Source
r/SquaredCircle•
PositiveTai

I can't sleep, so figured, why not do something stupid, and take early guesses at what Meltzer's Ratings will be for Wrestlemania 36?

First off, I'm going to be VERY curious to see what wins the Observers "Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic" award this year, as its a toss up between WWE working with Saudi Arabia again, or WWE continuing to run operations and put on Wrestlemania 36 during the Corona epidemic while pretending it never existed.

But yeah, thought it might be fun to get peoples opinions on this before Thursday.

Night 1:

Gulak vs Cesaro: 2 stars.

Bliss and Cross vs Kabuki Warriors: 2.5 stars

King Corbin vs Elias: 1 star

Becky Lynch vs Shanya Bazler: 2 stars

Daniel Bryan vs Sami Zayn: 2.25 stars (WWE not allowing them to put on an indy style match, combined with the fuck finish, ruins this matches chances)

Morrison vs Kofi vs Jimmy Uso: 3.5 stars (lot of effort from the wrestlers, but too many botches and a fuck finish will drag this down)

Kevin Owens vs Seth Rollins: 3 stars (Really see this losing points due to the bullshit DQ finish and pointless restart)

Goldberg vs Strowman: DUD

Boneyard Match: Either he'll decline to give it an actual rating, because it wasn't an actual match, or he'll give it a 2.75 star rating for being a decent little brawl, but overly long and, having no technical merit, a waste of AJ Styles.

​

Night 2:

Liv Morgan vs Natalya: 1.5 stars

Charlotte Flair vs Rhea Ripley: 3.75 stars (closest thing to a proper NXT match on the entire show)

Black vs Lashley: 1 star (I mean...this match is entirely pointless and had zero story and a bunch of botches sooo....)

Otis vs Dolph Ziggler: 2.5 stars (the story element of having Sonya there and Mandy help Otis win and the ending will give it an extra half star or so...but the incredibly rushed nature of the stories finale will hinder any chance of this getting 3 stars)

Edge vs Orton: DUD (This is...kinda cheating. He's been VERY vocal of his hatred for this match on Twitter, even calling it "Chinese Water Torture of a match", due to being about twice as long as it deserved to be, the tasteless intentional reference to Benoit, the incredibly bland and shitty announcing that dragged the entire match down, and utterly terrible camera work and editing, on top of just not being a good match with far too much aimless brawling and Edge's entirely weird insistence on climbing things.)

Street Profits vs Austin Theory and Angel Garza: 2 stars.

Womens 5 Way Match: 3 stars

Funhouse Match: He will either decline to rate it, because it defies everything that he rates matches on, or he'll label it a DUD for advertising a proper match and pulling a bait and switch instead, as well as the complete and utter lack of wrestling action.

Drew vs Brock: DUD. (Basically, this and Goldberg vs Strowman are just far less effective and less fun versions of Goldberg vs Lesnar at Mania 33.)

Drew vs Big Show: 1. 75 stars. (At least a proper match...but clearly not up to any kind of proper standard.)

​

So yeah, basically, I think he'll overall judge that Mania this year was pretty much garbage, with the stuff that was mostly liked and talked about also being the stuff that can't be really properly rated, and that this show was absolutely NOT worth putting the entire roster at risk for just to tape in advance, which is something I think we can all agree on.

Posted Apr 7, 2020, 9:19 AM UTC

037
YepNo1•

The intro is not supposed to turn me away from reading your post.

Edit: And wow it got worse the more I read

35
dcnoob122We Don't Chant YES!, We Are YES!•

You should check their post history. Goes from saying WWE should allow indie shows to run at the PC during Mania week, to claiming WWE doesn’t care about the health of its performers while saying AEW would never do the same. Talk about a heavy case of irony.

Edit: they claimed AEW wouldn’t Do that before shows started happening without crowds, that’s just a case of words backfiring

10
PositiveTaiOP•

I fully acknowledged that this was a stupid thing to do, done out of boredom and an inability to sleep at 2 in the morning.

-6
boorestholds•

I don’t even care about Meltzers stars, why the fuck did I just read that...

...the cinematic matches are 5*

14
PositiveTaiOP•

Maybe you can't sleep either?

As for the cinematic stuff, I mean...depends. To you its 5 stars. To me, they were 5 stars.

But we aren't important, and our opinion doesn't actually matter in this case.

Meltzer's gonna rate according to his standards and his thoughts on what pro wrestling should be, and those matches do not fall into his pre-thought ideas of what pro wrestling should be. Dude wasn't a big fan of Lucha Underground, if I recall.

-1
boorestholds•

I mean to say, your opinion is a smidge more important to me than Meltzers.

3
PositiveTaiOP•

Is that 0.5 of a smidge, or 0.25?

...god, even for a bad pun, that was a bland pun. I'm not funny.

-1†
boorestholds•

The minimum match measuring increment, .25*

1
Razzler1973•

You're right, it is stupid

11
PositiveTaiOP•

I fully agree.

-2†
HeelStephen•

the tasteless intentional reference to Benoit

Yes. Because they definetely decided to intentionally reference a man they've practically wiped from their history.

