Dan Severn: The Realest Guy In The Room

Dan’s always come across as someone who doesn’t care what others think about him and isn’t vying for a job anywhere so this book could be fun.

Introduction

Jim Cornette writes the introduction and explains he first met Dan when Dennis Coralluzzo asked if Severn could win the NWA World Heavyweight Title at a SMW show. I had to do some searching here because I always assumed NWA champ Chris Candido was freelance during this time but no, he apparently won the title while representing SMW. Huh! Anyway Cornette brags about SMW being the first wrestling company to help promote UFC. I don’t know, I think in 1995 most of American wrestling was doing a fine job of promoting UFC by being so rubbish.

Cornette was thrilled at the idea of Severn being in WWF in 1998 and tried pitching Shamrock vs. Severn III, but Russo was having none of it because he had never seen UFC and was more interested in “booking transvestite dance-offs.” Cornette compliments Severn on not hurting him when he threw his Dairy Queen-filled arse with a Belly-To-Belly.

“Relax Jim, you’re in the hands of a professional.”

Cornette explains how he tried to have Shamrock and Severn in the corners of Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards respectively but only Severn responded, and proceeded to show up and apparently blow up Edwards during sparring. I believe him.

Cornette ends a lovely introduction by wondering how over Severn would have been if he had got into wrestling during the Bill Watts’ era of Genuine Tough Guys, comparing him to Dick Hutton. Nice summary here of why you should like or be impressed by Severn, with Cornette managing to reference someone from the 1950s and get a jab at Russo so it was about what you’d expect.

Amateur Wrestling

Severn prefaces that more people wanted to fight him AFTER his success in UFC because he doesn’t look stereotypically tough. Dan agrees, he doesn’t have cauliflower ears and he can speak in complete sentences.

I’m not going into great detail about Dan’s childhood on the farm because I always skip these sections of autobiographies. I’ve read enough of them to know it’s always “we worked hard for our 11 brothers and sisters, life was different back then, we tied onions to our belts” etc.

Dan got into amateur wrestling during his 7th grade after a flu epidemic took most of the team out and they needed someone. Dan only started getting good during 9th grade after he decided he wanted to make the school’s varsity team, which he accomplished by gradually going up in weight until he beat someone and only achieved this at heavyweight by somehow beating someone who was at 300lbs while Dan was still 165 at best. Severn made the team and got his arse handed to him as he on the low scale of heavyweight classification, going against guys nearly twice his size. This all sounds nuts to me. Eventually the experience of taking on guys “the size of buffalo” lead him to gaining more experience and actually winning matches. His college’s chances of winning the series came down to his fight against a 275lb guy who made Dan “look like a pimple on the butt of an elephant.” The guy demolished Severn but wasn’t able to pin him, which was enough for Dan’s team to win. Dan hated that he only helped by not losing and vowed to never be in a position like that again.

Dan continues to train with his brother Dave which would be the bit in the film where the montage kicks in as Dan competes at the 185/198/220lb levels and set eight national records in one day where he was able to pin EVERYONE which apparently is a record that still stands to this day. Dan does a lovely job of explaining amateur wrestling and what this all means, I’m just skimming it.

At the age of 18, Dan tries out for the US Olympic team and finished in the top six which was enough to get various colleges doing their best to recruit him before he finally decides on Arizona State and their promise to start a Freestyle Wrestling club for him. I’ve seen the 30 for 30 on the Southwest Conference pay-to-play scandals so I was expecting craziness like a car or free whores.

Sadly after kicking arse and beating the Big Eight and Big Ten champs, Severn gets hurt mid-match but ignores everyone’s advice to stop as Dan doesn’t want to forfeit. He still wins (of course) but is told by the team’s doctor he has torn the cartilage in his knee and his wrestling is done.

“You mean my season, right?”
No, I mean your career.

Dan is devastated as he was being earmarked to becoming one of the all-time greats, only to be told it’s already over at 18. Dan would have surgery to fix his knee, but was never at the same level as before. Dan makes it clear that despite everything he did accomplish in his life, it still bothers him to think what he could have been.

