The Sunday Read: ‘How Danhausen Became Professional Wrestling’s Strangest Star’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Like a lot of people who get into professional wrestling, Donovan Danhausen had a vision of a different version of himself. Ten years ago, at age 21, he was living in Detroit, working as a nursing assistant at a hospital, watching a lot of “Adult Swim” and accumulating a collection of horror- and comedy-themed tattoos. At the suggestion of a friend, he took a 12-week training course at the House of Truth wrestling school in Center Line, Mich., and then entered the indie circuit as a hand: an unknown, unpaid wrestler who shows up at events and does what’s asked of him, typically setting up the ring or pretending to be a lawyer or another type of extra. When he ran out of momentum five years later, he developed the character of Danhausen. Originally supposed to be an evil demon, Danhausen found that the more elements of humor he incorporated into his performance, the more audiences responded. “I was just a bearded guy with the tattoos, trying to be a tough guy, and I’m not a tough guy naturally,” he said. “But I can be weird and charismatic, goofy. That’s easy. That’s also a role that most people don’t want to fill.” Over the next couple of years, the Danhausen gimmick became more funny than evil, eventually settling on the character he plays today — one that is bizarre even by the standards of 21st-century wrestling.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Dan Brooks and I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine.
0:10.0	I live in Montana with my handsome dog.
0:13.5	If you've ever seen professional wrestling, you're probably familiar with a concept called
0:18.2	K-Fa.
0:20.3	You could say that K-Faib is the fake part of pro wrestling.
0:24.6	The characters, the storylines, the match outcomes.
0:29.5	It's the world inside of wrestling, which, although planned and scripted, is presented
0:35.3	as real to fans.
0:37.9	But fans absolutely understand that it is fake.
0:42.5	One wrestler named Donovan Danhausen has an unusual gimmick in this world.
0:48.6	His entire persona is this sort of comedic meta-commentary on K-Faib and on pro wrestling itself.
0:57.3	It's a complicated stunt that it turns out hardcore wrestling fans love.
1:20.1	For this week's Sunday read, you'll hear the profile I wrote about Danhausen and his rise
1:25.3	as this face-painted, curse-wielding wrestling weirdo.
1:30.5	I think what really distinguishes Danhausen from his peers is that he doesn't take himself
1:35.0	too seriously.
1:37.0	He has this white face of makeup with big black circles around the eyes, black lipstick,
1:43.0	sort of evoking the band kiss or the silent horror film Noose for A2.
1:48.2	He enters the ring in a big cape and tights, like a lot of wrestlers.
1:52.4	But at 5'10 and roughly 175 pounds, he's not physically imposing.
1:59.1	He speaks in a vaguely European accent, kind of partaking in the tradition of cartoon
2:04.5	villains that way.
	...

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