The Realest Guy in the Room: The Life and Times of Dan Severn

by Dan Severn

  As the other guys went through their standard routines in the ring, I got changed and started stretching out. Then they asked me to step in the ring to show them some basic takedown techniques, and I went into Amateur Wrestling 101. I showed them Greco Roman and freestyle wrestling techniques, and then they asked me to show them more of the locks and throws in my repertoire. The workout lasted about an hour and a half.

  After the workout, we went out to eat lunch, and then we were brought back and shown a tape of the UWFi style in Japan. The style involved open-handed slaps to the head, punches to the body, and submission locks.

  After showing us the video, they explained that, between the eight of us who were there, only one contract was available for a position with the UWFi. All eight would need to step into the ring and compete for it.

  I dismantled the other seven, because I needed the job.

  Also, it didn’t help them that they were big, stereotypical, roided-up pro wrestling types. Not only did they not have my amateur background, but their steroid-enhanced physiques resulted in them carrying more weight than their frames could functionally carry, which gave them no advantage whatsoever in a real fight. When you’re that slow, it gives me way too many things to attack. To me, steroid use is a sign of weakness. It shows that you don’t believe in your own ability.

  Thirty days later, I was in Tokyo, Japan in front of 12,000 people.

  TWELVE

  IN FRONT OF THE JAPANESE wrestling crowd for my first UWFi match, I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing or what I had gotten myself into. The only thing I knew for sure was Yuko Miyato, the little Japanese guy in front of me, was throwing extremely hard kicks at me, and these were the first true kicks I’d ever experienced in a competitive setting.

  “Fuck this!” I said to myself, as I quickly closed the distance between us.

  I grabbed him and began an aerial assault where I was just flinging him all over the place like a ragdoll and dismantling him while the crowd went freakin’ nuts. I don’t think they’d ever seen a man grab another man in that setting and violently launch him all over the ring like that.

  After the fight, the Japanese interpreter came up to me screaming.

  “Dan Severn!” he exclaimed, “You will become superstar in Japan!”

  “Superstar?” I thought to myself. “I was just trying to stop this guy from unloading on me!”

  That was the beginning of this crazy ride of going back and forth between doing professional wrestling matches the U.S. and shootfighting matches in Japan.

  Again, I was at a point where beggars couldn’t be choosers. I needed the money, and UWFi was paying me $1,000 a match. It wasn’t great, but when you consider my professional wrestling paydays in the U.S. were in the range of $15, a $1,000 payday smokes a $15 payday every time.

  The UWFi promotion was a great awakening for me, because of how snug the matches were. A lot of the Japanese organizations were presenting what was referred to as a “strong style” product. It is best described as “professional wrestling on steroids,” and it was intended to look completely legitimate.

  There were several other Americans on the UWFi roster, including Gary Albright, who was a wrestling star from Nebraska, Gene Lydick, and Billy Scott, who wound up being my best friend while I was in Japan. Billy had a shooter background, so we were able to relate to one another on that level.

  Billy and I would walk around together and take in the sites while sharing insights about the industry and trying to understand the business minds of the Japanese bookers.

  A standard UWFi trip was four-days long. On day one, we would travel to Japan and immediately go to sleep. It was a twelve-hour time difference, and the flight was long and not very comfortable, especially in coach! We would be picked up later that day and taken to the gym to work out, and then we would go out to eat afterward. The rest of the day, you were free to do whatever you wanted. That’s when Billy and I would go off and walk anywhere and everywhere to take in the sights.

  A couple of the guys would always go out drinking, and they would invite me, but that wasn’t my cup of tea. I had a deck of cards and would play solitaire if I didn’t have anything better to do.

  On day two, we would be picked up early to hit the gym, and then we would be taken out to eat at a restaurant. After that, we would normally be picked up in the evening under the cover of kayfabe – a wrestling term for maintaining secrecy – and taken to the offices for talent meetings.

