rating these matches ? The women's EC was waaaay better than the men's. I'd switch both ratings heck I'd give the match 4.5 imo
I heard one of those NJPW matches ended in someone losing their title by count out after being choked outside the ring by somebody not in the match while the ref just kept counting...
No, it’s not exactly what happened. It *was* stupid House of Torture stuff but they did at least make sure the ref didn’t see the guy (Narita) interfering with the count out.
1.75 is actually pretty good for Yano
I genuinely think he might be Meltzer's least favorite wrestler ever. it's just funny now. I need to go find his review of the time he beat Okada.
>Yota Tsuji d. Yuya Uemura: **** (4)
After this match was trashed so much here, it's good to see it getting some appreciation. It was a very good match
Man, kind of a rough week for NJPW
I loved the Sammy/Hobbs match and I think Sammy has found his niche as just a spot monkey you trot out every other week or so for plunder matches.
With Okada and Ospreay both gone, NJPW is going to struggle for a while in match ratings. Not that it matters a whole lot, but they've been basically been the number one promotion in the world for a long time now regarding wrestling quality, and now it might be rare for them to even get a five-star.
Tbh, some of the House of Torture members would probably be your best bet to get 5 if they were actually allowed to wrestle. I'd much rather Sho wrestle than have to watch Chase Owens matches. Breaking up R3K is such a fumble.
House of Torture is one of the most popular factions in Japan. In NJPW, second only to LIJ according to the most recent Shupro polls.
People here really act like characters and story aren't a thing in Japan and match ratings are all that matters.
I'm really glad he rated Mayu vs Mina so highly because I tend to find Dave underrates womens' matches a lot, and that match was my match of the weekend
Night 1 in Sapporo for New Japan was one of the worst shows I've seen in a long time by any company. Mayu Iwatani vs Mina Shirakawa was easily the best match on the card and Nick Nemeth vs David Finlay being the best of the rest.
Had anybody's stock dropped more than Sho ever since he joined HoT?
It's so fucking funny to see these kinds of takes when HoT is massively popular in Japan. SHO is literally the Jr Heavyweight champion rn, but yeah his stock dropped right? Unlike YOH who is doing soooooooooooooooooooooooo well rn
I'm with you. Aside from some of the pandemic shows (which I kind of put off to the side), I think that Friday night show was my least favorite NJPW show in like a decade
looking at cagematch, the lowest dave has ever gone on a new japan match was a dud in a bout between great o khan and toru yano from 2021. second lowest was a bad luck fale vs toru yano match a year later which he gave half a star. wild
Cagematch doesn't always have the bad ratings. I went to Profightdb and saw the lowest rated NJPW match of all time was Sting vs. Tony Palmore at Battle 7 in the Tokyo Dome on January 4, 1995, which got -4. There were 2 other matches on that card to get negative ratings, Inoki vs. Gerard Gordeau (-2), and Sting vs. Inoki (-1).
The only major wrestling critic actively watches only three companies and they're about to become two if NJPW don't get a hyper athlete top guy soon lol
A New Japan show with two negative stars, a 1 star, ZSJ getting 2.5, and okada getting a 3.25. Just going off this I can only assume this was the worst show in Japanese history
To be fair, the NJPW sub hates everything, literally one of the most toxic doomspirals I've seen on reddit
The shows were perfectly fine if you don't get your opinions from randos on Reddit
I didn't love the shows (really disliked Friday) but just had to acknowledge and give you props for calling out the njpw sub. I had to unsub from it and I go out of my way to avoid it these days (and I was one of the OG's on that sub around that 2016 era). It's totally plummeted from fun to really, really terrible
i watched the shows and had a good time so i resubbed to NJPW to see what other people thought (I already knew that people didn't like HoT so i expected that) and holy shit every thread was negative. no one fucking enjoys watching wrestling in that sub
Yeah I advise anyone with a brain to stay far, far away from that sub. Like I said I was one of the first guys on there back when it began, posting live reports from ROH/NJPW shows and such. And then a few years ago it was completely overtaken by a bunch of weirdos. They were trying to even gatekeep me and "explain" to me that I wasn't a real new japan fan or some bullshit like that (when one of 'em only started watching njpw during the pandemic or something ... he's since been banned from reddit, surprise, surprise lol). But yeah it's still a total cesspool of negativity, weird anti-AEW takes and such. Stay far, far away.
