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Do you really think Tony Khan couldn’t legally say anything about CM Punk returning to WWE in that UK interview you posted on the site?
In a way, yes. If Tony said what he really wanted to say my guess is legal could have gotten involved then! I kid Tony Khan. Seriously, I don’t see any legal reason he couldn’t say, “If that is what Phil wants, I am happy for him”. He didn’t have to mean it, but it what’s a mature adult would do, like what HHH said when Edge left for AEW. Tony has shown that he lacks that ability.
I’m not going to say CM Punk is an angel. He should’ve taken the Cody Rhodes response from all the AEW mudslinging thrown at him and maybe he could’ve found a better way to deal with his issues in WWE despite being sick and hurt and burnt out by 2014. With that said, why is there such a myopic narrative toward Punk’s attitude? His fallout with WWE happened after being there for over 8 years and it wasn’t like he was some problem child during those eight years. I don’t remember reading a report from you guys saying CM Punk and Booker T got into a fistfight… that was Batista. And in AEW, we all know his problems came from reacting (maybe overreacting) to jealous has beens dragging his name through the mud to their favorite NewZ reporters and a boss who was unwilling to do anything about it. So why is there such an apprehension about Punk being the problem? It sounds like if you don’t disrespect him or take advantage of him, he’ll be happy… even if he needs to let stuff go sometimes. There are some legit questions in this rant so make it make sense please?
OK, first let’s go with the fans whose minds aren’t polluted by shoddy reporters who have an axe to grind with Punk at worst, or an agenda to promote AEW at best (and that’s a really sad “at best”). Punk is a polarizing figure, some like him, some don’t. Those that like him pop in a big way for him. Those that don’t like him respond in the negative. That’s fine. You are correct. Punk has to take a lot of blame in things that have happened over his career. And to his credit, he has taken said blame many times. Fair outlets report the good and bad. Outlets with an agenda/axe lie about him all the time, and some dolts believe them. But more and more, as their “reports” continue to be proven wrong, at least some fans are wising up to who those “reporters” really are and what they are all about.
Do you think WWE should do qualifying matches to get in the Rumble? They used to do it years ago and now wrestlers just announce they are in. I get it Cody is gonna be in it but why couldn’t anyone just announce they’re in it, especially, since there is 2 months to build this thing up. It should give them plenty of time on the shows to do so.
First off, I think any top or upper tier talent that declares for the Rumble should be able to do so. We want the best talents in there. I don’t have a problem with a qualifying match or two but I don’t want to see a lot of them. I want them to have the ability to let surprises get in. Let’s say that CM Punk signed in January. I want him to come out and not have all of the spots taken. Surprises makes the Rumble part of what it is.
Stephanie McMahon was at Survivor Series. Do you know if she played any role in the work involved to bring back CM Punk?
She did not. She was at the show but HHH’s deal, from what I was told, was all HHH and Nick Khan. Steph has no position in the company right now (but with Vince on the outs I sure hope that changes).
I have heard you say a few times that the only reason people are reading you is because of Dave Meltzer. I never heard of him until AEW started. I now know that he has been around a while and that you have a history with him. Can you tell the story of why Dave Meltzer got you into the business?
I want to start out by saying that I have an appreciation for some things that Dave Meltzer has accomplished in his career. He was a pioneer in the world of reporting on the pro wrestling business, covering it factually as if it were any other sport or business. At a time when most publications that covered the business, other than Wrestling Eye, were towing the kayfabe line, Dave reported what he believed to be the truth. I respect the work ethic that comes with publishing a very in-depth, weekly newsletter for decades. Anyone who has done that knows how difficult of a job it is. I respect that he has given his life to the business that I believe he loves and while it’s fashionable for some to bash his entire career in 2023, that is misguided and not fair. Like most things, nothing is all good or all bad and to ignore the positives of Dave’s career because of how he carries himself in 2023 is just unfair. I wanted to say that up front because, as you can probably guess by now, I have some serious criticisms to make going forward.
