Danhausen

[2Xtreme_lives]

Whats the big deal? Why is he so good or bad?

I've seen him cropping up everywhere online, podcasts, he's trading card in the Major Pod Card set is one everyone wants but I have no idea how long he's been doing the character or what it all started as.

Any worthwhile matches, is he likely to be AEW or WWE one day?

[69MeDon]

I have never seen a match of his but I enjoy his character work.

Love that Danhausen.

[Guest]

He’s not good or bad. He’s very nice, very evil 

there’s a good interview it’s him on Chris Van Vliet with his human Makeup on where he explains where he came from, and why he changed. 
 

I haven’t seen a single match of his. But he’s in my top 5 people in wrestling I enjoy online content of. His dedication to wearing the face paint in everything he does, even when it’s just hanging about with friends for food is superb

his limit..probably where he is now. The character doesn’t seem like it’s big time. But it’s a lotta fun and worth a bag of teeth in Anyones money 

 

[Factotum]

I have said it before on another thread. If he was on a bigger stage, he would be every kids favourite wrestler. There's a goldmine there if someone used him correctly.

 

[Chris B]

He's extremely hard-working on videos and social media. I find him hilarious, and I almost don't care whether he wrestles or not. There's a match with him and Orange Cassidy that's pretty much exactly what you expect:

I want him to turn up in AEW, just to mess around on Dark and the like. He's so good at just casually being funny and keeping attention. I love his constant attempts to scam comic book shops when he visits them. I think he's got the potential to be a big star, if not a big wrestling star. 

Edited October 14, 2021 by Chris B

[2Xtreme_lives]

So the gimmick is he's from outer space and he wasn't anyone beforehand. he's always been Danhausen since he debuted.

 

Just now, Factotum said:

I have said it before on another thread. If he was on a bigger stage, he would be every kids favourite wrestler. There's a goldmine there if someone used him correctly.

 

This is what ive seen a lot of kids making masks etc for Halloween 

 

7 minutes ago, Louch said:

He’s not good or bad. He’s very nice, very evil 

there’s a good interview it’s him on Chris Van Vliet with his human Makeup on where he explains where he came from, and why he changed. 
 

I haven’t seen a single match of his. But he’s in my top 5 people in wrestling I enjoy online content of. His dedication to wearing the face paint in everything he does, even when it’s just hanging about with friends for food is superb

his limit..probably where he is now. The character doesn’t seem like it’s big time. But it’s a lotta fun and worth a bag of teeth in Anyones money 

 

I'll check it out

[Chris B]

3 minutes ago, 2Xtreme_lives said:

So the gimmick is he's from outer space and he wasn't anyone beforehand. he's always been Danhausen since he debuted.

He's described it as 'Conan O'Brien posessed by a demon'. The make-up is inspired by the demon face that turns up in The Exorcist. So he's basically himself (Donovan Danhausen) possessed by the Demon Danhausen, who wants to be rich and famous and earn lots of human money. He's evil, but he's also nice.

 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Chris B said:

He's extremely hard-working on videos and social media. I find him hilarious, and I almost don't care whether he wrestles or not. There's a match with him and Orange Cassidy that's pretty much exactly what you expect:

I want him to turn up in AEW, just to mess around on Dark and the like. He's so good at just casually being funny and keeping attention. I love his constant attempts to scam comic book shops when he visits them. I think he's got the potential to be a big star, if not a big wrestling star. 

“Free for Danhousen” as things go in his cloak

hed be a great host on a kids wrestling show. The guy between the matches with a Renee type. 

[mim731]

17 minutes ago, Chris B said:

He's extremely hard-working on videos and social media. I find him hilarious, and I almost don't care whether he wrestles or not. There's a match with him and Orange Cassidy that's pretty much exactly what you expect:

I want him to turn up in AEW, just to mess around on Dark and the like. He's so good at just casually being funny and keeping attention. I love his constant attempts to scam comic book shops when he visits them. I think he's got the potential to be a big star, if not a big wrestling star. 

I enjoyed this far more than just about anything I've watched in wrestling in a while, thanks for sharing!

[Infinity Land]

Wasn't there the push to have him be one of Cody's open challenges during the TNT title run that saw the likes of Warhorse pop up? I mainly remember it because I think TK was against the idea of using him.

