Booking and promoting a pro-wrestling show had always been on my lifetime to-do list. In my twenties, I worked with a lucha libre promoter in Washington, D.C., and even flew to Mexico to do commentary on a show main evented by Blue Panther and Satanico tagging against Solar and Super Astro in a tournament final match. 

That show, which included Lizmark Jr., a pre-ECW Tajiri, and Cham Pain shooting an angle with Bestia Salvaje, was a TV pilot that never went anywhere — such is wrestling. I went back into fandom, writing on the Death Valley Driver Video Review (DVDVR) board and, later, the Segunda Caida blog for fun. 

Dean Rasmussen, one of DVDVR's founders, suddenly passed away in 2023. He was a close friend and mentor of mine whose writing and ability to foster a community affected countless people across the globe.

Dean and Writing About Wrestling 

When it came to online wrestling writing, Dean was the best to ever do it. His ability to cover all types of wrestling, from Mid Atlantic to Lucha to Battlarts, and make it funny, insightful, and accessible was unmatched. My publisher, Jonathan Snowden, referred to him as the "Pied Piper of Weird Wrestling," and everything I've ever written in my life is simply chasing a ghost. 

After writing my first book, Way of the Blade: 100 of the Greatest Bloody Matches in Wrestling History, it opened up some opportunities for me to write professionally, starting with a weekly column talking about the best matches of the week for The Ringer. 

It's still a bit surreal that Bill Simmons and Spotify paid me to write about SLADE, Gypsy Joe, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, and Nightmare Freddy, but now that I was actually making some income through wrestling, putting on a show seemed like something I could sell my wife on. Of course, by the time the DEAN~! event had taken place, The Ringer had cut back on their freelance budget.

Wrestlemania weekend in Philadelphia made the most sense logistically for our show. We all decided that naming the show after Dean would make for a fitting tribute.

ACTION Wrestling and Our Initial Plans

The original idea for a Segunda Caida show would be to bring Daisuke Ikeda and Yuki Ishikawa to run their legendary rivalry in America. I reached out to the ACTION promoter and DVDVR board veteran Matt Griffin, along with my Segunda Caida partner in crime, Eric Ritz, to help me with the project. 

We then got a tentative thumbs-up from Ishikawa and Ikeda. These things always take longer than you hope they would, and by the time we had a date nailed down, Mr. Ishikawa didn't think his body could live up to the history of that match, so we had to pivot.

There were two big things I wanted out of a DEAN show. I had become a big fan of Mad Dog Connelly, even dubbing him the King of the Dog Collar Match in The Ringer. He felt like the most underappreciated indie wrestler in America, and I wanted a showcase for him. 

Daniel Makabe was a DVDVR board veteran who was wrapping up his career after years as a mat wrestling Ronin, traveling the country with a technical style that had been mostly abandoned. Makabe was part of the original discussions when the idea was Ikeda vs. Ishikawa in a BattlArts tribute, so I was eager to get him a showcase match for the end of his career. 

Timothy Thatcher was always the top choice for his opponent. For a while, we brainstormed alternatives — Thatcher's first priority was Pro Wrestling NOAH, and he couldn't commit until he knew he wasn’t booked with the company for our date. 

I had a bunch of ideas for Mad Dog as well, but once I thought about Demus, it was perfect symmetry. Here was another underseen legend, a guy who had been putting on bloody classics in dirt-floor arenas in Mexico for years, but really only had U.S. runs on spot lucha shows or as Mascarita Dorada's touring opponent. No one in the U.S. had really witnessed his full potential, and we were thrilled to showcase his work.

Building A Well-Rounded Card

With those two big matches lined up, we started to fill out the rest of the card. Gringo Loco is a long favorite of ours, dating back to his days in Naucalpan's International Wrestling Revolution Group promotion. A friend let me know that one of Gringo's legendary opponents, Dr. Cerebro, had a work visa and spent much of the year in Chicago, making travel easier and less expensive. As one of Dean's perennial favorites, I knew we needed Cerebro on the card.

I also wanted to book Filthy Tom Lawlor, a DVDVR board veteran who was excited to perform on the show. He asked us for the lowest booking fee of his modern career, which helped us manage our ballooning budget. 

Slim J is arguably the most underseen and underappreciated independent wrestler of the 21st century. We had originally thought about running Gringo Loco vs. Slim J, but when we switched to Cerebro, Slim J against Adam Priest seemed to slot into the show perfectly. ACTION stalwarts like Manders, Alex Kane, The Coven of the Goat, and Suge D also rounded out the card. 

