You Know Dan Severn's Little Friends are All Dead and Gone

Dan Severn vs. Redd Dogg NWA Southwest 1/1/99

ER: Now this was cool, and kind of weird. We get an American strong style match for most of the duration, and then we round things out with a period appropriate ECW chairs brawl. We get a bunch of cool amateur takedowns and muscling to start, both men crashing shoulders together like they're about to roll. Severn has these great low takedowns where he gets a waistlock, and in one motion takes down Dogg's leg while tossing him back to the mat. Dogg gets some takedowns of his own and drops a great elbow on the back of Severn's head. So Severn turns to striking and breaks out some nice uppercuts he must have learned from Regal a month earlier. We get another stiff arm lariat, and Severn maneuvers quickly into his slick Indian deathlock, then starts throwing nasty crossfaces at Dogg. A missed avalanche leads to Redd Dogg tossing him with a belly to belly that basically drops Severn on his head, and Severn sells it GREAT. The way he rolled around holding his head and neck was downright Tenryu-esque. Dogg has some nice power offense, a big powerbomb, nice powerslam, two big dudes just tossing each other around.

I greatly love Severn's dragon sleeper, and I love the set-up even more as he just knees Dogg right in the back to drop him, and we get a good tease before Dogg makes the ropes. Dogg gets his own submission in, and before long we spill to the floor and things take an unexpected turn. I was not expecting Dan Severn to gets into a Balls/Tanaka dueling chairs spot, but it happens and seems out of place. But they stick with it and I get into it, both guys bashing each other with stiff chairshots, celebrating this simpler time of 1999 when we couldn't have possibly known that braining each other with metal folding chairs could possibly have negative longterm ramifications. Dogg gets posted, the chair beating continues, both men are counted out and we get a pretty great pull apart with a bunch of other huge dudes running out from the back to break things up. So apparently I need to deep dive late 90s NWA Southwest and do some indy fat guy investigations. I shall quit my government job tomorrow. Match was a real blast, bid dudes beating each other up like big dudes. Severn at this point is truly looking like the unheralded awesome worker of the 90s.

PAS: I thoughts parts of this were really cool, and a couple of parts were really bad, one of those matches which could have used some New Japan TV editing. Loved all the early amateur stuff, the announcer mentioned Redd Dogg had an NCAA background, don't know if that was true but he acquitted himself well. I also liked the suplexes by both guys and the chair brawl at the end was cool. There was some bad stuff in here though. Severn needs to never throw knife edge chops again, and his stinger splash looked stinky. Basically anytime there was any attempt to have a straight wrestling match it looked bad. Severn had a lane, it was a hell of a lane, but he really needed to stick to his lane.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE NWA DAN SEVERN