Dave Meltzer was gravely ill, but the phone would not stop ringing. It was December 1993, and someone had circulated the number of the hospital where Meltzer was being treated for a ruptured appendix, the delayed diagnosis of which had caused a life-threatening abdominal inflammation.

The professional wrestlers he often wrote about called to wish him well. Several would then launch into trade talk or gossip, which a fevered Meltzer would dutifully record.

“For 16 days,” he recalled, “I sat there with my notebook, waiting to go home and write.”

The wrestlers had no one else to call. Meltzer’s homemade publication, The Wrestling Observer, was their confessional, a place to anonymously vent about the politics and the vulgarities of their industry. For the past 26 years, he has printed a no-frills weekly journal that pulls back the curtain on a notoriously secretive business: which egos are running rampant, why revenue is up (or down), which injuries are legitimate and which are for show.

Meltzer said his workweek often exceeds 110 hours, but his home office in San Jose, Calif., allows him to spend pockets of time with his wife and two children. He has no employees, and he prints his newsletter — in single-spaced 7-point type — at a local copy shop. He declined to specify either the number of subscribers or how much he makes, but he agreed with an assessment of his income as being in six figures.