  Yoji Anjo was one of the wrestlers for the UWFi, and he was also the company’s booker. Whenever translation was required for talking to the owners, Yoji was usually used for that purpose, and I began to suspect that a lot of his power in the company derived from his bilingual abilities.

  While trying not to offend the UWFi management, I would choose the simplest words I could, and I would ask what seemed like simple, straightforward questions. Yet, Yoji would translate for me, and people would laugh. Because I couldn’t understand Japanese, I never knew if he was changing the tone or inflection in such a way that a simple statement or question was somehow deserving of a laughing response. That’s if Yoji was even translating properly at all.

  Things like this made me wonder if anyone was being fair to me, or if liberties were being taken with me because I didn’t speak Japanese.

  Day three was show day, which meant we were on our own until pick-up time. On day four, once the show was all over with, they would pick us up in the morning and dump us back at the airport.

  It was during one of these trips that I met the legendary wrestlers Lou Thesz and Billy Robinson for the very first time.

  Nobuhiko Takada was the founder of the UWFi, and he had already crowned himself as the “Real” Pro Wrestling Heavyweight Champion. The belt he used to represent that championship was a very old NWA championship belt personally awarded to him by Lou Thesz.

  Takada was the star of the company, and I just knew I would kill him in a real fight, but he was the boss. Being built up for the sake of having to lose to Takada really galled me. I was literally only there for the money, and they were using my legitimate reputation as a means of making Takada look like he was the real deal.

  It’s helpful to keep in mind that the UWFi was also funded by the Yakuza, so violating the company’s wishes would have meant angering the most powerful organized crime group in Japan.

  The first time I saw Takada was after I’d been to one of the traditional Japanese professional wrestling training dojos. While I was there, I got to see the very harsh training the young wrestlers, or “young boys,” went through, including how they were required to be entirely subservient to the established veterans.

  The young boys had to clean the toilets and mats, and also cook the food for the veteran wrestlers as well.

  Takada came out of the shower area completely naked, except for his sandals, and the young boys had to rush into position and literally squeegee him off in order to dry him.

  “Look at this guy,” I thought to myself. “He really thinks he’s the king!”

  I kept my mouth shut, but I knew I was better than Takada, and I knew my time would come.

  The UWFi was really pulling the wool over the eyes of their fans as far as what was real and what wasn’t. But, when you own the company like Takada did, you can make yourself look as dominant as you want to.

  In a real fight, I could have destroyed Takada, and then I would have gotten on the microphone to challenge Godzilla and Mothra, too!

  In the matches with Takada and other Japanese stars, I ate so many kicks to my legs that I got horribly bruised, and I wound up taking aspirin afterwards simply to thin my blood so that I would reduce the risk of a blood clot.

  We weren’t supposed to sell any of the damage that was being inflicted on us in the Japanese rings unless we truly felt it. They didn’t want us working in such a way that things looked soft. Instead, we were supposed to deliver a real impact with each blow.

  The simplest way to put it wou
ld be like this: in the U.S., you were responsible for delivering the punches and kicks in a way that made them look as real as possible while ensuring your opponent’s safety. In Japan, they would throw chops and kicks as hard as they could, and you needed to figure out a way to take the strikes to minimize the damage inflicted on you.

  The Americans weren’t the only foreign, or gaijin wrestlers in the company. The UWFi also had some Russians working for them, like Salman Hashimikov, a world-championship-winning amateur wrestler for the Soviet Union, who would go on to briefly hold the IWGP championship in New Japan Pro Wrestling.

  Gary Albright and I were matched up against Salman and his tag-team partner, Vladimir Berkovich. When I had to go out and do the job while standing in the ring surrounded by those three turds, I was so pissed.

  When I got in the ring with Berkovich for the first time, I definitely potatoed him, and I choked him to the point where he was gurgling on his own blood.