I first discovered Dave in either 1990 or 1991 when he did a wrestling column in the short-lived sports paper, The National Sports Daily. He had a weekly column, much like I did later for The New York Daily News, where he covered the business in a factual fashion. At the end of every column, he promoted his newsletter, The Wrestling Observer. I decided to give it a shot and was a subscriber for a few years, maybe more. I noticed that he had a results section in his newsletter so at some point, I wanted to support the cause and give results of shows that I attended or could watch on my C Band satellite dish (including CMLL and AAA when it first started) to share with the readers, you know the old wrestling fan fraternity. I was also trading tapes with a friend Japan, who gave me a lot of news from the country that I passed along to Dave. That led to Dave calling me at least once a week for results and news, which I gladly shared for free. I still paid for my subscription and no comp was ever offered or asked for.
Then ECW started to take off and I was very in tune with what was going on there. I got more calls from Dave since I knew a lot about what was happening in the company, even though I was still just a fan. I posted a lot of news on the old Usenet r.s.p-w group and I guess Dave didn't have access to it, so he called me for information. I was fine with that. I was helping the cause for both fans and ECW by sharing the news with Dave. It was all good….until it wasn’t.
As any Elite subscriber who has listened for any length of time can tell you, my relationship with Dave started to sour when I would read things in his newsletter that wouldn’t align with what I saw with my own eyes and/or knew wasn’t the truth. In some cases, things I told him, which I knew to be true, would end up being "reported" much differently by Dave, and they weren't totally true anymore.
I want to be clear and say that I don’t think Dave purposely did that, I just think that he ran what he was told by someone and/or believed to be true, even when it wasn’t. For instance, I doubt he ever doublechecked any of the news I gave him but if I gave him the stratight scoop and someone else gave him a flawed version of the story, he would mix the two together. To me,, wrong is wrong and when mea culpas are not given for making an error in print, it’s even more wrong. I did not appreciate it when my name was attached to something I knew was not completely true and I told Dave that a few times.
Often times, Dave would ask me for star ratings on matches in ECW. Then, when he would publish the results in his newsletter, the match ratings were different from what I had relayed to him (which luckily I had backup for since I posted reports, with the ratings, on the r.s.p-w group).
But, wrestlers didn’t know the whole story since they didn'f read the group. They would see Dave’s newsletter, my name credited, then ask me why I crapped on their match, when I certainly didn’t. How Dave got the ratings that he did, I can’t say. All I knew is that they didn’t come from me but it sure as hell looked like they did the way he presented them. That led to me starting a ridiculous group on r.s.p-w called, Mutants Against Star Ratings (some of us in the bleachers at the ECW Arena referred to ourselves as “mutants”). I gave up rating matches with stars. I decided a good writer could use, you know, words, to say how good or bad a match was and as Dave himself has shown by his own ratings, the star system is a complete joke when used by a lot of people. The big reason for stopping was simple: If I wasn’t using star ratings, no one in the business could think what Dave “reported” came from me.
There were other instances where something was reported by Dave that people in ECW assumed I was the source of when, again, that wasn’t the case.
It got to the point that dealing with him became a chore, or worse and since I knew some of what Dave “reported” wasn’t true, as explained above, I began to wonder if some of the other things in his newsletter were wrong as well. It just got to the point where I wondered how I could trust the stories that I had no knowledge of as being factual when stories I did have intel on I knew weren’t? The answer is, I couldn’t.
Between that, as well as the way Dave reported things as being 100 percent fact when there was no way he could known for sure since he wasn’t there when it happened, or as in the case of things like his ridiculous “WWE has no interest in CM Punk “story” that he should have known to at least quantify but in all reality should have never "reported" at all, I decided to divorce myself from Dave and start my own newsletter.
I decided that we wouldn’t report in absolutes or present opinion as fact. We would at least double source stories and most importantly post retractions if we got something wrong. It worked out pretty well in the long run for me, for sure.
So, in a way that he never intended, the most important thing that I appreciate Dave for is this: If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. You probably would have never heard of me.
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