The Realest Guy in the Room: The Life and Times of Dan Severn
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After the show, Ken walked up to me in the locker room, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I don’t know how you pulled that out of your ass,” Ken said. “But, that was awesome!”
I’m not sure how awesome Ogawa felt the match was, because he left the arena and I never spoke with him again.
AFTER I lost the NWA championship to Naoya Ogawa, my life was just as busy as ever. As far as I was concerned, it was simply one less belt to carry around. Things continued in the same blur of a fashion, just like they had when I was the champion.
I was still fighting and still taking professional wrestling bookings. More independent promoters were familiar with me thanks to my exposure from being on the WWE’s television programs, and now that I was technically free of the NWA’s reins, they actually started booking me more often.
My free-agent, non-exclusive status was continuing to work to my advantage, and the number of independent promotions was far greater than it had been.
Even though I never missed a beat while working in more of the independent promotions, some interesting situations emerged. While I was working with the WWE, I was working with the cream of the talent crop. As NWA champion, I was typically working with a company’s best guy, and many times the best guy in the NWA-affiliate company had more ring experience than I did.
When it came to working in the independents, I found myself working more frequently with guys who were extremely green in the ring, and they leaned very heavily on me to help them plan and execute the matches.
Generally, I’d make sure the talent and I got with the promoter beforehand to understand what window of time we were expected to fill, and what sort of outcome he was looking for.
That’s something I learned in the WWE, where the match listing and the time allotted for it were constantly in flux. If one of Steve Austin’s promos went a little too long, they would just cut your time on the fly, or they would erase your match from the board entirely, even if you were back in the gorilla position ready to walk out.
I always credit professional wrestling for giving me a creative mind, and for giving me the ability to think on my feet, because everything can and will go wrong. Ring ropes break, injuries happen, and plans can change in the blink of an eye. You need to have the ability to adapt and adjust to these things.
At some of these indy shows I worked at, the ring didn’t even show up! This quickly morphed into a professional wrestling show where we were working on amateur wrestling mats.
The percentage of pro wrestlers who can work a meaningful professional match on an amateur mat is probably less than three percent.
For reasons like this, I have all of my wrestling trainees start out on the mat, and they need to graduate to the ring. The way they qualify for time in the ring is by passing five “blue-mat” matches. In a blue-mat match, there are no ropes or turnbuckles to work with; they literally have to wrestle a five-minute match as faces and heels.
At the four-minute mark, I’ll tell them to take the match home, while forcing the go-home spots to make sense. If they don’t conclude the match within the one-minute time frame, it’s an automatic failure.
I’m not trying to be mean to them, but in all of the top companies of the day, whether it’s WWE, TNA or Ring of Honor, everyone on those rosters needs to be able to manage their time.
BECAUSE OF my run in the WWE, far more attention also came to everything else I was doing outside of wrestling and fighting, including the classes and seminars I was teaching in Coldwater.
I kept my family naive to a lot of the things that began to happen after I gained notoriety, and that included the death threats that were left on my business answering machine. Sometimes, these threatening messages were waiting for me on my office voicemail two or three times a week.
The threats went largely undiscovered by anyone but me until my facilities manager, Mark Pennington, checked my messages for me one day and heard one of the threats. On that day, I arrived at the office late, and Mark was staring at me with a face as white as a ghost.
“What’s up?” I asked him.
“You have a death threat on your answering machine,” he replied.
“Play it,” I instructed him.
Sure enough, it was some ranting drunk moron saying he was going to kick my ass and kill me. When the message concluded, I looked up at Mark, calmly.
“Mark, we have caller ID,” I began.
“Yeah, that’s true,” he said.
“We can call this guy back,” I said. “But, before we do that, take a look at the time this call came in. I guarantee you it probably came in between one and four in the morning.”
Sure enough, the call came in around 2:00 a.m.
“This is a guy who was clearly drunk,” I continued. “He had his beer muscles on, and he decided to call the toughest guy he knows and make a threat.”
By this time, I was smiling at Mark.
“If you want to have some fun with the guy, call him back and let him know that I want to take him up on his offer,” I joked.
Mark just stared at me shocked.
“Call him and tell him your boss can fit him in on Wednesday, in between his morning meeting and his appointment to kill somebody in the afternoon,” I said. “To make him happy, I’ll squeeze him in there somewhere on my schedule.”
While Mark was still staring, I reached toward the answering machine.
“Or, why don’t we just do this?” I said, as I pressed the delete button. “He’s gone now.”
Prank callers were like the keyboard warriors of today. They can be as tough as they want when they don’t actually have to back up any of the threats they’re making. However, there were other situations that occurred around this time that kept me a little more on edge.