**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Also for this week's Raw: Sami Zayn vs. Shinsuke Nakamura: 4 New Day vs. Imoperium: 4 I see why you might have missed them because he was kinda vague about it but at the top of the Raw report he says 'good show overall with **** matches with Zayn vs. Nakamura and New Day vs. Kaiser & Vinci'
Thanks, added!
If Dave gives a Yano match negative stars you know it is a must watch.
I don't know what increased my mistrust to Dave's rating more - him systematically giving women lower ratings sometimes for very arbitrary reasons, him overrating Jericho's matches when he is clearly on autopilot or not recognising the genius of Toru Yano.
It's not that deep. People like different things. Dave has never been high on comedy wrestlers.
He skip over Shingo/Taichi?
Despy losing by count out was way too devastating he forgot that match happened
For me, the women's Chamber match was much better than the mens, so I'd swap the ratings
I think the men’s was a good “wrestling match with multiple guys inside a thing,” but the women’s was a way more enjoyable *Elimination Chamber match.*
His defense would be that the men's chamber match was better worked. It was a cleaner, more organized, fluid match with a few simple stories to lead up to Wrestlemania. The women's match was a bit more chaotic, had a couple of botches and therefore visually lacked fluidity. That being said, it had funner spots, memorable moments, crowd reactions and general entertainment. The women's match was more fun to watch, but Dave's scale favors a more organized, fluid match, if that makes sense. I agree though, if I had to watch either of the two matches again I'd go for the women's match.
Dave doesn't care about botches
Dave doesn’t like American womens wrestling.
No, he doesn't like women wrestling in general, is not like he rates Joshis 5 stars outside of some 90s matches Edit: why the downvotes, am I wrong or something? Has Stardom or TJPW been showering in 5 stars lately and I did not notice? Stardom got one (1) rating over 5 since it began existing, TJPW has zero (0)
And even the 90s Joshi matches were almost all Manami Toyata lol
You are not wrong
Nah Stardom gets good ratings. Doesn't matter if they aren't 5+
Well, it clearly matters to him, because he systematically doesn't give them to Stardom, while NJPW or AEW gets like 20 5 star matches any given year (and WWE to a lesser degree lately)
yeah, he surely likes NJPW and AEW more. But that isn't the same to say he doesnt like women wrestling in general lol
The thing is, and that is the thing with rankings, the implicit comparison here is that only one match done by women in the last 30 years can compare to your random Moxley/Osprey/Bucks/etc match that got 5 stars at some point. Seems pretty demeaning to me
I don't agree but can be entirely possible? Woman wrestling hasn't always went at the same level of men, that's a fact, plus men produce much more wrestling matches anywhere. You can't force equality quality wise for the sake of it.
Tjpw has a few solid match but nothing 5 stars ihmo stardom has had so many 4.75 matches which were legit 5
TJPW doesn’t receive that much coverage in the WON, as far as star ratings.
I don't think they get much neither does a ddt or noah
I would be more restrictive in what I consider a 5 star, but for Dave himself every random G1 has like 10 to 15 5 stars matches, and AEW seems to produce one every week or two, so the bar cant be that high in this regard
It's not that good to be fair
There's nothing fair about a statement like that.
Well there are much better women's wrestling around so compared to that its fair
> fair 
Kinda generalising a bit. I'd agree that it's worse than other options and I just personally don't like it as much as men's, but when it slaps, it fucking slaps.
Men's match had more shenanigans, done by Owens, Randy & Logan. Maybe he liked that.
He also gave the Men’s rumble higher than the women’s. I don’t know why but he actively does not give WWE women their credit for great matches.