[Linus]

Here's something I wrote for my 'zine in March 2020 (spoilered for length):

Spoiler

Wrestling gimmicks can be very simple things. A wrestling plumber, a wrestling cowboy, a wrestling clown. But the best gimmicks – apart from the clowns, obviously – are those which aren’t very simple at all. Yes, you may be able to distil them down to a few words or phrases, but that doesn’t capture the heart of just why this thing on your television, or at the local show, is so damned awesome.

One of my favourite gimmick wrestlers at the moment can be described by four things: face paint, teeth, no swearing, and “Tequila!” But that doesn’t get anywhere near to explaining the absolute charisma of the man known only as Danhausen…

A VERY NORMAL PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER

Donovan Allen was working a very normal job when a new co-worker announced that he’d like to train to become a professional wrestler. Intrigued, Allen joined his new pal Woodrow at Truth Martini’s House of Truth wrestling school, in Detroit, Michigan, where he was trained by Martini and former Ring of Honor World champion Jimmy Jacobs.

Graduating on to the local independent wrestling scene, Allen made his debut – as “Kid Gorgeous” Donovan Danhausen – in October 2013, on a Metro Pro-Wrestling card that also featured a young Quinn Ojinnaka (now better known as Moose), and New Japan Pro-Wrestling star KUSHIDA. With a decent physique, Danhausen played a stereotypical, vain muscleman, but his skills earned him repeat bookings with Metro-Pro, and pretty soon he was branching out all over the Midwest.

By 2015, he was a regular at Inspire Pro-Wrestling in Austin, Texas, DREAMWAVE Wrestling in central Illinois, and for St Louis Anarchy in the south of the state, breaking into Chicago by the end of the year with both Freelance Wrestling and All-American Wrestling. In the spring of 2016, he caught the eye of former-ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky, now running the World Wrestling Network, who brought him to Florida to work for Full Impact Pro, where he worked the likes of Dezmond Xavier, Jason Cade, Fred Yehi, Martin Stone, and Lince Dorado.

FIP was where Danhausen won his first title, winning a four-way contest for the vacant Florida Heritage Championship in May 2016, before losing it the next night to Stone. After a re-match two months later, which he also lost, Danhausen only worked one more show for FIP, but by that time he had plenty of other work in Florida, where he’d relocated, for promotions such as FEST Wrestling, Platinum Pro-Wrestling, and REAL Pro-Wrestling.

In the summer of 2017, Danhausen moved back to the Midwest, and became a regular at Rockstar Pro-Wrestling in Dayton, Ohio, owned by Jake & Dave Crist, and at Black Label Pro-Wrestling in Crown Point, Indiana. He also began getting bookings in Canada and in Virginia, and turned up back in DREAMWAVE once more, where he joined the Deep Six stable led by Arik Cannon.

2018 AD

Absolute Intense Wrestling, run by John Thorne and the late Chandler Biggins out of Cleveland, Ohio, has gained a reputation for pushing the envelope. A place where talent can stretch themselves, it was the perfect place for Donovan Danhausen to tweak his wrestling character into something a bit different, and the reason he did it was very simple indeed.

“My character came from the frustration of trying to please everyone else by trying to be something I’m not, he told the Fansided website. “I was sick of just being a guy who wrestles, I didn’t care anymore what people thought of me, I just wanted to make sure I was enjoying what I loved doing again.”

Initially calling himself Danhausen AD, he joined a stable led by Eddie Only, known as The Production, but the development of the Danhausen character meant he was growing in a different direction to his stablemates, and the more he was true to his vision of what he wanted to be as a wrestler, the more popular he became, with bookings with Bizarro Lucha and Glory Pro-Wrestling in Indiana, Beyond Wrestling in Massachusetts, Limitless Wrestling in Maine, and Southern Underground Pro in Tennessee added to his regular schedule.

The change to the Danhausen that has become so popular was stark, but gradual at first, with face paint – a bizarre cross between The Joker and a kabuki mask – and tights supplanting the trunks and clean cut look, and a short cape for his entrance thrown in for a retro-60s horror movie host vibe. Billed as “very nice, very evil”, Danhausen is announced as standing seven feet tall and weighing in at almost 350lbs, and has an almost pathological hatred of swearing, although he does occasionally grant a Free Swear pass to opponents and friends, enabling them a curse in his presence. He also doesn’t like alcohol, which he calls “spicy water”, declaring it on the few occasions he is made to imbibe it in-ring as “too spicy!”

