by Dan Severn
Rather than speaking directly with Vince, the majority of my conversations were with Jim Ross, the lead announcer and head of talent relations. I always had a good relationship with Jim, especially since he seemed to understand where I was coming from in terms of my priorities. He had a great rapport with pretty much everybody on the WWE roster.
One thing that made my situation particularly unique was that I arrived in the WWE as the reigning NWA champion. I think Jim realized I wasn’t going to bite the hand that was feeding me, and he also understood I didn’t want to bring any dishonor to the NWA by the way I was being handled in the WWE. I was an old-school guy, and Jim knew my handshake and my word truly meant something.
By the time I got around to finalizing things with the WWE, even Vince must have been aware of my trusting nature and the integrity behind my handshake, because he walked up to me and said, “How do we do this, pal? Do we shake hands or should we just write something down on a napkin? What do you want to do?”
“As much as I’d like to do that, Vince, I think in today’s world I’d feel more comfortable with a contract,” I replied.
Because I knew my show dates so far in advance, it allowed me the leeway to schedule MMA fights, speaking engagements, training seminars, and wrestling appearances with other companies. So, if I appeared for the WWE one night, the following morning I might have visited a local police station and trained some of the officers there.
As a result, during the twenty-four-hours on either side of a WWE booking, I might have been earning two or three additional paychecks. It always struck me as the smartest possible way to conduct business.
People around the WWE got used to seeing me in the cafeteria area sitting off on my own and conducting assorted business. I was always reading, making notes, or developing workout routines to teach at either different combat training seminars, or back at my Coldwater training facility. I was also making a lot of business calls.
I’m sure I came across as standoffish to some of the other talent, but that wasn’t my intent. I was just trying to be courteous to others while also maintaining some privacy for myself.
In the beginning, the WWE used me very well.
I would come for my first few appearances while wearing a suit and tie, and I would quickly squash people like Mosh of the Headbangers or Flash Funk, making them submit or choking them out.
Eventually, I started appearing in my gear, with Jim Cornette behind me carrying my belts. The outfit I competed in was pretty much a carbon copy of what I’d worn in the UFC cage.
I’d even bring down a water bottle and a mouthpiece, douse the mouthpiece with water before sticking it in my mouth, and then rinse my mouth out with water and spit. It was like I was getting ready for war.
Part of the reason for the mouthpiece was theatrical, but it was also used partially as protection for myself. Despite the fact that punches and kicks in the wrestling industry are supposed to be “working punches” and “working kicks,” I’ve still met plenty of professional wrestlers who were missing their teeth. A poorly aimed working punch could hurt just as much as a properly aimed shoot punch.
Many wrestlers don’t know how to gauge distance of velocity very well when it comes to throwing punches, so you ultimately end up getting hit with a few potato shots, which I referred to as “taters.” I did not wish to be tatered by anyone, and if I was tatered, they would certainly get a receipt so they wouldn’t think they could get away with it again. And, as many wrestlers are well aware, I liked to work snug to begin with.
It can be hard knowing if a potato shot is intentional or not, but there is plenty of jealousy in the wrestling business. Guys wonder why they have to be jobbed out and why they have to be the one to lose, and if they resent the fact that they’re being scripted to lose, they might decide to take it out on their co-workers in the ring.
My entrance attire was completed by a towel around my neck and a dampened shirt, which gave the impression that I’d just finished working out and warming up.
The honest truth is, I did make sure I gave myself a workout and a stretch before going out to the ring, which made a lot of the guys in the back nervous. I would make sure my body was completely warmed up so that I could avoid an injury, but given my actual fighting background, I guess they thought I might get too worked up and actually hurt someone.
“Brother, it’s not a shoot; it’s a work,” they would say.
Even if wrestling is choreographed, I’m still preparing myself to get thrown around and dropped so that my body can absorb the impact of hitting the mat.
I normally tried to get the people I was working with to head out to the ring with me before the shows started. I always figured it was better to rehearse the spots from our matches to some degree, because during a live show, things can change, and I thought it would be easier if we’d practiced a little. Very seldom did anyone take me up on the offer to prep for the matches.
Jim Johnston composed the custom entrance theme that played as I came through the curtain, and he did a marvelous job. To this day, I have people coming up to me proclaiming my WWE entrance theme as one of their all-time favorites.
UFC owes a debt of gratitude to both Ken Shamrock and I. The two of us were in the WWE at a time when the UFC was struggling to keep its programming on pay per view. Ken and I gave the UFC added visibility at a time when they were losing momentum and weren’t getting a great deal of attention.
Ken carried the moniker of ‘World’s Most Dangerous Man’ as part of his gimmick, and I had Jim Cornette out there with me as my manager and spokesman, and he continually brought up the UFC’s initials when a lot of people were at home saying, “What’s the UFC?”.
Jim was a good mouthpiece for me, and the UFC got a great rub from Ken and I since we were both in front of millions of television viewers on a weekly basis flying the UFC flag.
