Dave Meltzer is an American journalist, writer and university lecturer who mainly deals with combat sports such as wrestling and mixed martial arts.

Meltzer has been the editor of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter since 1983, but has also written for the Los Angeles Times and Yahoo! Sports; he is also a lecturer at Stanford University in Palo Alto, where he explains many aspects of the business surrounding the world of wrestling and mixed martial arts.

In May 2013, he was named the world's most experienced sportscaster by Sports Illustrated's Frank Deford.

Meltzer was born and lived in New York until the age of ten, before his family moved to San Jose. He graduated from San Jose State University with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1982 and began working as a sports writer for the Wichita Falls Times Record News and the Turlock Journal.

Meltzer has shown an interest in wrestling since his teens, writing many articles reporting on the National Wrestling Alliance's territories outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1993, with the birth of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, he also started following mixed martial arts.

On June 12, 2008, the Wrestling Observer's website merged with Bryan Alvarez's Figure Four Weekly, using the latter's layout and graphical structure. After being a print-only newsletter for more than twenty-five years (aside from a brief period when it was also available via email in 2000), the Observer became available to online subscribers through its website. Meltzer writes news updates on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, contributing to the Figure 4 Weekly website (f4wonline.com). David Bixenspan writes the Tuesday and Wednesday updates.