Dan fails to win the NCAA Title after feeling the ref screwed him (Dan is not afraid to speak up when he feels he’s been wronged, which we’ll see more of later on). Later on he’d be pinned by Steve Williams in the 1981 NCAA Championships after going un-pinned his entire collegiate career.

That was a dark moment in my life I wish I could banish from memory.

Dan follows this bad memory with being screwed in his Olympic Trial against Lou Banach, where despite winning 2-1 the refs decide Lou won and a furious Dan can’t make sense of it. Dan attempts to lodge a protest but is told it won’t be good for him. The Olympics have always had a sense of shadiness about them when it came to boxing and wrestling to be honest. Dan is still allowed to be part of the Olympic Team’s training camp and “accidentally” hurts Lou during a session. Lou still goes on to win Gold and be unscored upon, as a raging Dan points out he HAD scored against Lou as well as pinning all of Lou’s opponents. Dan makes it clear these set-backs and screw-jobs still make him mad but he also admits it lit the fire in him to prove himself.

I’ll skip ahead to when Dan starts professional wrestling as there’s naturally a lot of the amateur and collegial and whatnot but I summed up about forty pages above. I’ll say this though, there’s a lot of bullshitting in wrestler’s autobiographies about being a tough guy and making the ground shake when you walk into a room etc, but with Dan there’s proof of what he’s referring to so it never feels self-serving.

Pro Wrestling

Severn starts training in Lima, Ohio at (you guessed it) Al Snow’s Body Slammers Wrestling Gym. Look, I know Al had a decade of experience doing wrestling at this point but it’s still really fucking funny to me that it’s AL SNOW training the super athlete. It’s like finding out Blue Meanie trained Matt Riddle. Severn takes to training very well and it’s not long until he’s making his debut against Shinobi and earning…$15 for his trouble. Dan would have to resort to entering nearby Toughman contests to keep himself financially stable as he continues to wrestle for Motor City Wrestling.

Anyway via Candi Devine (I swear these low-tier guys being important to Severn’s career have to be half-ribs) Dan gets a try-out for UWFi in Japan. Upon being told there’s only one contract available and eight potential wrestlers, Dan naturally beats the shit out of everyone else to win the opportunity. Dan’s life is how Steven Seagal sees the world.

UWFi

Dan admits he had no idea what he was in for in the “legitimate wrestling on steroids” that was UWFi, so he got sick of Yuko Miyato’s stiff kicks and shoot-suplexed him onto his head, drawing a wild reaction from his interpreter who dubbed him “SUPERSTAR!”

Severn did not appreciate being built up just to lose to Nobuhiko Takada because Dan “could have killed him in a real fight” and resented the company using his legitimate background to build up Takada’s. Severn didn’t respect fellow wrestlers Salman Hashimikov or Vladimir Berkovich describing them as “turds.” Dan was so annoyed at having to lose to them that he beat the shit out of Berkovich in their first match and choked him until he was gurgling on his own blood.

(I went and watched this match and oh wow, Dan isn’t kidding. He is relentless in his smothering of poor Berkovich, turning him as red as his gear.)

Severn wasn’t a fan of Gary Albright either as he knew he could take him out easily, but the “Japanese obsession with massive foreigners” meant Dan had to lose to “some fucking fat slob who couldn’t carry my jock strap.” But Dan stuck with it because it still paid more than anything happening in USA.

UFC

Dan’s friend Eric was watching UFC I with him and suggested Severn tried it out. Dan was hesitant as he didn’t have the necessary striking skills (you got that right), but watched the fights and realised all he needed to do was wait for someone to come within striking distance and he’d be able to get into their range to suplex them around. Can’t fault that logic.

Dan goes into a crazed diatribe about how he took some law enforcement classes to expand his offensive style for the show, which leads him to explaining how he got screwed out of a lot of money by someone and is really glad they’re dead. I can’t do it justice but it’s GRIM. I think Dan uses some of this book for therapy.

Dan gets rejected from UFC III and instead takes a wrestling match with Road Warrior Hawk instead (I love that even NWA Jersey matches are on YouTube now).

UFC Founder Art Davie was at the show and liked what he saw and gets Dan booked for UFC IV. Hawk meanwhile described Dan as being stiffer “than a pipe wrench.” That’s rich.