I WAS always impressed by the WWE’s staff. Whenever they descended upon a building, they always took it over with military precision, and quickly tacked up paper signs directing everyone to Vince’s office, or over to the catering area.
As far as the management was concerned, they always wanted the wrestlers to show up extremely early, between noon and 1:00 p.m.
At first I wondered why they wanted us to show up so early for shows that began late into the evening, but the longer I was in the WWE bubble, the more I got to understand why things were structured that way.
For a lot of the talent, the early afternoon period functioned as a babysitting service. Management wanted us there as early as they could to make sure we were all accounted for. All of the proposed matches for the night would be written on an easel, but things could change rapidly over the course of a day depending on who showed up without their ring gear, who showed up under the influence of something that made them unfit to perform that evening, or who didn’t even bother to show up at all.
However, if someone showed up without gear, the WWE had a couple seamstresses there who were so talented, they could whip up a brand new set of ring attire for a performer on the spot with just a couple hours of notice.
After I showed up very promptly for the first few events, WWE officials made it clear they weren’t all that worried about whether or not I was there precisely on time. I wasn’t one of the performers they were worried about.
The WWE also had makeup professionals who could dust the circles out from under your eyes, or who could color your hair for you. The WWE’s staff could do literally everything except wrestle the matches.
As intense as the atmosphere was for the Monday Night RAW events, the Tuesday night performances for pre-recorded shows were significantly less stressful.
I would look around at most of the wrestlers and think, “Where else can you guys make this kind of money to dress up like it’s Halloween every night?”.
Yet, some of these guys were so genuinely arrogant or stupid that they would risk showing up under the influence of all kinds of substances, not realizing it wou
ld be nearly impossible to earn that type of money in this line of work anywhere else.
Every major wrestling fan is aware of the vast number of wrestlers who have gone in and out of rehab. I can’t think of another company that would take employees out of the work setting, pay for their stint in rehab, welcome them back to work, and pay the worker the entire time.
The WWE would do this for people three or more times. They’re the only company I can think of that does this time and time again, and yet they seem to have the employees most likely to abuse drugs.
The wrestling industry doesn’t follow the basic fundamentals of business at all. Even at the highest level, wrestling was one of the only jobs where showing up on time and showing up ready to work seemed optional.
I need to mention how a lot of the tardiness and other shenanigans had to do with guys recognizing how management and the creative team were willing to overlook certain infractions if they thought you had the ability to draw money for them. If they thought you could make them money or draw ratings, they were far more willing to look the other way.
In wrestling’s ‘Attitude Era’ the locker room was a diverse band of misfits like something out of the movie The Dirty Dozen. It was a strange group that somehow fit together when it was show time.
TWENTY-EIGHT
RIGHT AWAY, THE WWE PRESENTED me as a major player and entered me into the 1998 King of the Ring tournament. Ken Shamrock and I were placed on opposite sides of the King of the Ring tournament bracket, and it looked like it was the WWE’s intent to make a confrontation between us happen in the finals. Since Ken and I each had one victory in our MMA series, and there was virtually no chance of either of us fighting one another in the UFC’s octagon again, it seemed like a wise choice to have us meet in the tournament finals with the crown on the line.
Properly promoted, Shamrock vs. Severn at the King of the Ring tournament at that time would have appealed to a lot of UFC fans who might never had considered buying a wrestling pay-per-view show before.
Quite honestly, I was convinced the end of the tournament was going to involve Ken and I fighting for the King of the Ring crown, and when that didn’t happen, I was quite surprised. Instead, I wound up losing to the Rock during his run as the leader of The Nation of Domination.
I only ever worked with the Rock that one time in our King of the Ring match, and I just remember thinking he was such an arrogant ass when I met him. I was being very polite to him, but he wasn’t going along with the way the match was laid out beforehand, and he started working overly stiff on top of that. It was honestly one of the few times I actually considered turning a work into a shoot. Granted, he had a football background, but that didn’t mean diddly shit to me.
People ask me all the time about what it was like to wrestle the Rock. I understand that he went on to become a Hollywood star, but this match with him took place long before he became the major star he is today. At that time, he was just another guy on the roster trying to get a push.
The 1998 King of the Ring was the first example of how I never really understood the inner workings of the WWE. I would have thought, in a case like this, that they would have approached the talent involved to get their input on how to get the best out of a situation and to get the most out of an event, but I didn’t see that happening from the get-go.
I suppose it’s possible I hadn’t been with the company long enough to be privileged to pitch ideas for those types of angles. It also could’ve been my lack of exclusivity to the WWE that made them hesitant to push me, knowing full well I could have performed for another company and given them the rub as a result of my being pushed by the WWE.
For all they knew, if they’d allowed me to win at the King of the Ring, I could have been in some crazy barbwire match for ECW the following night. Then, if I did something outside of their ring to upset them, the next time I was at a show, they could’ve had me doing a job for Doink the Clown in the opening match.