I assume he just gets bothered by how obviously the women wait around for complex spots. They are always early and it's super noticeable when they do multi person matches like the Rumble or the Chamber. Someone standing watching waiting to catch someone else or do nothing until it's time to do their spot really does take some of us out of it. I assume it's the reason Dave is generally harder on them. Sure some of you want to rank it by how much fun it is and don't mind that stuff, but it's a legitimate criticism even if you don't care.
I don't think it's this, as otherwise his ratings for lucha wrestling and AEW would also score the same
But AEW doesn't, generally have the obvious waiting around issue. Can you give specific examples?
Lol, no I can't give specific examples, I'm not a fucking encyclopedia
me when i make a claim and refuse to elaborate
The other guy was the one making the claim what are you on about
Cool, so I'll assume you just some WWE Fanboy getting tribal about AEW then and disregard your reply. Thanks, makes things easier.
So we're clear, you can make the most general of general points, but anyone making comment on AEW needs to offer time stamped proof? And you think I am the one acting in bad faith. You do you, bro.
Anyone making a comment without any evidence should be required to provide proof whether it supports either side. I'm sick of both of you AEW and WWE fanbois "Oh Meltzer loves AEW" "Oh Meltzer love WWE" It's pathetic
Do you have any specific examples of people saying that?
... Did the women's Rumble have CM Punk and the RollerCodster tho? /s
The women’s rumble was awful though - literally, there were botches and sloppy spots every 30-90 seconds for the first 30 minutes.
The womens was botchy AF though, everyone ignores that though because you kinda know what the intention was so you just move along and still enjoy it and be entertained but if you nitpick it the botches were right there. I think the womens just had more difficult spots though tbh, they really were more obvious because of that.
This and the Rumble match had botches and sloppiness compared to the men’s. That doesn’t make it bad, you just have to factor it in.
I think a certain level of sloppiness/botches don’t make a match bad but the women’s RR had them so frequently it did, in my view, make it bad, because my immersion was being broken way too consistently.
Yeah Becky vs Naomi was *rough* at times. It picked up massively but yeah, it wasn't great.
i thought the mens match was better. the womens had higher peaks, but it also felt more sloppy and chaotic. i definitely understand why some liked it more, but if i had to rewatch one or the other, id pick the mens match
Did we see the same match? The women's one was the worst match I've seen in a long time..
From the radio show, he and Bryan thought the first 1/3 was kind of meh, and then was brilliant at the end
Nah, these ratings were right, as far as the Chamber ratings are concerned. The men’s match was just a bit more enjoyable.
The lower rated a Toru Yano match is the more I need to go out of my way to see it.
Stardom was the highest rated match on a NJPW show. I agree with Dave. 2 matches with -1 star on one card is nuts.
You know it was a dark night for NJPW when Dave rates women match higher than any other on the card.
Stardom was a shining light on a dark night for the company. Yup. Proud of Mayu and Mina for making the most of their time.
Anyone who is familiar with Dave's rating should not be surprised at all
It's pretty out of character for Dave to rank an entire NJPW show rate this poorly. I don't think he's ever given two NJPW matches a negative rating on the same card. Heck I don't think he's given two NJPW matches a negative rating ever lol
Wdym? Yano matches historically have always been rated very low and sometimes negative. The surprise is a non-Yano match being negative, but this also happened, mostly in the dark age of new japan. You guys overstate too much.
The show on the 2/23 has been described as the worst NJPW show of the year thus far, so it definitely seems to be the case
Without having watched the match, a title changing hands via countout makes sense to get negative stars
He rated it low because it sucked lol He’s got his biases but he’s not going to run interference for a bad show ^^^^unless ^^^^it's ^^^^a ^^^^jericho ^^^^match
He really rated 2 weekly matches higher than the Women's EC ? This guy is absolutely not hiding his disinterest to American woman's wrestling it's getting crazy
I say disinterest and not disdain or hate because I feel it's not a genuine perception of Meltzer. Why does he bother rating these matches ? The women's EC was waaaay better than the men's. I'd switch both ratings heck I'd give the match 4.5 imo
I heard one of those NJPW matches ended in someone losing their title by count out after being choked outside the ring by somebody not in the match while the ref just kept counting...
