The Observer is wrong all the time

I've been on a bit of a quest to point out how awful "official" wrestling journalism is. I've been on this quest for years, but only lately have I really stepped it up. From here on, follow the tag "awfulwrestlingjournalism" and you'll see posts about exactly that. All of the posts are currently about the F4W, all titled "Figure Four Weekly is Terrible," and I'll be adding to that. But we'll also be adding "The Observer is Wrong All the Time," "The Torch needs to be put out," and "Let's all write copy like TMZ." I hope you enjoy these new features.

If you're wondering where you've heard "The Observer is wrong all the time," before, it's because I wrote an article titled exactly that four months ago on the un-defunct Footnotes of Wrestling. Here's a snippet, with the Observer's bit double-blocked:

The lesson is that while a surprise is nice, and worrying about a singular rating is kind of silly in a business of 52 weeks a year, but blowing what should have been the best rating through lack of promotion is a lesson about surprises.

This run-on sentence was brought to you by The Observer being angry at itself for not getting the scoop. Also, only The Observer could look at Monday's episode of Raw and think, "If only they hadn't screwed it up so badly."

But how has the Observer been doing lately? Well, let's check up on them. Quotes are from the 6/13 issue of the Observer.

Raw in March 2010 went head-to-head with Impact which appeared to take away about .2 ratings points, which is the entire difference and then some year-to-year

.2 ratings points could be from just about anything. .2 could be the number of people who had something better to do that night.

**Raw went head-to-head on Mondays with Impact which played a large part in being lower last year than this year.

You just said there was a .2 difference. That's hardly a "large part."

The one thing notable about all three months is that Smackdown on Syfy is doing a better rating than it did on MyNetwork. That's with it clearly being the "B" show.

I love it when things do ratings. It's like when people do television, or when athletes do sports. Or when Meltzer does sentence fragments.

The idea that he [The Rock] was back made wrestling cool, and in a sense, once it became clear that he's not around for a while, wrestling fell back to the level it was in January of being overall down in most categories.

If the Rock does anything it's make things cool.

Raw on 6/6 did a 3.21 rating and 4.96 million viewers. The number has to be considered disappointing since there was no NBA game against it, had a stronger than usual lead-in with a higher rated Tough Enough, and Steve Austin and Vince McMahon were both on the show, with Austin refereeing in the main event.

Do the writers of The Observer really believe that in 2011 there is a pocket of people skipping the show unless Steve Austin and Vince McMahon show up?

Following this is approximately 400,000 words explaining who beat who this week but not one explaining why, how, or if any of the matches were worth checking out. Seriously, if you've never seen this, The Observer reports on international shows like it's horse racing:

6/7 Tokyo Differ Ariake (New Japan): Kyosuke Mikami d Hiromu Takahashi, Mascara Dorada b Gedo, Taka Michinoku b Daisuke Sasaki, Fujita Junior Hayato b TJP, Jado b Kenny Omega, Hirooki Goto & Tomoaki Honma b Hiroshi Tanahashi & Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Davey Richards b Koji Kanemoto, Kota Ibushi b Great Sasuke, Prince Devitt b Tiger Mask, Ryusuke Taguchi b Kushida\

Now that's a show you've gotta see!