  I was so pissed about the situation that I was taking my frustrations out on this poor slob. He was an innocent pawn in the chess game being played by this fucked-up company. After relenting, I finally allowed him to make the tag to his partner. Remember, these were MMA-style professional wrestling matches, so I had some leeway as far as when I allowed him to get off the mat.

  The propaganda machine from my years as an international amateur wrestling competitor had touched such a nerve with me, so I always felt like I had something to prove when I got in the ring with two elite amateurs from Russia. Everyone knew Russians were the best technicians in amateur wrestling, even though their cardiovascular capabilities were questionable.

  Gary Albright was an interesting guy to work with. When it came to his training, he didn’t put much work in. The Japanese had a fascination with big bodies, and since Gary was a big guy already, he was able to embellish his size even further by putting on extra, unhealthy weight. He eventually weighed in at over 350 pounds while standing only 6’3.”

  If Gary made better choices, he’d probably still be with us, but in 2000 he suffered a heart attack in the ring and died as a result.

  As unhealthy as Gary’s habits were, I almost couldn’t blame him for taking that approach when I was seeing his payoff envelopes. The Japanese paid us in cash, and you could tell the size of the payoff from the girth of the envelope. My envelope looked like it would be carried away by a gentle breeze; Gary’s envelope looked like it would have taken a typhoon to move it.

  I was the better athlete, but Gary’s size made him the better perceived draw at the box office, and since toughness could be faked in the ring, it was easier for them to give a push to the larger guy.

  Once the UWFi was done feeding me to Takada, they booked me to lose most of my matches instead of being booked the way Gary was. I was hoping they would be able to see through the fantasy and understand that I was a real monster with real athletic ability.

  Of the Japanese guys I fought in the UWFi, the only one I really respected was Yoshihiro Takayama, because he seemed to be the most legitimately skilled, and the toughest of the group. Anyone who saw his MMA fight in Pride with Don Frye later on knows exactly how tough Takayama was.

  If I didn’t need to put food on the table and make sure the mortgage was paid on time every month, there’s no way I would have allowed myself to be put in the position of losing for these guys. It pissed me off so bad to know that I was the guy who had to do the job for some fucking fat slob that couldn’t carry my jockstrap. But, because I needed the money, I had to roll over.

  It left me so infuriated with the UWFi organization, because I was a world-class athlete, and in a real fight, I would’ve murdered these guys.

  “Why do I have to be the guy who lays down?” I would say to them. “Why don’t we make it a nice little show, and since everyone knows I can destroy him anyway, why don’t we make him lay down for me?”

  Between financial stresses and the professional insults I was having to deal with, I truly don’t think my family had a clue as to what I was dealing with.

  When I walked into each of these matches, the one certainty was I absolutely could not afford to get hurt, because then we would have been in serious financial trouble.

  At this point in my life, I wasn’t expecting to be reliant on my physical abilities to make money, but those same physical skills were allowing me to tread water and hold my own, and they granted me the ability to be hopeful for the future.

  AT VARIOUS points in my UWFi run, I vacillated back and forth between having a moustache and having my moustache with a beard added to it. Early on, the beard was pretty big, but I decided I didn’t want an Abraham-Lincoln-style beard. That’s when I bought the tools necessary to keep it cropped tightly around my face. I was also getting sick of having to pick food out of my facial hair.

  Sometimes, I’d even shave my beard off completely, but that became a bit more of a challenge after I had kids. One time I shaved everything off because I was appearing in the movie Rudy, and when I came back out of the bathroom, Michael, Danielle, and Dominique started crying.

  “You’re not my daddy!” they screamed.

  Even though they could hear my voice, my own children didn’t recognize me without my facial hair. If I’d known it would be so traumatic for them, I would’ve let them watch the shaving process from start to finish.

  Obviously, they got over it, but parents don’t like to distress their children. Eventually, the moustache became my trademark, and I learned it was my trademark when I started getting interviewed specifically about my moustache during November, the no-shave month for men.