Dan says the booking of UFC IV was done by Rorion Gracie, which is why Royce was rarely put against anyone that could hurt him. I mean Art Davie admitted years later the Gracies did their best to keep amateur wrestlers away from them so I believe it. Dan assumes because “roided-up” Ken Shamrock had lost easily to Royce and he competed in Pancrase, the obviously fake UWFi wrestler would be no issue for him.

Yoji Anjo rings up Dan and advises him that UWFi will be using him even less if he competes for UFC, to which Dan replies that he’ll be making $60,000 at the event compared to the $1,000 they were paying him. Upon hearing that, Yoji offered to train Dan for the fight. Severn tells him to fuck off and a few months later, Anjo decides to try it on with Rickson Gracie in one of those stories that could only happen in fighting/wrestling.

So Dan spends the last few weeks doing conditioning training with Al Snow (yeah I know, I know) and decides on traditional wrestling trunks rather than a singlet so he can’t give his opponents anything to grab onto. Huh, I hadn’t thought about that. Also Dan didn’t tell anyone he was doing the event, so his uncles were watching and rang his Dad to tell him his son was fighting. “Which one??” was the reply.

Dan goes into vicious detail about his first fight with Anthony Macias who got suplexed so hard than Anthony’s own knee spiked him in the forehead to split him open.

I wasn’t worried about killing Macias.

Dan wins with a rear naked choke (even though Dan admits he didn’t know any submissions so he just squeezed his neck until something happened) and the crowd loves him because no-one was throwing suplexes in the Octagon back then. Severn dispatches of Marcus Bossett after seeing him a spinning back kick coming from a mile away and taking out his other leg before another kinda-choke ended it in 52 seconds.

This put Dan in the finals vs. Royce Gracie, with Severn unable to do anything while trapped in Royce’s guard which resulted in a desperate Dan attempting strikes for the first time. After fifteen minutes, Royce was able to submit a tired Dan in a Triangle Hold and boy oh boy is Dan still bitter about it.

Dan reckons Royce only won because he refused to give up regardless of the abuse he was giving him and Royce’s dad Hélio sat ringside wouldn’t throw the towel in. Dan reckons he only lost because he wasn’t willing to kill a man. I mean…Dan also admits striking wasn’t his thing and he didn’t know any holds so with the politest of respect it was a hell of an achievement for him to get to the finals with wrestling & dodgy chokes alone. Dan’s excuses for every time he loses are a fascinating part of the book, a real window into an ultra-competitive athlete’s psyche.

Dan sees the size of Royce’s cheque and decides to dedicate himself to a 32-day no holds barred training camp for UFC V. Oh and also winning the NWA World Title.

Dan very flatly says his first SMW show saw him watching NWA World Champ Chris Candido compete in a loser-eats-dog-food match. Yeah, that sounds about right. The dog food ends up on Severn who challenges Candido for the belt out of anger and taps out the champ to win it. Dan wasn’t an idiot and knew that the NWA was virtually extinct in 1995 but he appreciates that he was compared to Lou Thesz (probably by Cornette, non-stop) as the type of legit shooter needed to raise the belt’s legitimacy. Not even James Cameron could have raised that at this point but I think Dan sure as hell was raised up by having this around his waist while competing in UFC.

Dan dispatches of Joe Charles with his dreaded maybe-a-choke before taking on Sambo practitioner Oleg Taktarov. Dan has to fight dirty (but within the then-rules) by holding the cage to escape armbars and dropping several knees across Oleg’s forehead, earning him his first TKO victory and giving us this famous image of a blood-stained Severn.

Replacement fighter Dave Beneteau is Dan’s final opponent who Dan taps out to a keylock submission to win the tournament with Dennis Coralluzzo immediately climbing (citation needed) into the cage to make sure the NWA World Heavyweight Title was seen by everyone while commentator Jim Brown dubs Severn “The Beast” (a moniker Dan didn’t originally like but learned to love, because he really is a gentle giant. Unless you cross him or are fat).

