Dave Meltzer's 8 Most Controversial Star Ratings
A celebration of all the times Uncle Dave has made your blood boil with a quarter star.
Back in the late '70s, Jim Cornette was reading the TV Guide and talking on the phone with his friend Norman Dooley. Dooley distributed a self-published wrestling newsletter in the Louisville area, which included the results of matches he attended live. In addition to said results were Dooley's editorial comments, including assessments of match quality. Facetiously, Cornette remarked to Dooley that he should include star ratings like the ones that were next to the movies listed in TV Guide.
Dooley took Cornette's joke to heart and began rating matches on a four-star scale. Soon, other newsletter writers implemented this practice, including a young Dave Meltzer.
At their most innocent, Meltzer's star ratings are just one man's opinions of a subjective medium. At their most constructive, they're a handy way of cataloguing some of the best of wrestling history through the lens of an experience tastemaker. Twitter user Allan Cheapshot has an incredible ongoing thread looking at every 5+ star rated match, and it's a wonderful dive into the evolution of what has been considered "great" in wrestling.
But seeing as how Dave is a polarizing figure, so too are his ratings. Whether it's rating a match too low or too high, there hasn't been a shortage of time a large, vocal section of fans have given Big Dave grief for his grades.
8. Tyler Bate Vs. Pete Dunne (4.75 Stars)
Before Johnny Gargano vs. Andrade "Cien" Almas at TakeOver: Philadelphia opened the floodgates for NXT's recent slew of 5-star matches, the uncrowned A-Brand had trouble cracking that illustrious ceiling. From Neville vs. Zayn, to Sasha vs. Bayley, to The Revival vs. DIY, there are many matches that your average WWE fan considers 5-star masterpieces that Dave apparently saw enough flaw in to not rate them as such.
This has led people to believe (spuriously, I'll add) that Meltzer has some sort of bias against WWE. However, this sentiment was ramped up big time last year after NXT TakeOver: Chicago. Tyler Bate and Pete Dunne had an incredible match for the UK Championship in front of an ultra-hot crowd. It was athletic, exciting, and extra impressive when you consider how young the competitors were. Personally speaking, I think this match is a masterpiece, and one of the finest examples of NXT doing wrestling right.
Dave loved the match as well, giving it 4.75 stars. So of course, fans lost their minds, demanding to know why he snubbed Bate and Dunne by a whole quarter star. Naturally, the old accusation that Dave would have given it "5 stars if it were in the Tokyo Dome" surfaced. and Dave actually responded to that:
Of course, the matches that do earn 5 stars in the Tokyo Dome are no strangers to controversy either...