7
PositiveTaiOP•

The first thing ANYONE who follows pro wrestling is going to think when they see Edge being choked by gym equipment is "That's how Benoit killed himself"

It's impossible, absolutely impossible, that they shot and edited and re-watched that spot before airing it, and NOBODY AT ALL thought of Benoit during it.

At BEST, they were reminded of it and STILL intentionally chose to air that part of it, on some ridiculous hope that people just wouldn't notice a reference to the worst wrestling tragedy of all time.

1†
DarthCitrusTRANQUILOOOOOOOOOOOO•

you should know that not everyone knows all the details in how Benoit killed himself. hell, even i didnt know about it. casual viewers wouldnt know about it. stop making generalizations from lens of your little world

2
TreeBore•

I know the full Benoit story and it never crossed my mind while watching the match.

2
YepNo1•

I didn't think of that at all. And I knew the details of how he died. Tell Meltzer to stop making something out of nothing

1
freebread•

He could give everything else a dud but if he tries to completely shit on the Firefly Funhouse match I can’t take him seriously. Somehow WWE pulled off the best storytelling short film seen in professional wrestling to the point where it was worth the whole odd wrestlemania, especially when you think about how if things went as planned it would have been a quick and easy match at the live Wrestlemania, and not an in depth character driven storytelling show.

5
PositiveTaiOP•

I think he will probably just not rate it at all, but I could see him giving it a low rating because of the false advertising and because it wasn't actually a match.

He's shown before with Miz vs Wyatt at TLC, I believe, that he'll give a low rating to a match with fantastic story telling if the technical side of things isn't up to his standards.

1
bobbyzee•

I'll take an early guess at what this post is going to end up at. DUD.

4
PositiveTaiOP•

Does a few flips

Is it .25 stars now at least?

2
bobbyzee•

Nope, -1 for not being a Tokyo dome as well

5
A_WILD_CUNT_APPEAREDBetter Than NAKAMURA!!!•

There really are meltzer drones huh comparable to the wwe ones.. Fucking hell.

3
MRN9Hiromie•

This guy doesn't rven listen to Meltzer otherwise he'd know he'll more than likely not even rate any of the matches.

1
A_WILD_CUNT_APPEAREDBetter Than NAKAMURA!!!•

Yeah looking at his other comments dudes just a troll.

2
PositiveTaiOP•

Depending on the person asked, Meltzer is basically a genius of pro wrestling who knows exactly how to book and what the crowd wants to see based off of nearly 50 years of experience in his field and knows more about wrestling than anybody in the business...

...or he's a total pillock whose on the spectrum and basically lucked his way into his career by watching wrestling for a long time and putting little asterisks next to matches and knows less about wrestling than anyone.

I know people get pissed about his star ratings being seen as objective in anyway, but I don't understand the point of disregarding him all together like some people do. The guys been spot on about so many things that it's impossible to just label him as worthless.

0
A_WILD_CUNT_APPEAREDBetter Than NAKAMURA!!!•

No I'm just making fun of you for your first paragraph.

1
PositiveTaiOP•

Oh, the whole "disgusting promotional tactic" bit.

That mainly had to do with how I kept seeing all this outcry from Dave and others about how WWE was being terrible people by continuing to do shows and not canceling Wrestlemania outright.

Meanwhile, AEW is apparently getting a free pass for doing the same thing.

0
[deleted]•

[deleted]

2
GraceDoran•

Becky v Shayna 2 stars? I’m intrigued. Is that purely cos of the finish? I thought the actual match was really good, fantastic actually. I can understand it not being rated high because of the surprising pin. I would have liked it to have gone longer too. To me it was one of Shayna’s better matches and deserves a better rating.

2
PositiveTaiOP•

Speaking personally, I enjoyed it, but based off what I've read of his ratings over the years, I feel like he would feel its too short, didn't tell much of a story, had a bad ending, and the generally bad booking with the wrong person winning costing it stars.

1
GraceDoran•

Yeah that makes a lot of sense to be fair

2
ukmosthated•

Asuka v Liv was the best match of the weekend

2
ClintEastwood41flair•

Drew vs Big Show??? WTF? did I turn Mania off early or something?

2
prabuddhasl•

I find it ridiculous how much people on this sub feel the need to suck a wrestling "reporter's" cock.

Here is an idea man, think for yourself.

2
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1
Looper007•

I think the closet to a 5 star will probably be the Boneyard match. I think Owens/Rollins and Ladder match will probably get 4 stars.

I expect the most debate will come from Orton/Edge match (he really seem to hate that one) and wasn't that big on most of the matches from night 2, I think Charlotte/Rhea might get the highest rating from that night.

1
SillWutton02•

Oh fucking hell not this guy again.

1
ukmosthated•

11.99 please

0
PositiveTaiOP•

I have to admit, while I know his price was set before the Network was a thing, I find it very amusing that a guy who mainly reports and speculate on wrestling shows and wrestlers charges more than literally any wrestling companies streaming service.

It would be like if I started a show to rate various albums on Spotify, or various movies on Netflix, while charging more for my service than they do for theirs.

Like, I KNOW this isn't the case, but doesn't it kinda just, a little bit at least, scream "I'm more important than the actual wrestling shows I report on."

Which again, isn't fair and isn't true.

-1