DEAN~!!! 2 Day 1: Manders vs. Rhino

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Manders vs. Rhino

MD: I actually really like Ron Bass. Some of that is a sort of after-the-fact nostalgia to his babyface turn on JJ Dillon and Black Bart and Buddy Landel in 1985. They more or less anchored the JCP midcard that year. But as a heel in the early 80s, he was a guy who knew exactly what to give and when, would lean on people, would throw himself into things when it was time get comeuppance. I was looking through the board and DEAN thought that he needed a reexamination in 2015. I tend to agree and...

Actually, let's put a pin on Outlaw Ron Bass for a minute as hard as that may be. DEAN~!!! 2 took place last week in Arizona. There is a Matt involved. He is promoter extraordinaire Matt Griffin (formerly #251, two spots above Ricky Reyes, on the November 2002 DVDVR 500, Jacey North). He is not me. I'm basically just here holding the fort on the blog while Phil and Eric put this stuff together and honor the big guy. It means, however, that I can enjoy the show like the rest of you can and that I get to write about it having not, you know, actually put together the matches. I ended up writing about DEAN~!!! 1 in one big post but I figured I'd write about each match here on its own. Maybe one a day. Maybe not. But we'll get through them soon enough. 

Anyway, back to Ron Bass. I got big Ron Bass vibes from heel-leaning Manders here. There was a moment early on where it seemed like the crowd was more than happy to get behind him, but they had put it together with Rhino as the babyface given that they were probably expecting a more-casual-than-not crowd and it all worked out. Unsurprisingly, he rose to the occasion. 

These could have been two big, hard-hitting guys just running into each other over and over again. When they announced the match, that was mostly what I was expecting. That would have been fine. It would have set the stage for the rest of the show. It would have given everyone a unique match-up worth talking about. And there was quite a bit of that smashing and crashing overall. But that's not all that this was. Manders gave a far more nuanced performance than that, layering in both vulnerability and canniness to give the match a backbone so it wasn't just working on heft and muscle alone.

That vulnerability was honestly lovely. That's the word I'll use. Lovely. He stood tall against Rhino, going shot for shot, but each shot he took snapped his head back. On the floor, Rhino might have backpedaled in the face of Manders' assault, but in the ring, he had just a bit more forward motion, which made sense both visually and because he was babyface-coded here. Manders went for a big shot early and missed the lariat on the outside, ravaging his arm into the post. He found really interesting ways to sell it moving forward. Rhino hit a suplex almost immediately thereafter and he played up the landing by focusing on it. Then, closer towards the finish, he whiffed on a lariat and sold the arm just from the motion of missing. That's a true relatable feeling. If your arm hurts and you move it the wrong way, you feel it. Of course going for broke and missing a lariat (even if the only contact was with the air) could stun someone, but it's a concept of immersed selling that you will almost never see from anyone else even if you watch eighty years of pro wrestling footage. 

And he was canny in his offense. He, being the heel, missed the charge on the outside, but Rhino crashed into the post only because Manders propelled him that way. He pointed to his head after the fact and well he should. This was still a crowd that half wanted to support him and it was best to make it clear what they were going for considering he'd be gutting his way though the rest of the match with one arm. That meant when Rhino clapped up later on (because he's a babyface vet who knows how to get the crowd going), the fans went with him, and it meant that they were happy and satisfied with the finish instead of disappointed. This was a match that could have just been the lowest common denominator and everyone would have been happy with it anyway but that tried to be something more, because that's the spirit of the thing, isn't it? And the spirit was alive and well with this opener.