  Later on, when my moustache would get compared to that of fellow UFC legend Don Frye, I’d always put him over for being a younger man with a fuller, thicker moustache. Still, I’d always refer to myself as the originator of the MMA ‘stache.

  For years people have been telling me moustaches are no longer in fashion, but I always replied that I never followed the crowd in any respect, including fashion statements.

  THIRTEEN

  BACK HOME IN COLDWATER, PHYLLIS Lee was calling me every single day, several times a day, to the point where I almost had to start heeling on her.

  “Phyllis, you shouldn’t be calling me just to see if I’m breathing,” I’d say to her. “Unless you have something specific you want to talk to me about, I’m busy.”

  I wasn’t the kind of person to just sit on the phone for the sake of talking. First of all, I’ve always been extremely focused on time management, and I couldn’t afford to waste too much time on the phone. Second, I felt the need to keep my cards held tightly to my chest because I didn’t really know who I could trust. Wrestling and MMA aren’t exactly businesses in which you can trust a lot of people.

  Sadly, Phyllis didn’t have much going on in her life outside of wrestling, and her phone was her lifeline.

  I need to be clear that my relationship with Phyllis was purely platonic, because there were a few cases where it became clear she may not have always wanted things to remain that way.

  Al Snow, Geza Kalman, and Scott D’Amore all rode with us at different points in time, when I was the navigator, and Phyllis was the driver.

  Phyllis was a horrible driver, and I was never at ease being her co-pilot. I constantly zinged her with one-liners during our travels, and whenever she would laugh, she would reach over and grab my thigh.

  Unfortunately, sometimes she would grab my thigh just a little too high up. I’d always either slap her hand away, or grab it and put it back on the steering wheel.

  “Phyllis… ten and two,” I would say. “Didn’t you take driver’s education? Your hands need to be at ten and two. Are you going to behave, or do I need to superglue your hands to the steering wheel?”

  It was always handled in a comical way, but with her there were always sexual innuendoes and flirtatious passes thrown in my direction.

  Not only did I drive with Phyllis, but I also shared a hotel room with her on more than one occasion when
we were on the road. There were always two beds in the room, so it’s not like she was curled up next to me.

  To the boys, Phyllis was essentially one of us.

  When I went on the road, I normally did some sort of training. If I went out running, I always ran without a shirt on to try to keep some color on my body. Pasty, white skin doesn’t draw money, and tan, muscular bodies are much more marketable.

  Well, one night, I got back from a run and sat down on my bed, shirtless. I was taking my shoes off and preparing to take a shower.

  Phyllis had gone into the bathroom beforehand, and as I removed my shoes, I felt a presence as if someone was coming onto my bed. Suddenly, I felt the touch of a hand on my shoulder.

  Startled, I spun around and inadvertently threw an elbow in the direction of the hand. My elbow caught Phyllis on her side, and all I could see was cottage cheese doing a cartwheel off the edge of my bed.

  It was not a pretty sight.

  This was the clearest case of Phyllis making a sexual advance at me.

  Only Geza, Scott, and Al ever saw anything like that going on, and they would constantly rib me about it.

  “You never know, Dan,” Al said once. “Turn the lights off and have her take those dentures out, and it might be the best you’ve ever had!”

  “There’s not enough alcohol in the world that could make it happen, Al,” I replied.

  “Come on, Dan,” Al continued. “If you were on a desert island, you know you would get some from Phyllis.”

  “That would depend on whether or not I could catch any monkeys,” I laughed.

  PEOPLE THESE days might assume pay-per-view programming was everywhere, even back in the mid-1990s, but the pay-per-view concept was still in its infancy back then. In a state like Michigan, you could only count on getting pay-per-view access in the major metropolitan areas. So, you could expect to get it in and around Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Flint, but in the outlying areas like Coldwater, where I lived, we didn’t have that capability.