Dave Meltzer's 8 Most Controversial Star Ratings

It's August of 2018. So far, Dave Meltzer has given... *checks notes* 14 matches a rating of 5 stars or higher. By comparison, how many matches did he rate 5 stars or higher from 2007 to 2010?

Zero. There was once a time when it was really hard to get 5 stars. It was only last year when the floodgates really opened up and we got doused in stars. Whether this was due to a change in Dave's standards or the overall quality of wrestling, we can't say. All we know is that during the early 2010s, a match had to be pretty special to get full marks from Dave. And a lot of people will say Davey Richards defending the ROH title against Michael Elgin was not it.

Granted, there's a lot of baggage when it comes to this controversy. Many people don't care for Davey Richards, and a lot of people don't care for Elgin (even before it was revealed he's bit of w*nker, to put it mildly). Some ROH fans are also miffed that this match earned 5 stars, yet none of the classics involving Bryan Danielson, KENTA, Nigel McGuinness, or Takeshi Morishima did.

And of course, some people just don't like the fact that this match had sloppy transitions and long stretches of no-selling. These people also get mad when Dave rates PWG matches 5 stars, for what it's worth.