A Word About Dean Rasmussen, The Pied Piper of Weird Wrestling

My first Japanese wrestling tape came in the mail wrapped in the remnants of a brown paper bag, its contents, perhaps, seen as too shameful to be viewed by the outside world. It was a collection of what are now viewed as the standards—Mitsuharu Misawa, the young ace of All Japan Pro Wrestling, Jushin Liger, the pint-sized super-hero reinventing wrestling in his image for New Japan and the rampaging Bruiser Brody, a legendary brawler, bad ass and martyr. The last of the renegades.

My life was never the same.

Is that a weird thing to say about professional wrestling? Probably. But I was obsessed. I had just entered my first year of law school as the age of the internet dawned, with it coming new ways to connect with the like-minded across the world.

There weren’t many people in Athens, Georgia carefully following the epic battles between Genichiro Tenryu and Shinya Hashimoto or wondering just how real the dueling leglock spots in a Pancrase match were.

But on the internet? We were legion.

Before it was a pejorative, the Internet Wrestling Community was just a collection of (mostly) dudes enjoying what they’d been told for their whole lives was an embarrassing pastime only suited for children and the mentally incompetent. Suddenly, through the power of NetZero or AOL and the piercing shriek of a modem, we were able to locate other odd ducks, a group of fellow travelers venturing into an unknown world. We discovered it all together, dubbing tapes of dubious quality and sending them far and wide, missionaries for the great art of professional wrestling.

Dean Rasmussen was our king.

Founder of the delightful Death Valley Driver Video Review, Dean was a the pied piper of weird wrestling. While others were discussing the intricacies of All Japan line-by-line and fiercely arguing semantics, Dean was simply spreading joy. He was the first person I ever read online who escaped the narrow confines of Japan’s big two, diving deep into the seedy, wonderful underbelly of the sport.

He loved it all—the flash of the joshi stars, the purity of the British style, two big men slapping meat. Violence most of all. Eschewing any and all weird provincialism, Dean wasn’t a fan of any single promotion. He talked with great passion about anything and everything—so long as it was awesome~!

In an era of fake positivity, it’s important to recognize the real thing when it stares you in the face. Dean loved wrestling and loved taking his readers on journeys into the weird and obscure. And, because of his incomparable passion, a lot of us followed happily.

Soon the DVDVR was more than a message board. It was a collective, traveling the country to take in live shows, one-upping Pro Wrestling Illustrated with their own list of 500 wrestlers and razzing Triple H at every turn. Many of your favorites (hello Phil Schneider, Tony Khan and Bix) cut their teeth at the site, almost all of us at one time or another trying and failing to be as cool as Dean.

It was magic.

Most of us moved on from the big green board as the internet changed. But its spirit never left us.

Now its founder needs our help. If you can, please give.