DEAN~!!! 2 Day 7: Mad Dog Connelly vs Adam Priest

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Mad Dog Connelly vs Adam Priest (Dog Collar Match)

MD: Work with me for a minute here. If you ever got a tape from Dean over the years, there was a real good chance that it'd just be something he had watched recently and enjoyed. You never knew what you were going to get. That was, in many ways, the spirit of the Death Valley Driver Video Reviews. The wrestling came to them. Maybe they had a good idea of what to seek after repeat viewings, but it was the footage that ended up in their hands. It was very much the opposite of the Observer. That was at the center, the keeper of the canon. These ruled the periphery, full of strange energy where anything counted and everything was a possibility. 

Now remember, this show was put together in part by Phil Schneider and to get a Schneider Comp was a very different experience. You were already in through the door. You knew the password. You were choosing from a numbered list. If the DVDVRs took the footage as it came, Phil took the best of that footage: the weirdest, the wildest, the bloodiest, the hardest hitting, the absolute must-see distilled from every corner of the world and put it all in one place. 

For those of us who watched the show at 7 PM last Tuesday having looked forward to it for a month+, it was a Schneider Comp. But I imagine for those who walked up not quite sure what they were getting into, that took their kids, that saw the social media posts and clicked, thousands and thousands of people, it was instead the cool tape that you got from Dean which might have anything in the world on it. 

The DVDVRs helped to expose people to the possibilities of pro wrestling, to push people out of either one box or another, the culture or the counter-culture, and realize there was so much more under the sun. And that's what this match was meant to do as well. It wasn't Connelly vs Demus II, and that's okay. It was a bit more of the touring version of a Connelly dog collar match. You could see them run this around the horn in 1985 in Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, and Jackson. It was a gateway drug for a Connelly dog collar match. Here's a taste. Intense? Sure. Not what you're used to? Not at all. Unsanitized? No Dunn Cuts and corporate speak here. Want more? You absolutely do. 

But it was one that leaned into contrast. Adam Priest can, of course, wrestle any style, and this is a style he can wrestle, but the strength here was in the differences. He was canny, savvy, underhanded, and backed into a corner and fighting for his life. That meant getting some cheapshots in early. It meant having the corrective collar in his back pocket, a real equalizer that might, might have put Connelly down if he could get it on him through hook or crook. 

The problem was, connected by the chain as they were, every bit of violence Priest could bring to the table, Connelly could return threefold. He could whip Connelly into the guardrail, bruise and batter up his side, but Connelly would burst forth and drive his own head into Priest without abandon, a living breathing guardrail coming straight at you at high, reckless speed. You aren't going to outchoke Connelly. You aren't going to outmangle Connelly. You might outsmart him, but if that buys you one opportunity, you better damn well put him down with it, because otherwise, he will get up and you will have hell to pay. In this case, hell came in the form of Priest's own corrective collar clamped around his neck as Connelly pulled and pulled until it seemed Priest's eyes might bug out. 

This was a free show. It was on YouTube. For those of us who knew what we were getting into, it scratched the itch but left us wanting more. Of course it did. There was always another issue, always another post, always another road report, always another match to be found in the crates or the distant corners. For those new to this world, however? Well, the first one's always free, isn't it? There's so much truth still left to be lived.