This leads to the Severn vs. Shamrock superfight at UFC VI, which Dan hates because surely he should be taking on a fellow tournament winner and not a “chemically-enhanced athlete” who “had never won anything.” Severn BLASTS Shamrock for using fake Pancrase fights to inflate his MMA record. I’m not sure if he did or not, but Dan seems to think he did. Dan is of course furious that he lost to Shamrock and blames a sickness he was struck with days before the event.

If I’d wrestled the pillow in my hotel room, the pillow would’ve won.

Dan blames himself for trying to keep the NWA Champion schedule while also training for a UFC fight for overworking his body to the point of illness (he wrestled Yoshiro Tajiri a mere four days before the event) and is full of anger that he lost to “steroid-filled” Shamrock.

IWA Japan

Dan travels to Japan for his “craziest match ever” vs. Tarzan Goto which Severn points out wasn’t even the craziest thing to happen that night as it happened at the King of The Death Match tournament. Severn drops knees like in his fight with Oleg so Goto can blade himself. Severn started lobbing chairs into the ring, with one overshooting and going into the crowd.

Fortunately we were in Japan and they like that sort of thing.

Ultimate Ultimate ’95

Dan beats Missy Hyatt’s biggest fan Paul Varelans in a minute to set up the Tank Abbott semi-final. Dan detests Tank because he mocked his opponent post-KO in a moment I’m sure you’re all familiar with, so Dan made sure to strike Tank (and I quote) 276 times. The fight goes to the judges but Tank doesn’t wait as he knew he lost and climbs over the cage before the finish is decided. Ha! Dan follows that up by headbutting Oleg “300 times over a half hour” to win the $150,000 cheque, dominating in the first UFC tournament to not involve Shamrock or Gracie. Severn takes this opportunity to claim Taz was intended as ECW’s version of him, given his fondness for suplexes and finishing with a choke. I’m not sure about that, Taz seemed to be an homage/version of MMA in general but I digress.

UFC IX

Severn finally gets his rematch with Shamrock but it’s at the infamous UFC event that banned strikes on the day of the show and the rematch ended up being longer and duller than this review. Severn claims he watched the rest of the fights that night and noticed no-one was actually being fined/arrested for their strikes so he didn’t change anything from his usual strategy, which was to keep away from Ken until Ken’s mood got the better of him and he charged and used all his energy allowing Dan to sneak the win with 45 seconds of offence over 30 minutes. You can find the cure-for-insomnia fight here but it allowed Dan to become the last UFC Superfight Champion. Dan again takes shots at Shamrock for him claiming he only lost because he was injured and blames the steroids once more. Dan makes it clear how mad it makes him that people compare them as rivals when Shamrock’s win all came out of a bottle and a syringe.

So boo hoo hoo you got hurt, Shamrock.

Dan talks briefly over getting the submission victory in the main event of the World Wrestling Peace Festival, explaining what a huge honour it was considering he was teaming with Inoki. Actually he spends more time mocking Oleg for having to wear a Russian Bear as part of his entrance attire.

Something I wasn’t aware of was Dan making it clear that if he had lost a fight while Superfight Champion (he fought five times elsewhere when competing for UFC) he knows the NWA would have stripped him of their title. Which was almost certainly his mentality going into those fights, was not the truth in reality as he was still NWA World Champ even after losing at:

UFC 12

Oh great… another steroid freak.

Dan has the same amount of respect for Mark Coleman as he does Shamrock and Gracie, insisting those three would be the only three people he’d ever come out of retirement to fight because Dan’s the only one out of the four to not test positive for steroids. Coleman taps out Severn with a headlock to become the first ever UFC Heavyweight Champion, but Dan continues to carry his Superfight title belt around to this day, even though the lineage got absorbed into Coleman’s title. Well, are you going tell Dan he can’t hold it? Severn points out he doesn’t cry about a loss. No but you have a reason every time you do lose (even if I agree with most of his points, with the UFC locker room looking like Dr. Zahorian’s wet dreams).

PRIDE

Dan is frustrated with his draw against all-clean Kimo but was happy seeing Takada lose to Gracie, pointing out his own fight record in Japan is better than his. And that’s all he has to say about PRIDE.

