Meltzer on Lesnar — Read and Learn

Frank Deford has called Dave Meltzer, publisher of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, “the most accomplished reporter in sports journalism.” With the right subject in the right context, Meltzer has strong commentary chops, too, and everyone can read them in his latest column for Yahoo Sports, for which he covers mixed martial arts.

I highly recommend “Lesnar backlash brims with double standards,” http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news;_ylt=AqJCauAAB_xH_84zhbTKH.49Eo14?slug=dm-lesnar071709&prov=yhoo&type=lgns.

Some of the controversy surrounding Lesnar involves his dissing after Saturday’s fight of UFC sponsor Bud Light. But the intellectual contradictions of a pro wrestler making it big in a new hybrid legit sport — scrambling our conventional notions of smart self-promotion and sportsmanship — most remind me of something else: the Lite Beer from Miller campaign from the 1970s.

You know. The one with the fierce argument between the respective advocates of “Great taste!” and “Less filling!”

Who do you love? Who do you hate? What if you don’t know what you want to call it, and what if it doesn’t matter?

Deng Xiaoping famously said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s black cat or white cat — as long as it can catch rat.”

And the color of money is neither black nor white. It’s green.

Irv Muchnick