Dave Meltzer Calls Recent Indie Bout 'The Worst Pro Wrestling Match I've Ever Seen'

Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter was one of the many people who travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada over Easter weekend to be apart of all of the WWE WrestleMania 41 festivities. On the Thursday (April 17), Meltzer attended the sixth annual Mark Hitchcock Memorial Show, hosted by WrestleCon, which took place at The Pearl Theater in the Palms Resort on the Las Vegas strip. While at the show, Meltzer revealed that he witnessed quite possibly the worst wrestling match in his life, and in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, he gave his honest thoughts about what he saw.

The match in question was the penultimate match of the night between Japanese legend Minoru Suzuki and boxing icon Eric "Butterbean" Esch, which also had UFC Hall of Famer Dan Severn acting as the special guest enforcer. Meltzer explained that while the crowd was sympathetic towards Butterbean in particular, primarily due to the number of health problems he has had over the years, the match was one of the worst matches he had ever seen.

Meltzer claimed that Suzuki had to lose this match due to the fact that there is currently a documentary being made about Butterbean's life, meaning that the camera crew at ringside needed to see Butterbean win for the purpose of the movie. However, given the condition Butterbean was in, with the story that he is currently making a combat sports comeback after breaking his leg, it was inconceivable to think that Suzuki could actually lose. With that said, neither man ended up losing as the match ended in a double count-out towards the end of the second round (they were doing two minute rounds for this match), something Meltzer understood given the circumstances, and the fact that Butterbean wouldn't have been able to get up again had he been pinned to the mat.

The initial reaction to the match announcement in the weeks leading up the event ranged from morbid curiosity, to genuine excitement at how absurd the pairing of Suzuki and Butterbean was. However, once the dust had settled, no one, especially Meltzer, was happy about anything that had just gone down.

Meltzer stated that the fans booed the finish, leading to Severn going up to the ring announcer and have a chat, which many people thought would result in one more round being given to keep people happy. Instead, the ring announcer confirmed, for the second time no less, that the match was over and that it had been declared a double count-out, causing even more boos from the audience. What's more, Meltzer questioned the decision to announce the result twice as everyone involved should have known what reaction they were going to get from an audience that genuinely wanted to see the freakshow fight continue.

Suzuki wasn't best pleased either, with Meltzer reporting that he was very upset about how bad the match was, and that he was most annoyed about the fact that he had never had a match that bad in his entire career, to which Meltzer expressed sympathy to the Japanese star as none of it was his fault.

All in all, despite calling the match "perversely entertaining" in its own way, Meltzer said that Butterbean had no business in the ring, and that to all the people who had a hope that it might have been good, even they couldn't have predicted how bad it would turn out. As for one of his famous star ratings, Meltzer gave the match -459.7 stars (which equates to -273.15 had it happened in Japan according to Meltzer) and said it was worse than the infamous The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff versus The Bushwhackers from Heroes of Wrestling in 1999.