WWE

Dan has a conversation with Eric Bischoff about joining WCW, saying “I envisioned you as a car crash in the Indi 500!” to which Dan has no reply to and instead signs with WWF.

Something I didn’t know was Dan had a part-time schedule as the WWF didn’t want to mess the NWA around, so Dan was able to work indie dates when he wasn’t working WWF dates. His Cagematch listing for 1998 is pretty nuts. Dan claims Vince was aware of his trusting nature and offered to work on a handshake deal but Dan politely asks for a contract instead. Dan is very happy with how his entrance theme turned out (I agree, it’s very hummable):

Dan explains he’d wear a mouth-guard not just to look the part but because of all the toothless wrestlers he’d come across. He also (in typical Dan fashion) explains his sweaty grey shirt was to give the impression he’d just finished a workout…which he had done in the back anyway. Of course. Dan is very complimentary about the efficiency of WWF’s operations at this time but after early UFC and Motor City Wrestling it must have looked like a Swiss bank heist by comparison.

Severn and Shamrock end up on opposite sides of the KOTR bracket so naturally Severn loses to The Rock who then loses to Ken. Severn thought The Rock was an “arrogant shit” and working with him was the closest he came to shooting on someone mid-wrestling match.

Granted he had a football background but that didn’t mean diddly shit to me.

It’s at KOTR Dan realises that him being part-time was likely a big reason for WWF not wanting to do more with him. He wonders why the writers wouldn’t talk to him about what was the best use of him but also admits he was very naïve about how that side of the business works. He says he would have had no issues losing to Shamrock if asked (DOUBT DOUBT DOUBT) but admits their interactions were limited and full of tension given their competitive history. They teamed up one time to lose to the Nation, had a triple threat with Owen Hart (Dan won), and one singles match (Ken won).

Dan is referred to as “Mr. Severn” by the wrestlers and has to ask Val Venis why this was, who explains half the wrestlers were worried he’s going to flip out and murder them in the ring. Sadly I think the wrestlers were more intimidated of Dan than the fans were. I can only speak for myself but as a kid when I saw this maths teacher-looking dude come out on TV, I couldn’t have cared less about him and his soft voice.

Brawl For All

Dan assumes him and Ken wouldn’t be asked to compete, but is surprised when he offered him $5,000 to take on The Godfather. Dan tries to get out of wearing the giant gloves but it’s absolutely necessary so he puts them on and is still able to take Godfather down multiple times. However, the commentators during the fight keep on insisting Dan’s take-downs aren’t legit and stress that Godfather is winning, so when Dan is announced as the winner there was confusion in the crowd. Dan wonders if the fix was in and regrets not removing the gloves as soon as the bell rang. Dan is removed from the tournament for undisclosed reasons, allowing Godfather to carry on despite losing and Severn doesn’t know why. I mean, teasing that you were going to remove your gloves and destroy a man on live TV probably didn’t help mate.

Dan thinks it was down to WWF not wanting Severn to derail Steve Williams’ push who he (of course) reckons he could have taken with ease. Naturally competitive Dan wasn’t happy when he found out the tournament winner won the same amount as a UFC winner, if that had been the case and knowing in advance he would have been allowed to compete, he would have taken time off from indie dates to train properly for it. It’s almost like this whole thing was a clusterfuck from start to finish.

Owen Hart bonded with Dan over their mutual background of amateur wrestling. Owen presented Dan with an Owen Hart shirt signed by Stu Hart, saying “Stu wanted you to have this.” Dan still doesn’t know if it was a rib or not.

Dan enjoyed being involved in Owen’s Dungeon and Lion’s Dan matches, but wanted his own Beast’s Lair style match. Russo disagreed.

Severn realises the company didn’t have a clear idea about what they wanted from him, noticing the commentators would alternate between acknowledging his NWA World Title and ignoring it. Dan wonders why they couldn’t have had someone like Owen show up to a NWA Title defence with a camera crew in tow to build to a match on WWF TV or something like that. Probably because they couldn’t have given a shit about NWA at that point mate, Russo or no Russo.