TEETH & TEQUILA

No Danhausen appearance is complete without a mid-match incursion from The Champs’ 1958 hit “Tequila,” inspired by the scene in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure where Pee-Wee Herman performs a dance to the tune to placate a bunch of angry bikers. Initially performed, like Pee-Wee, on a bar during a match against the giant PB Smooth at the Winchester Music Tavern, in Lakewood, Ohio, the spot usually happens when Danhausen is on the apron, and may – or may not, depending on how much heat is needed – end with a kick to his opponent on the arena floor.

Similarly, the introduction of a jar of human teeth has also become a staple of a Danhausen match; carried to the ring in a jar marked “teeth,” the contents are poured into the mouths of his opponents as a prelude to a superkick, sending teeth – and who knows their provenance by this point – flying into the air. This particular dental development came as a result of a Twitter post, a photo of Danhausen golding Bobby Beverly’s mouth open, captioned “I want to eat my opponents’ teeth!”

Danhausen told Fansided that “teeth gross me out,” adding that he wants his enemies to share his disgust, but refuses to divulge where the teeth are sourced from, save that he is a regular haunter of curiosity shops on his wrestling travels. That such a vital, creepy part of the Danhausen character should come from social media is apposite – he now has over ten thousand followers on the website, and fans (and hipster adoptees) can’t resist adding –hausen to their Twitter handles or, indeed, to everything.

One of a number of larger-than-life character on the US independent scene, which also includes gay idol Effy, and the very metal Warhorse (which whom Danhausen has formed tag-teams, called Gaytanic Panic and Warhausen, respectively), and a feature of shows broadcast on the Independent Wrestling TV streaming service, the stage was all set for Danhausen to break out over Wrestlemania weekend, which was as usual accompanied by a full slate of independent shows, which outperform the main attraction in every conceivable way.

WRESTLEVANIA

After the success of Joey Janela’s Spring Break in 2017, New Jersey’s Game Changer Wrestling have broadened their scope with every subsequent ‘Mania, and last year formed The Collective to brand a variety of shows under the same umbrella. At this year’s Collective, Danhausen and Warhorse were set to present WrestleVania, a horror and heavy metal-themed event, which had a main-event of the Gaytanic Brood (Danhausen, Effy, and former WWF vampire Gangrel) against the WARHORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (Warhorse, and WWE-escapees The Ascension), but the Coronavirus put paid to those plans and we may have to wait a little longer to see such devilish fun.

In the meantime, Danhausen is getting everywhere, even turning up in Ring of Honor, where he’s yet to win a match but did get to take part in a twenty-man battle royal for the number one contendership to the ROH TV title, and continues to appear for Black Label Pro (he holds a share in the tag-team championships with Ethan Page and Swoggle), AIW, and Freelance, where he’s a highlight of their IWTV broadcasts.

In his most recent outing, for the Minnesota indy F1RST Wrestling, he stepped into the ring for a dream match, against Orange Cassidy, something he’d wanted for a while after fans on Twitter started calling him the “dark universe Orange Cassidy.” Before they could really throw down, however, they were attacked by Darin Corbin and Heavy Metal Lore, and formed a dream tag-team instead.

It’s very easy for pro-wrestling purists to dismiss a character like Danhausen, but he’s out there proving Wrestling Can Be Anything, and backing it up with a solid set of wrestling skills to match his comical, macabre personality. Men in trunks are a dime a dozen in this business, but it’s a rare gimmick that stands out from the crowds; Danhausen is the manhausen.

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by Linus

[poetofthedeed]

My favourite moment was when someone bought cornette a danhausen cameo, expecting a meltdown, and cornette loved it.....

So to paraphrase ol' corny "danhausen is my favourite wrestler and I'm never gonna jeopardize that by watching him wrestle."

[HobowithaShotgun]

Love Danhausen and have barely seen a single match of his, seems to be par for the course for most.

 

I think he will be big but not in the wrestling world. He could easily be a host of those horror movie marathons that are big here in the States, think of him as a male Elvira effectively. His character work is great to the point even Conan O' Brien had him on his podcast and he's getting some cool unique merch opportunities too, he's got a guitar pedal coning out on Halloween which I'm dying to get!

Edited October 14, 2021 by HobowithaShotgun

[LaGoosh]

He's absolutely fucking great. Hoping AEW pick him up once his ROH contract ends. Just a brilliant, hilarious and truly unique character with absolutely huge potential. 

[Guest]

If anyone hasn’t seen the video where he tried the Rocks energy drink, I suggest looking that up