Last year I did something that jacked up my right hip a bit. My day job doesn’t give me the option of putting my feet up and resting my poor muscles, so I’ve just lived with it. The only time it really bothers me is when I’m driving. Obviously, I need my right foot to work the pedals, so I can’t move my leg around too much. Too long sitting like this, and my hamstring feels like it’s tearing in half, and my knee feels like someone drove a railroad spike sideways through it. I know, I know, pauvre bébé. I only bring it up because I drove around five hours to attend DEAN~!!! Sunday School at the White Eagle Hall in Jersey City.

Was the show worth five hours of pain each way? Yes, but the matches were only part of that.

One of the ways that these DEAN~!!! shows capture the spirit of the old Death Valley Driver Video Review newsletter is that there’s a diversity of styles on display. Any given issue of DVDVR might jump around from BattlArts to All Japan Women’s to Pennsylvania Championship Wrestling to Toryumon to UFC. As Dean Rasmussen himself put it when talking about his relationship with fellow DVDVR writer (and DEAN~!!! co-promoter) Phil Schneider: “I send him everything I think is good and he sends me everything he thinks is good and we yammer on the phone about it. HEY! WOO-HOO! WHIP ASS!”

With DEAN~!!! Sunday School, there’s no mistaking Low Ki vs. Karl Greco-Malenko for Tony Deppen vs. Ryan Mooney. The only thing that the Infantry vs. Top Team and Mad Dog Connelly vs. SLADE have in common is that they’re both on the same tape. Or maybe one’s from a Glenn tape and one’s from that Pesky Quebrada Boy, but here they are, butt-to-butt in the same DVDVR.

I won’t go match-by-match here, mostly because you can already find any number of blog pundits writing about The Work as an end unto itself. Yes, there were fantastic, MOTYC-caliber things that happened in the White Eagle Hall in front of, like, fifty people if it was any at all. I haven’t watched the VOD. I don’t think it will compare to being there in the building, ten feet away from Mad Dog and SLADE, hearing the full-force impact of their clotheslines on each other’s necks and shoulders. It won’t compare to looking over and seeing Phil Schneider picking up a chair and banging it on the ground in time to the “HOM-I-CIDE” chants. It won’t compare to the minute of total silence at the start of Ki vs. Malenko, where all of us were so rapt with anticipation that we didn’t dare make a noise and risk breaking the spell.

These experiences are what professional wrestling is truly about. If there is a goal to a professional wrestler’s work, it’s in creating those moments for the audience. Some of them are big moments, like the lights going down and the “Ironsides” sirens going off, or Low Ki putting his Hitman tie around Greco-Malenko’s neck. Some of them are little moments, like Tony Deppen flinging people’s hats around, or Carlie Bravo yelling “Someone grab that earring” at the front row after it came out mid-match. (In fact, someone did grab his earring.) The show-by-show success of any pro wrestler who has their head in the game is to make the person who paid for their ticket go home and have a story they can tell about being there.

That’s what stuck with me, driving home from DEAN~!!! Sunday School. I was there. I was one of the few people on planet Earth who got to be there for what might be Homicide’s true final match. I was there for SLADE and Mad Dog Connelly brawling on Newark Street on a humid, sunny September afternoon. I was there while the guy in front of me spent all of Adam Priest vs. Slim J on his phone, scrolling Twitter and bookmarking pictures of Stephanie Vaquer. I was there for Oldman Youngboy and Angus Legstrong putting in what, on a bigger show, would be a star-making performance against Violence Is Forever. I was there for shaking Phil’s hand and getting a big hug from Eric. Stronger guy than you might guess, but we were all riding high on the adrenaline from that dog collar match anyway.

That’s what this fandom should be about. That’s what DVDVR was about. When you read Dean’s reviews, he shouted out the people he got his tapes from, he shared stories about who he drove with to see a show at a flea market. The writing came from community, and a desire to strengthen and grow that community. ‘Here are some matches that were so sick (or so bad) that I want to tell you about them, so that you can get excited about seeing them, too.’ That’s the spirit animating the DEAN~!!! project, isn’t it? Here are some matches that Phil and Eric think sound so sick that they want you to come and see them. If it was only for the two of them, why bother selling tickets? It’s for all of us.

This is the sort of thing I was thinking about as I worked on Monday, with my leg and hip really fucking sore from ten hours in the car. The pain was worth it.

I only ever knew Dean Rasmussen as words on a screen. Most people aren’t lucky enough to have even that. When they’re gone, like we all will be one day, they won’t be remembered by total strangers for words that they wrote twenty-five years prior. They’ll be remembered by the people who shared moments with them, and conversations, and enthusiasms. They’ll be remembered for having been there.

So: turn the screen off once in a while. Go to the indie show, even the one at the flea market. Drive the five hours. Ride with someone, if you can. Reach out to slap five with the wrestlers as they walk past. Talk shit with strangers. Shout, holler. Join in the chant. Make the memory for yourself; tell the story later. Be there. You have to remember that this is all that any of us get.