Anyway, if they’d just talked to me about how I could best serve their company, things probably would’ve gone a whole lot better for both of us.
It seemed to me like Vince Russo and the rest of the creative team felt like they would retain more power if they kept their plans separate from the wrestlers and didn’t involve us in the discussions. All in all, the shows probably would’ve been even more successful if they had shared their ideas and future plans with the parties involved so that everyone would be at least somewhat comfortable with where things were headed.
For the record, if I’d made it to the finals of the King of the Ring and they’d asked me to do the honors for Ken Shamrock, I wouldn’t have minded. It simply would’ve depended on the way the match was constructed and what the plans were going forward. There are plenty of creative ways to end a pro wrestling match - through interference, or referee manipulation, or through the use of a foreign object like a steel chair - to keep both wrestlers strong. It’s not a matter of whether you win or lose, but how you win or lose.
I get asked a lot what it was like for Ken Shamrock and I to be in the WWE locker room at the same time. Our interactions were extremely limited and infrequent. It was a situation where there are two bulls in the room, but because of Ken’s steroid use, I’m guessing I was the only bull in the room with a fully-functioning set of balls.
I didn’t go out of my way not to speak to Ken, but there was a lot of tension between us. We were two legitimate competitors from another industry that involved real fights, and we each had a win and a loss in our series. That, in and of itself, is more than enough to cause tension between two competitive people.
THERE WAS nothing normal about my WWE contract. The sheer fact that I was working one third of the dates the other wrestlers were probably rubbed some of them the wrong way.
Something else occurred regularly that probably rubbed some of the talent the wrong way as well, but I didn’t realize until much later how it might have affected the reactions I got from them: when my attorney negotiated my WWE contract, he got a clause approved requiring the WWE to pay me a portion of my salary in person, and in cash.
The problem with the way this was handled is that I received my cash payment at the same time the other wrestlers were receiving their per-diem money, which took care of some of their incidental road expenses. The way this played out is each night I was there, an elderly gentleman came in with a briefcase full of cash, and he was generally giving the wrestlers $50 here or there, and the wrestlers all lined up to receive it. No matter who you were, you generally got the same thing.
Well, when I got up there, I received $1,500, in a stack of $100 bills, which obviously dwarfed what the others were receiving. Again, this was simply part of my base salary which was subtracted from my check, but I could see the looks and gestures I was getting, and I’m sure it influenced the way I was perceived, as if I was getting some sort of preferential treatment. If the boys had some sort of problem with me, I wish they would have asked me about it, because it would have cleared up a lot of misconceptions.
After two weeks with the company, I noticed everyone referred to each other by their first names or their ring names whenever they came in contact with each other. They would say, “Hey, Rock” or “Hey, ‘Taker,” but for some reason, everyone referred to me as “Mr. Severn,” instead of “Dan,” which I found to be extremely odd, as if there was some invisible rift between me and the rest of the talent on the roster.
For weeks, I noticed this going down, and I finally decided to get to the bottom of it. When everyone had cleared out of the locker room except for Val Venis and myself, I finally had the opportunity to get some answers.
“Hey, Val.” I began. “Why is it when the boys all talk to each other around here, you all refer to each other by ring names or first names, but everyone calls me ‘Mr. Severn’?”
He stared back at me with a deathly serious expression.
“Dude, you’re from the real world,” he said. “We’re all make believe. You sc
are us because we’re afraid if we accidently potato you, you’re going to have a flashback to the cage, and then you’re going to kill us.”
His answer blew me away, because this was the world of professional wrestling, and I was well versed in this world. Mentally snapping and then shooting on the people who are trusting you in the ring is not what this sport is about. Then again, if I scared the boys that badly, it probably would have translated well to the audience watching at home.
The only new people I really got to know while I was in the WWE were Owen Hart and Steve Blackman, but I had better camaraderie with guys like Al Snow and Mick Foley, who I’d known before I arrived there.
I would sit back, observe, and try to figure out who was real and who was fake.
In life, you have people with great attitudes that are wonderful to be around, and you have others who want to know what the bare minimum is they can get away with without getting fired. This is especially true in an environment as politically motivated as the world of professional wrestling.
Speaking of political motivation, there are plenty of homosexuals in the wrestling business, including those in booking positions, and one of the running jokes in the WWE was that you needed to be careful about who was behind you, pushing you to the top.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care what some of the boys are doing in the privacy of their own homes, or in their spare time. The point is, there were plenty of rumors about wrestlers who received their pushes or maintained their employment because of sexual favors they gave to members of the booking team.
TWENTY-NINE
A FEW OF THE ROAD agents gathered all of the talent together in the catering area to announce the concept of the Brawl for All to us. Even though professional wrestling is scripted, the Brawl for All was going to be a real fighting tournament with a real cash prize awarded to the winner.