I have a riding lawnmower, and there has been more than one occasion when I’ve been out mowing my lawn and I’ve noticed cars driving back and forth in front of my property. Eventually, some of them will pull into my driveway. When this happens, I don’t know if it’s a friend or a foe, and it’s not exactly like my house is on the way to someplace special. I’ll shut down my lawnmower and walk toward them, typically while wearing bib overalls and a flannel shirt.
“Are you Dan Severn?” they’ll usually ask.
“Last time I checked,” I’d answer.
“I’m a huge fan!” they’d yell.
When that used to happen infrequently, it was fine, but as it happened more and more, I decided it was time to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. I mean, there are a lot of crazies in the world, and it’s not like John Lennon wasn’t shot and killed by one of his fans.
I grew up in the era of the Andy Griffith Show and people thought Mayberry was the ideal. I certainly did, but we’re not living in that era anymore. The world is a lot less wholesome than it used to be.
I live in an out-of-the-way area, but with people having access to things like Google Maps, they can pinpoint the exact location of your residence a whole lot faster than they used to, and they can find you with far less effort.
As much as I wish I could engage with everyone who comes by my house or calls my Michigan Sports Camps business line, I always have things to do, like making sure I have my lesson plans lined up for my students and making sure things look as professional as they possibly can.
I’m very pernickety about the way I want things to be done, and there have been so many young employees of mine that I’ve had to groom along the way. So many times, I’ve had to say, “If you’re my teacher, and you’re representing me, don’t show up here in a t-shirt that looks like you pulled it out of the bottom of your laundry pile. And definitely don’t wear a shirt that says ‘I like big tits!’”
You’d think it wouldn’t be asking too much of staff members for them not to wear things with profanity and sexual innuendos on them, particularly when you’re trying to create a family-friendly environment where parents feel good about bringing their children to learn and train.
When I hear one of my guys curse one too many times, I bring the pocket thesaurus from my shelf over to them and either smack them in the forehead with it or shove it into their chest.
“Find me another word that expresses the same thought you’re trying to convey,” I’ll challenge them. “You might be surprised to learn that you can actually curse in public and people will think you’re intelligent if you use a multi-syllable word!”
Sometimes I don’t know if I’m running a training facility or a halfway house for young boys, but eventually they learn my rules and how I want things to be run. People may think I’m overdoing it, but my training facility is on my property, and I need things to be handled in a certain fashion in order to keep my family protected as well.
THIRTY-THREE
I FIRST BOUGHT MY PLACE in Coldwater partially because of my love for amateur wrestling. I knew what I could build by having this piece of property. It has three acres with a barn, and a storage facility that’s 10,000 square feet.
When I bought the property, I remember thinking I could never have afforded a business and a residence at the same time, so I got this place so I could have my cake and eat it, too.
I slowly converted it into an amateur wrestling facility, but then when I started getting involved in the wacky world of professional wrestling, additional features were added on to accommodate my career change.
Putting drills together was easy for me to do, and the lesson plans I would put together for professional wrestling included drills for warming up, stretching out, and bumping so that there was some type of continuity to the training. I even put out the very first three-tape series on the fundamentals of professional wrestling training.
The first discipline I taught at the facility was amateur wrestling, then I followed that up with professional wrestling instruction, and then I moved to no-holds-barred fighting and mixed martial arts. Back in the mid-’90s, there were no instructions or manuals for how to train to be a cagefighter or a professional wrestler, so I was making things up as I went.
The best-known wrestler to graduate from my training facility was Monty Brown. Monty came out of Detroit, played for Ferris State University, and became recognized as one of the finest NCAA Division II football players. He ultimately wound up in the NFL for several years before retiring and finding his way into my training center.
He didn’t live anywhere near Coldwater, but Monty was very dedicated, and he’d travel three hours each way just to work out with me for two-and-a-half hours. Seeing that kind of sacrifice made me partial to Monty; it took me back to my days of driving a similar distance just to get in some training time with Al Snow.
Fortunately for him, Monty didn’t need any character development whatsoever, because he was a larger-than-life character already. He took to wrestling like a duck takes to water.
When Monty asked me to work with him on an independent show at his old high school, I gladly obliged. Normally, I would’ve worked the show as my masked Japanese alter ego, Tubby Tanaka, but I decided to wrestle under my real name as a favor to Monty, because I’d be of more value to the card by performing as Dan Severn.
Up until then, Monty had always been a heel in his matches, and I was always the de facto babyface. We put the match together and worked out what we’d planned to do, but as soon as we walked out there the crowd went bananas for Monty and started booing me.
I said, to myself, “Uh oh… Mr. Brown may not realize it, but we’re about to switch roles.”
As I hit the ring, I started acting in a more heelish way than normal simply by using my facial expressions and body language. What I said wouldn’t have helped too much, because the audience can’t really hear you unless the ring is mic’d.
This was early in Monty’s career, and he was thrown off by the shift in my attitude.
“What are you doing?” Monty asked me after we were locked up, trying to conceal his mouth.
