10 Things Nobody Has Told You About Wrestling Yet
5. Dave Meltzer Is Not Biased
Read, literally, the current issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
AEW's Bryan Danielson worked an exceptionally well-reviewed match on Dynamite against Sammy Guevara. Dave Meltzer rated it ****1/2. FTR also put their working shoes on, not that they've been removed at any point this year; their match, opposite Swerve In Our Glory, was awarded ****. A man with whom he is publicly friendly, and many insist feeds him scoops in return for critical acclaim - Chris Jericho - also worked a match on that card. He teamed with Daniel Garcia in a losing effort against Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler YUTA. Dave awarded it ****.
Now, if Dave is "biased", and uses his platform to convince fans that AEW is automatically better than WWE as part of some agenda - perhaps he is funded by AEW, despite his publication existing 37 years before the launch of the promotion - then why did he rate Bron Breakker Vs. Ilja Dragunov Vs. JD McDonagh from NXT Halloween Havoc ****3/4, making it his own personally-selected 'Match of the Week'?
Most wrestling snobs/nerds/hardcore fans/whatever had Tomohiri Ishii Vs. Ren Narita as their best match of the week. Meltzer could have easily "gotten away" with "credibly" spreading an agenda and awarding it the full five.
He didn't.
Because he thought a WWE match - promoted by its least fashionable brand, no less - was better.
Meltzer isn't biased; he just gets accused of that unfairly by fans who don't like his star ratings, so much so that they will even ignore them.