Thinking we were only going to do this once, we approached the show with the idea that we would lose money. However, thanks to generous sponsors from the DVDVR board, it was a light shower, rather than a total bath. The late, great H2O Wrestling Center, across the bridge in Williamstown, New Jersey, made for an ideal venue. 

It was the right kind of grimy. With rust and dirt in every corner, it looked like it was put together with spit and bubble gum. It felt like an awesome punk rock club, pro wrestling's 924 Gilman St., the perfect place to promote a dirt-under-its-fingernails indie wrestling show.

The Day of the Show 

Eric and I spent the first part of the show putting labels on seats, setting up chairs, and DIYing the layout of the show. IWTV had a setup in the back with our friends and ACTION commentators Dylan Hales and John Mosely on the call. 

As showtime approached, we started hearing that there was a person threatening to jump from the bridge that connected Philadelphia to our spot in New Jersey, delaying both fans and wrestlers. Matt was backstage, juggling the lineup to account for stranded wrestlers, causing us to push Colby Corino vs. Alex Kane for the ACTION title to the opening spot. 

That match ended up being a great starting point. They built the match around Corino applying a series of complex headlocks, frustrating Kane and making for the type of fun, semi-comedic opener you might see on a Memphis show in the 1980s. 

The Gypsy Joe tag was a total blast, and maybe the emotional match on the show with all four wrestlers brawling around the ring, exchanging big punches and hitting each other with the "Reserved for DEAN~!" chair. 

Gringo Loco vs. Dr. Cerebro was the pre-intermission highlight for me, as the Terrible Cerebros vs. Gringos Locos feud was such a highlight of the glory days of IWRG, and the rematch 15 years later was the kind of thing that would only be booked on a Segunda Caida produce card.

Adam Priest and Slim J had the kind of match that felt like they had been touring opponents for years: hard-hitting, unique, and explosive, with Slim J somehow retaining his 20-year-old athleticism at 40. At our follow-up event, Dean~!!! 2, Bryan Danielson called Adam Priest the best independent wrestler in the world for a reason. This felt to me like a best-case scenario Dynamite Kid vs. Tiger Mask match.

Mad Dog and Demus Deliver, Among Others

Mad Dog Connelly and Demus delivered the whirlwind of violence I had hoped for. Out of all the matches on this show, this was the one that came most directly from my mind. Everything else here might have happened on another show at some point, but it was extremely unlikely that Demus and Mad Dog Connelly would have linked up unless I put them on opposite sides of a chain. 

It was magic. It felt like one of the greatest dog collar matches of all time and a contender for the best match of either man's career, and it happened on our show. Matt Griffin was freaking out because they were wrecking the arena, and we had to go to Home Depot to replace the many chairs that Demus and Mad Dog destroyed. It was one of the proudest moments of my life, and no, I won't reflect too hard on what this could possibly mean for my mental health.

Daniel Makabe and Timothy Thatcher, even this late into the night, were able to put on a slower mat wrestling clinic after that tsunami, still completely enthralling the crowd. We didn't get Ishikawa and Ikeda, but Dan and Tim did their best to represent that style with violent strikes, limb-ripping submissions, and intense credibility. Dan gave an emotional post-match speech about how much Dean and the Death Valley Driver Message board meant to him, which was a perfect coda to the evening.

Thank You & Rest In Peace, Dean Rasmussen

My only regret of the night is that Dean wasn't there to see the show in his honor. It was full of the type of wrestling he would have loved. Dean always sought to foster community — there are dozens of stories from people who would tell about how he would send them tapes unsolicited, trying to spread the word about things that he loved. 

The community around the show truly made it special, with old and new friends coming together to celebrate the bizarre hobby that captivates us all. With assistance from Ring of Honor and Tony Khan, Dean's legacy continues to live on through these ACTION Wrestling-promoted shows, including a follow-up show the night before All Elite Wrestling's 2025 Double or Nothing event. The upcoming D3AN, which will take place before and after AEW's Collision event at the 2300 Arena on Saturday, September 6th, 2025.  

Phil Schneider is a writer and podcaster who contributes to the Segunda Caida blog. He has published two books with Hybrid Shoot: Way of the Blade: 100 of the Greatest Bloody Matches in Wrestling History and the follow-up Way of the Blade: AEW Edition. He also hosts the Way of the Blade podcast.