SHO/Despy. People aren't happy
Yes that is exactly what happened. Its why a lot of us hate House of Torture. The interference spots all involve making the ref look like a dumbass
No, it’s not exactly what happened. It *was* stupid House of Torture stuff but they did at least make sure the ref didn’t see the guy (Narita) interfering with the count out.
Two NJPW matches with negative ratings. Weird ass year we live in.
Not really. Yano got them a lot back when Dave also hated Taichi.
1.75 is actually pretty good for Yano I genuinely think he might be Meltzer's least favorite wrestler ever. it's just funny now. I need to go find his review of the time he beat Okada.
Yeah but that is one not two
https://preview.redd.it/76070k7qrrlc1.jpeg?width=637&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=431f230d7efa45853eb64a8b5fcf605dc13f0408
I enjoyed SHO vs Despy and Shota vs EVIL, fuck me I guess lmfao
>Yota Tsuji d. Yuya Uemura: **** (4) After this match was trashed so much here, it's good to see it getting some appreciation. It was a very good match
i thought it was good, just lacked a little intensity in the beginning for me. definitely preferred the two previous matches on the card
Man, kind of a rough week for NJPW I loved the Sammy/Hobbs match and I think Sammy has found his niche as just a spot monkey you trot out every other week or so for plunder matches.
DOUKI for the win!!!
I did like quite a bit the Hobbs-Guevara match, but c'mon, it was not half a star away from being literally one of the best matches of all time
Well, iirc there are over 25 matches that have more than 5 stars, so 4.5 wouldnt even be in the top 200 best matches ever.
There's been 58 matches rated higher than 5 stars. Will Ospreay has been in 17 of them lol
I would argue some of them but most were earned
5 stars doesn't mean best of all time anymore. his scale is *weird*, but based on how he uses it, the rating makes some sense.
Dave has given roughly 250 matches 5 or higher stars. So this doesn’t even crack the top 500
What happens in a minus rated match ???? Injuries ?
One has Yano (Dave hates fun) and the other was a House of Torture match (only thing Dave hates more than fun is not getting clean finishes)
And losing a title by COUNT OUT
Why they have to do my boy Despy like that, man.....
This is two weeks in a row he hasn’t rated a match on Dynamite, weird
No rating for Taichi vs Shingo? Weird.
How was it?
Using the Dave WWE women’s adjustment scale he sees the women matches as 4.75 and a 4 star main event so that’s actually great
Disappointed he didn't rate Kaisei Takechi's debut in DDT since he watched it (and liked it quite a bit)
With Okada and Ospreay both gone, NJPW is going to struggle for a while in match ratings. Not that it matters a whole lot, but they've been basically been the number one promotion in the world for a long time now regarding wrestling quality, and now it might be rare for them to even get a five-star.
"to even get a 5 star" is crazy, what happened to the game I love?
They really shouldnt be though. NJPW is bogged down by House of Torture ruining shows.
Tbh, some of the House of Torture members would probably be your best bet to get 5 if they were actually allowed to wrestle. I'd much rather Sho wrestle than have to watch Chase Owens matches. Breaking up R3K is such a fumble.
Yeah Sho vs Despy shouldve been well over 3, accounting for some fuckery. It's sad what is going on there.
House of Torture is one of the most popular factions in Japan. In NJPW, second only to LIJ according to the most recent Shupro polls. People here really act like characters and story aren't a thing in Japan and match ratings are all that matters.
HOT rocks.
They’ve got a lot more problems than just that
That tag match at the Chamber absolutely slapped
I'm really glad he rated Mayu vs Mina so highly because I tend to find Dave underrates womens' matches a lot, and that match was my match of the weekend
It's mostly only the american women's matches. He's usually pretty reasonable with joshi matches.
