There are several people here (and many more on IcyRag) with their heads so far up Watson's arse I think they have become a part of his spleen. In my brief encounters with Watson over on the IceRag before I was banned there, nothing he said made any sense to me. Nor does any of his spins about NorCal in the 1970s jive with what I saw living there. To the extent that the Monterey Bay area that I lived in and he (maybe) lived in were completely different worlds. Over time thinking about it, it seems to me that his world has to be fluid in order to cover up for all the lies he has spun over the years about Sacred Seeds, breeding top strains, the Haze Bros., etc. etc. His dates vary all over the place from story to story and who and when and where is so nebulous as to be pure and utter fantasy. Which I believe pretty much sums up everything about Watson.
To the contrary Nevil has one simple story line, and it never changed. His perspective is consistent. We also know for a fact that he started his seed company, where he started it and when. Nevil put his photo on it. There are lots of photos of him posted from all over the world. We also have lots of press from third sources of events about him, including being busted and jailed. Watson on the other hand? We have zero corroboration of anything that he says. There are no photos, save for a few with scratched out faces that could be of anyone, little press (real press that is), and a lot of fake names and aliases, and a pile of fiction published in High Times. There is zero evidence that Sacred Seeds ever existed in Santa Cruz County. There is no evidence of any bust of Watson or Sacred Seeds in Santa Cruz. The only thing I could dig up about Watson from people I know in the Santa Cruz area was that Watson was a small time dealer there at one time. That's it.
Reading the books, The Bandit of Kabul (1 & 2), Weed, and The King of Nepal books, the three authors Jerry Beisler, Jerry Kamstra and Joe Pietri are all consistent and open about what the scene was back in the day. It also agrees with what I lived through and what I and my friends did back then. At least in Northern California, Oregon, BC and Mexico where I was. I do not know what happened in Holland, and I have never been there. The stories about Watson in Santa Cruz? Especially the so-called report by "Dutch authorities" investigating and reporting about Watson being busted in Santa Cruz and Sacred Seeds being shut down, and all the crap about Watson saving the seeds from a dumpster? Pure bullshit. It never happened. I and others have searched the records and old newspapers in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and Monterey Co. Nothing about any of that. Never mind that I lived there in the Monterey Bay area at the time that these events were supposed to have happened. I do not recall any news stories or anyone ever saying anything about Sacred Seeds, David Watson, the Haze Bros, or heard of anything called Haze. With the one exception that the LSD batch made for the Monterey Pop Festival was dubbed 'Purple Haze'. The guy that made that batch of LSD later said that he hated the name Purple Haze, for whatever reason.
Anyway, Watson has told me online that Big Sur Holy Weed sucked, and he smoked it with the 'hippies' in Big Sur in 1969. He said that he had Haze then and it was so much better, and that was all he smoked. Odd that he would refer to the Big Sur hippies being some other entity than his own. We are all hippies then. Big Sur was overrun with hippies by 1966 when we moved to the area. There were always 100s of thumbs out along Highway 1. I never went on any hippie trail, it came to me. Also the notion that he only smoked Haze for what, 15 years? Its utter nonsense. No one had an endless stash of weed. The whole region was always dry in late summer before the harvest came in from Mexico every year. And who would only smoke one type of weed when there were so many great strains floating around? And how/why would he breed anything else (as he claims) if that were the case? And the story that Haze weed sold for over $200 an ounce in the early 1970s in that area? Ba ha ha ha! Acapulco Gold was $20 a lid then. Who would pay 10x that for a bag weed?
As for Watson being a big breeder from Santa Cruz, that is pure crap as well. Debunk #1: Jerry Beiser documented that he bred California Orange. Debunk #2: Mel Frank has posted that he bred Durban Poison and sent his Durban "B" strain to Watson in Holland. Debunk #3: There is no fucking way that Watson bred original Skunk. It was all over NorCal by the late 1970s, and there are/were several strains of skunk. Debunk #4: Haze. Watson's Haze stories are all over the place. The Haze Brothers... well, they were not really brothers, and one retired to Mexico, see? Oh, then there were no Haze Bros. after people like me posted that was pure bullshit. So now the story has drifted to there only really being one guy that bred Haze, and not named Haze, and no brothers... yeah. And it was bred in 1974, No, wait, it was around in 1969. No it was later in the 70s. If that weed was that good then, EVERYONE would have known about it. It would have sold out fast. ALL the good weed I had sold out FAST. Like Kerala Ganja, Lebanese Red hash, Thai sticks, Colombian Gold, and the really fucking good Guerrero. No one seems to have heard of any Haze weed back then. Haze came into Santa Cruz from Holland much later. Several have posted about that here on MrN. That was after 1986 when I moved to Sandy Eggo.
In the end what I believe is what Nevil posted here long since. That Watson simply took strains available in NorCal in local bag weed and took them to Holland and sold them to Nevil as his own breeds. End of story. The rest is all cooked up shit to sell the beans and to sell stories to High times magazine. But there are the loyal followers of Watson, and all this crap posted online about him being a super breeder like no other. There is God, Jesus, and then Watson. The Holy Trinity. Funny thing though, all the other "best breeders" have come up with one or maybe a few breeds that stood the test of time. DJ Short, Shanti, Mel Frank, The Indian, Ken Estes, yadda yadda. But not Watson, he bred the best of the best all as a master breeder! All conveniently bred in a remote place for a fictional company somewhere in south Santa Cruz Co. called Corrolitos that no one would have heard of. Except the likes of me. And after his move to Holland? The magic breeding streak ended. Funny that. With more genetics and a DEA license in hand, more room and more greenhouses and more available breeding stock? In Holland he is attributed merely to breeding the skunk out of skunk and breeding the Durban out of Durban with skunk. So he bred two strains with skunk and called himself the Skunkman. Big whoop. You would think he would have put all the other global breeders to shame there with all the superior breeding knowledge and available genetics. And yet... zilch.
Its all tall tales of the wold west. Nevil had it dead right. Watson? Depends on the day of the week as to what that story line will be.