“The crowd loves you!” I explained. “It’s called a role reversal, brother! You’re me, and I’m you now!”
Instantly, we changed roles and made the crowd happy. Those are some of the things you have to be able to do when you’re working in front of a live audience and they clearly want to see a variety of wrestling other than what you planned to give them
When he was done with his training, Monty had a high-profile run in TNA Wrestling, and then the WWE picked him up and added them to the roster of their resurrected ECW brand. The WWE also changed Monty’s name to ‘The Alpha Male’ Marcus Cor Von, as if the fans somehow wouldn’t recognize him as the Monty Brown who played in the Super Bowl for the Buffalo Bills.
Sadly, Monty’s career was cut short because his sister and his brother in law were killed in a car accident. Monty assumed the responsibility of being the guardian for his sister’s children, and he had to bring his wrestling career to a close. That was a very tragic way for a promising career to end, because Monty had the size, athleticism and charisma to be very successful as a professional wrestler.
TYPICALLY, WHEN people ask me about my fight with Forrest Griffin, I jokingly respond, “Forrest who?”.
There’s no disrespect intended on my part toward a fellow UFC Hall of Famer, and the first-ever winner of The Ultimate Fighter television series. It’s just that for the longest time, I didn’t even realize I’d fought and beaten Forrest Griffin in his very first MMA contest.
I honestly don’t remember anything about my match with Forrest. I was so aggressively doing MMA fights and professional wrestling matches, and on top of that I was also teaching amateur wrestling clinics and military training seminars.
Fighting, wrestling and teaching made me a very good living, whether I was working for the big companies making big paychecks, or working for the smaller companies making smaller paychecks. The gravy train ran really well for a long time.
Forrest and I met on October 27, 2001, in the middle of a stretch where I’d fought thirty-one times in four years and had twenty-four wins, four losses, and three draws.
Most of the losses have etched a mark in my memory bank, but the victories? No.
It’s funny to think that my MMA record during this four-year stretch, which concluded well into my forties, was so good. I only ever thought I would do one event, which was UFC 4, but once I got a sense for how much money could be made, I went back again and again, because I never knew when the gravy train was going to end and my age would catch up to me. This led to a second year, a fifth year, a tenth year, and I just never stopped.
Speaking of winners of The Ultimate Fighter, Rashad Evans is a former Michigan State wrestler who ultimately became a UFC Champion, and he got his MMA start at my training facility in Coldwater.
In Rashad’s case, it was great to start with someone with such a great amateur wrestling pedigree. For all mixed martial artists, there’s an element of striking you have to learn, and there’s an element of submission skills you have to implement. However, you need wrestling ability.
Wrestling doesn’t teach you submissions, and it doesn’t teach you striking. Rather, wrestling teaches you body positioning, body control, manipulations and things of that nature. That’s why it’s the glue that holds everything together.
Over and over again, I’ve said, “As long as I have a high-level wrestler, I have someone that has a work ethic and a mind-set.” Rashad certainly had those attributes.
Rashad’s first professional fights were for my Danger Zone promotion, and his first major win was at the Gladiator Challenge Tournament in Colusa, California. I cornered for him in those fights, and he wound up winning the whole tournament.
During his first fight,
Rashad got his eyebrow cut, and everyone assumed the tournament was over for him.
“Come with me,” I said to Rashad.
I took Rashad to the back, cleaned out his cut, and glued his eyebrow back together with superglue. Rashad came back out looking as if nothing had happened to him.
I’d used superglue on myself several times after fights in order to close cuts and prep myself for the rest of my weekly activities, so Rashad’s split eyebrow wasn’t anything new to me.
After Rashad won the tournament, I called the UFC and asked them if Rashad could get a try-out for the second season of The Ultimate Fighter.
“Sure, Dan,” they said. “We’ll do it for you. Just make sure he gets his tape in.”
Even then, Rashad still delayed getting his tape to the UFC officials, and I had to pressure him some more.
To date, I’ve only ever heard Rashad talking about the major fighting camps he has trained with, like the Blackzillians or Greg Jackson’s team. I’m extremely proud of Rashad’s success. I just wish he’d acknowledge how he got his start in my Coldwater training facility a little more often to make people aware of the high-quality training available there.
One thing I try to develop in the fighters who train with me is an old-school-cagefighting attitude. Today’s competitors have a different mind-set to where if you take them down and you’re throwing bombs at them, they won’t tap out. They would rather have the referee stop the match so they can save face, show how manly they are, and tell people they never gave up.
To me, if you take this attitude into the cage, you are a dumbass. Truly, you are a dumbass.
Mixed martial arts is a mental and physical chess game where checkmate hurts. Any time you beat somebody, that person took some type of physical damage in defeat. It doesn’t matter whether the damage came in the form of strikes or a submission hold, it’s still physical damage.