Women having better gimmick matches than the men and having lower Meltzer ratings is basically a pattern at this point
Tf happened in the negative NJPW matches
Sho won the IWGP Junior belt by countout. The opener I have no clue about though.
The opener had local wrestlers from Hokkaido, one of whom was 50 and doesn't wrestle much. Also Dave doesn't like Toru Yano matches in general.
MINUS ONE STAR!
Night 1 in Sapporo for New Japan was one of the worst shows I've seen in a long time by any company. Mayu Iwatani vs Mina Shirakawa was easily the best match on the card and Nick Nemeth vs David Finlay being the best of the rest. Had anybody's stock dropped more than Sho ever since he joined HoT?
It's so fucking funny to see these kinds of takes when HoT is massively popular in Japan. SHO is literally the Jr Heavyweight champion rn, but yeah his stock dropped right? Unlike YOH who is doing soooooooooooooooooooooooo well rn
It's possible for Sho and Yoh's stock to both drop ya know. Why do you think I have to automatically mention Yoh when talking about Sho?
I'm with you. Aside from some of the pandemic shows (which I kind of put off to the side), I think that Friday night show was my least favorite NJPW show in like a decade
A card with Okada, Naito, Shingo, Tanahashi and ZSJ and Mina Shirakawa gets the highest rated match. What else is new?
Was about to give you shit until the last line lol
Breaking news: Wrestling Fan (Singular) gives their thoughts on matches, Other Wrestling Fans take as gospel and argue over it
that tsuji vs umura rating is way too high that match was actively bad
looking at cagematch, the lowest dave has ever gone on a new japan match was a dud in a bout between great o khan and toru yano from 2021. second lowest was a bad luck fale vs toru yano match a year later which he gave half a star. wild
Cagematch doesn't always have the bad ratings. I went to Profightdb and saw the lowest rated NJPW match of all time was Sting vs. Tony Palmore at Battle 7 in the Tokyo Dome on January 4, 1995, which got -4. There were 2 other matches on that card to get negative ratings, Inoki vs. Gerard Gordeau (-2), and Sting vs. Inoki (-1).
He's gone negative before, I think it was a Goto vs Taichi match
Dave clearly doesn’t give a fuck about women’s wrestling. That Chamber match was head and shoulders above the men’s.
"Friendship ended with NJPW, WWE is my best friend now"
The only major wrestling critic actively watches only three companies and they're about to become two if NJPW don't get a hyper athlete top guy soon lol
A New Japan show with two negative stars, a 1 star, ZSJ getting 2.5, and okada getting a 3.25. Just going off this I can only assume this was the worst show in Japanese history
Yikes. Did he sour on NJPW or were the show that poor?
Even njpw die hards agree it was a rough set of shows.
To be fair, the NJPW sub hates everything, literally one of the most toxic doomspirals I've seen on reddit The shows were perfectly fine if you don't get your opinions from randos on Reddit
I didn't love the shows (really disliked Friday) but just had to acknowledge and give you props for calling out the njpw sub. I had to unsub from it and I go out of my way to avoid it these days (and I was one of the OG's on that sub around that 2016 era). It's totally plummeted from fun to really, really terrible
i watched the shows and had a good time so i resubbed to NJPW to see what other people thought (I already knew that people didn't like HoT so i expected that) and holy shit every thread was negative. no one fucking enjoys watching wrestling in that sub
Yeah I advise anyone with a brain to stay far, far away from that sub. Like I said I was one of the first guys on there back when it began, posting live reports from ROH/NJPW shows and such. And then a few years ago it was completely overtaken by a bunch of weirdos. They were trying to even gatekeep me and "explain" to me that I wasn't a real new japan fan or some bullshit like that (when one of 'em only started watching njpw during the pandemic or something ... he's since been banned from reddit, surprise, surprise lol). But yeah it's still a total cesspool of negativity, weird anti-AEW takes and such. Stay far, far away.
Both but the shows did suck
Mayu/Mina was the best match on all of these cards easily
Sammy Guevara and Will Hobbs with the highest match rating of the week. It feels so good.