Dave Meltzer Wrong Info on Nosawa Sugi-San Story!
Written By Alfredo Esparza
I felt I should write about this here since it upset me a bit that Dave Meltzer got the email I sent him concerning who Masahiro Hayashi is and got everything completely wrong. For one thing I didn’t accuse anyone of anything. In the July 16th issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer had the following info concerning the Nosawa – Sugi-San marijuana story:
How is this for a weird story. Wrestler Sugi-san claimed when talking to the press when arriving in Japan that he was the one who planted the marijuana on Nosawa and girlfriend Io Shirai in May. The two were arrested at Narita Airport when marijuana was found in a large portrait the two were bringing through customs. The case was dropped a few weeks ago. Sugi-san and Masahiro Hayashi (wrestler Sol Luna) claimed Hayashi purchased the drugs and they were setting up Nosawa because of a grudge. He said Nosawa found out he was the one who did it and was going to release the info and he claimed he wanted to come clean about it. He said that he probably wouldn’t be returning to Japan for a while. AAA then put out a press release saying that they were investigating the story and gave the impression they weren’t going to be booking Sugi-san.
In the story, Meltzer had listed that Masahiro Hayashi was “wrestler Sol Luna”. I thought that was weird, so I double-checked Kris Zellner’s July 10th Lucha Report and noticed the error on there and corrected it. Its a simple correction. Mr. Hayashi is a mask and gear maker in Japan who owns and operates a company known as Solluna. If you’ve been around lucha or dealt with merchandise or you are a wrestler or fan who’s looked for masks or gear, then you might have heard of him. I’ve known of him for several years mostly due to his involvement with making masks for various wrestlers, promoting AAA shows in Japan and from having a lucha-inspired web site that’s been around a long time.
Since it was late last night, I figured I’d send Dave Meltzer an email so he could correct it on his update. Here’s what I emailed him:
From: Alfredo Esparza < ****@yahoo.com>
To: “dave@wrestlingobserver.com”
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 12:19 AM
Subject: Wrong info in Sugi San story in WON.
Hi Dave,
I think either you or Kris Zellner got the info wrong about the other guy involved in the Sugi-NOSAWA story.
Masahiro Hayashi isn’t a wrestler. He’s a mask and gear maker. Been around a long time. He runs
a company called Solluna, which also co-promoted AAA shows in Japan in the past.
Here’s the link to the company site:
http://www.solluna.jp/
- Alfredo
Some how that email turned into this in the Thursday Update at the WON/F4W site:
–A correction on the story regarding the person believed to have planted the marijuana on Nosawa. The person is Masahro Hayashi, not Sugi-san. (thanks to Alfredo Esparza)
I didn’t write that. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU GET THAT WRONG?
I figured he also gets info from others, so he might have gotten wrong info from someone else to write his newsletter. I don’t mind getting something in wrestling wrong, but that’s a pretty serious accusation and I didn’t write it. I just want to clarify it because I didn’t write it.
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Meltzer is a hack….this doesn’t surprise me.
S
Not MMA, not important.
Its pretty amazing how shoddy their reporting of anything non-MMA/WWE/TNA is. Heck at this point, I have to question Dave’s reporting on that stuff as well. Hope this doesn’t happen to someone else. Nothing worse than being credited with bad information.
Okay. This isn’t very clear to me either the first time I read the email. It took me two passes and a friend to tell me they were both involved still.
bp – The email had nothing to do with the incident itself. Everyone that is involved is correct from the report. I was correcting what the other guy (Masahiro Hayashi) does for a living. he’s not a wrestler. Dave then took that somehow to imply that I was accusing the guy of being the main person responsible.
Fredo, I saw your tweets but didn’t see the blog post ’til now.
I feel like Dave is sometimes just reading every other word in an email. Several weeks back when the news came out about WWE buying the Watts library he emailed me to ask for help hashing some things out. Somehow, things that I stated very clearly in my reply got twisted into something completely wrong in the WON story and he had to correct it the next week.
Bix, I think you are right. There’s been a lot of people since this happened that have either told me or commented that it has happened to them as well with emails they send to Dave.
I’m not upset about it. Just thought it was kind of strange for him to get what I sent him that wrong.
The latest WON, he corrected the job occupation (which was what my email was about), but kept the other wrong info about the guy involved.
On the new Konnan show on the site he said it was Hayashi that was behind it.