Dan talks his final match with Owen that ended with The Black Hart delivering the same sit-out Tombstone that paralysed Steve Austin with the idea being Dan would pretend to have a broken neck and come back later to vow revenge. Except Owen wore too much baby oil that night so he ended up actually dropping poor Dan on his head and giving him a stinger. Post-match, Owen realised he’d messed up and pleaded with Dan to squeeze his hand to tell him he was OK. Dan didn’t due to being pissed. Upon heading to the back, Owen yelled at Dan for not squeezing his hand so Dan yelled back for dropping him on his head. In a sad moment, Dan doesn’t make it clear if they ever made peace.

Dan was flattered that he got a WWF Action figure, and instantly took one out the box and placed it amongst his sons’ other toys. Dan waited a few days for his son to realise but ended up having to ask his son who this new toy was. His son didn’t have a clue.

Yeah I’m with the kid.

Dan explains he left the WWF due to disagreements over creative, meaning he didn’t want to have 666 written on his forehead and be part of the Ministry. The reason being he lives in “Smalltown USA” and wasn’t going to be run out of town for participating in “Satanic crap.” Dan defends his stance by saying he wasn’t solely a pro wrestler, he was Dan Severn 24/7 and he couldn’t separate the wrestler from the real person. In response, Severn lost to Steve Blackman on every house show. I mean I completely understand where Dan’s coming from but you can’t then complain about the company using you to job to someone they have full-time and also doesn’t mind working with Chester McCheesington. Dan in the Ministry with his soft voice would have been the scariest thing about them.

With Dan no longer in UFC or WWF, the NWA decide to have him lose to Naoya Ogawa at (oh god) Inoki’s UFO experiment. Dan was happy with the visibility he brought to the NWA during his 1,479 day reign and was more than OK with losing to a legit athlete like Ogawa.

Immediately after writing that, Severn takes glee in explaining how he disagreed with Ogawa’s idea for the rematch being a three-minute grapple to the outside resulting in a draw. So he got back in before the planned finish and proceeded to “throw Ogawa around for real for twenty seven minutes.”

After the match, Ogawa left the arena and never spoke to him again. Dan liked the match.

The book winds down with various statements and platitudes. He was proud with his Coldwater Facility graduate Monty Brown (oh shit I didn’t know that) and being one of the first three inductees into the UFC Hall of Fame along with Shamrock and Gracie (who both tested positive for steroids, don’t forget). He thinks he should be in the WWE Hall of Fame also (uhhhhhhhhhh) and is happy that his run inspired Brock Lesnar to come out with a mouthpiece who bragged about his UFC victories while being dubbed “The Beast.”

Dan works JCW Bloodymania II (oh wow no way) and thought he’d negotiated a decent payday for himself until he saw the amount of bottles and human shit being thrown into the ring. Dan changes the plan for the match and instead squashes the hell out of his opponent Kris Chambers before getting out of there quickly. No Faygo hit Dan that night. He was more than happy to return to referee a Shamrock match so he could watch Ken get hit with Juggalo juice for twenty minutes.

Dan follows that story up with a nonchalant announcement about divorcing his wife as a 50th birthday gift to himself. Yikes. This is followed up with a few pages on his respect for the old days of wrestling and how he tried to be like the Terry Funks of days gone by, feeling proud of his reputation and mark he left on so many different sports…before saying Kimbo Slice vs. Ken Shamrock was fixed and “everything happens for a reason.”

Overall: I’ve read many wrestler’s autobiographies where it’s obvious they think they can get another run somewhere or a backstage role in WWE. It’s immediately apparent that Dan doesn’t give a fuck about how he says something or who he’s saying it about because he has the accomplishments to back up everything he brags about and it’s very refreshing. You understand why he insists on taking shots at Shamrock every chance he gets (which are some of the highlights of the book) because of his insanely ultra-competitive nature.

I know Dan has a podcast with Don Frye called Toxic Masculinity, but I’d rather listen to a Vince Russo interview than hear a second of that but sticking to just athletics/wrestling/UFC, Dan is very entertaining and informative while bragging about everything that he should be bragging about. I wanted to read about a man talk about being undefeated in MMA while also defending the NWA World Title while also signed to WWF and that’s what I got.

Recommended if you’re a Beastie.

I’ve been Maffew