Exclusive: Dave Meltzer on his journey from sports writer to top journalist, meeting Bryan Alvarez & more

An award-winning journalist, Dave Meltzer has been the definitive wrestling industry journalist for decades. Meltzer, also a top reporter and analyst within the MMA and general sports realms, has been the recipient of top honors from the Cauliflower Alley Club (2017's James Melby Historian Award) and the Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall Of Fame (2016's Jim Melby Award).

Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter has of course grown and evolved with the times, later merging with Bryan Alvarez's Figure Four Online and producing content every day of the week. In turn, Meltzer has hundreds of thousands of social media followers, readers, and newsletter/website subscribers while also continuing to contribute to a variety of other publications.

While onboard the ship for the second edition of Chris Jericho's Rock 'N' Wrestling Rager At Sea, I had the pleasure of interviewing both Meltzer and Alvarez after a taping of Wrestling Observer Live. Interestingly, neither Meltzer nor Alvarez had been on a cruise before, although both had been on ferries.

Audio of the full chat is below -- as heard on the all-Jericho-Cruise edition of the Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz podcast -- while part of the conversation has been transcribed below exclusively for Sportskeeda. Prepare to be inspired by how these two hard-working and motivated individuals created careers that many of this website's readers could only dream of.

More on Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez can be found online at www.f4wonline.com.

On the early days of running the Wrestling Observer as a career:

Dave Meltzer: I tried to make it a career in '87 and by '88 it was a solid career. The first year everybody thought I made the most foolish choice because I couldn't do both anymore because I was killing myself, doing the full-time writing and the wrestling. So I was making more money with the sports-writing and the wrestling, but I thought "I'm just going to go for it with the wrestling." And I did. In '88 I did well and by '89 it worked. '88 was 32 years ago, so it's been tremendous.

On life outside of wrestling and MMA journalism:

Dave Meltzer: I don't have a life outside of wrestling and MMA, other than my kids. It'd be hanging out with my kids, that's pretty much it.

On how Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez first met:

Dave Meltzer: We didn't actually meet until 2001... He faxed me.

Bryan Alvarez: He had a spot on his 900 line [open], and my 900 line had just gone out of business and I faxed him. I said, "You need someone new on option four." He goes, "Call me back," I said, "Sure." I did option four and then one day he called me to do a guest spot...

Dave Meltzer: He stayed as guest for the whole run of the show, then he started up an audio website.

Bryan Alvarez: I started a website with a podcast and we did that for three years. For three years I said, "Come onboard." For three years Dave said, "I'm not coming onboard."

Dave Meltzer: It wasn't quite like that. I called you up... The night of Anderson Silva, Dan Henderson fight, I was sitting there and I was so exhausted. I sat down to write a story, when I was writing for Yahoo! and my brain was fried, I couldn't write. It's like, "I can't go on like this, I can't do these daily updates seven days a week. If I do it four days a week and Bryan does it three days a week, things would be so much better."

Then we basically merged and what a fantastic decision that was. That seriously changed both our lives. Of all the business decisions I've made in my life, that was the greatest by far. I knew it was going to be good, but it's been two times as good as I expected.