Posting on Instagram, Danhausen posted the songs Freedom Slam by Freedom, Finally Free by Bad Beat, and a picture of The Genie from Aladdin losing his shackles and no longer being imprisoned in a lamp. All of this is to suggest his AEW contract has finally expired. Today his photo was finally removed from the AEW roster page.
It is believed (though we won’t know until someone confirms when it happens) that a large crate that states to open at WWE Elimination Chamber will end up having Danhausen pop out of it. As WWE has a long and storied history of disappointing reveals (Gobbledy Gooker, Higher Power, Who Ran Over Stone Cold, Who is Vince McMahon’s bastard child, the countless hooded men in ski masks, etc.) Danhausen will continue that tradition.
Danhausen has been in AEW since 2022 but his last appearance was at ROH Final Battle 2024 in a cameo appearance that was never followed up on. His last appearance on AEW TV was his last AEW wrestling match, an eight wrestler tag match with Orange Cassidy, HOOK, and Trent Baretta facing 2point0 and Dark Order members Alex Reynolds and Evil Uno on AEW Rampage, a show that no longer exists. This was on November 29, 2023.
He also appeared in a Worlds End Zero Hour battle royal won by Killswitch (Luchasaurus) eliminated by Trent Baretta before Trent got eliminated and Killswitch won. Danhausen got two eliminations, one on Johnny TV and a co-elimination with Trent on Lance Archer.
It bothers some people that I would care so much about a guy who is barely on TV, and barely wrestles, being on the AEW roster. What does it matter to me? He did of course get an FTW shot at Ricky Starks once, and an AEW Men’s World Tag Team Championship shot in a four way with Orange Cassidy as his tag team partner against The Gunn’s, Planet Jarrett, and The Acclaimed at Revolution 2023. But that’s waved aside.
It’s not like he won all the time. But he did get wins. Wins against Jake Something (now Jake Doyle), a win against Max Caster and the Gunn Club teaming with FTR. A win against Peter Avalon. Wins against James Stone and Jon Cruz on Dark. Teamed with Chuck Taylor, Trent Baretta, and Rocky Romero to beat The Factory on Dark then did it again addding Orange Cassidy on the Full Gear 2022 Zero Hour. Then there’s the Casino Tag Team Royale that him and Orange Cassidy won to get the tag title shot. Danhausen and Orange Cassidy eliminated Claudio Castagnoli in that match, and Danhausen alone eliminated The Butcher and The Blade to win it.
This all matters to me because I watch pro wrestling and the pro wrestling is the most important part of it, and I think Danhausen is one of the lamest excuses of a pro wrestler in the 21st century.
It’s okay to dislike a wrestler
I feel like in this day and age I have to explain something. It’s okay to dislike a pro wrestler. It’s also okay to dislike an athlete, an actor, pretty much anyone. It isn’t a bad trait. You don’t have to like everyone. In fact, liking everyone shows you don’t really know what you like. You’re just afraid to upset someone. That’s an insult to being a human being.
I have to say this because when you dislike someone, like a pro wrestler, people pretend it’s personal. It’s not personal. I watch a wrestling show each week and someone on it is a bad wrestler and doesn’t entertain me. The natural honest reaction is to not want to see them anymore. Back when Danhausen was doing his tag team with Hook I stopped watching AEW Dynamite live so I could fast forward their segments.
Then he started getting on pay per view, which I paid for, and having to sit through him getting an AEW Men’s World Tag Team Championship match made me wonder what AEW saw in him and if AEW actually wanted to be a pro wrestling alternative. I can watch bad wrestlers have bad comedy matches anywhere. AEW with Orange Cassidy established if you’re going to be funny? You better go. You better be a good worker. And now I’m watching this guy do the most contrived, over telegraphed spots and wrestlers so many levels higher than him have to sit at home and wait for AEW President Tony Khan to call them to work.
My dislike of Danhausen doesn’t come from his debut in 2022. It actually comes from Ring of Honor, which I watched semi-regularly in the 2010s, including during the pandemic. With the company doing poorly they brought him in during the pandemic as sort of a clown act when they couldn’t have crowds. He wrestled Brian Johnson at Final Battle 2020, a pay per view I purchased.
It was the worst wrestling pay per view match I have ever paid full price for. Oh, I have watched worse WWE shows, but I usually had an illegal satellite feed to catch those. Or it was a watch party with friends where I paid maybe $5 or $10 for the pay per view and pizza. This I sat at home, paid for an ROH pay per view, and was insulted with this match. An under 10 minute travesty. Anything I saw him in after that, from ROH to the indies, was just a really bad pro wrestler with a comedy gimmick.
I’m not against comedy gimmicks. I’m sure some of the comedy gimmicks I love some people would say were insulting to pro wrestling. I love Andreza Giant Panda and I’m sure some curmudgeon would say an inflatable panda bear is an insult to wrestling. And you know what? I think you have every right to feel that way, and to be as negative and critical as I am about Danhausen.
My basis for disliking him isn’t some beef with CM Punk. CM Punk is good friends with Brody King and Darby Allin and I like both of those guys a lot. I even liked FTR when they turned heel and pushed for them to win the AEW Men’s World Tag Team Championship, which I now regret with how bad the reign was. Point is, that’s a dumb social media complaint. I don’t care who his friends are.
I don’t care about who his friends are. I don’t care about his merchandise sales. I don’t care if he makes you laugh. I care about how he wrestles in the ring. Every time he has? It has been bad. It’s why his supporters don’t talk about how he is as a wrestler, and the best of a compliment they can come up with is, “he’s not THAT bad.”
He’s a terrible wrestler in the company that claims to be Where The Best Wrestle.
Where The Rest Wrestle
Yes, “Where The Best Wrestle” is just a slogan. It’s like when WCW said they were where The Big Boys Play*
*People have often attacked Kevin Nash for his promo where he said, “Look at the adjective, play, we ain’t here to play” and made fun of his poor English. I just want to defend Kevin here even though he has blocked me twice on social media and point out that the adjective he was talking about was “big” and didn’t mean to have a pause after saying adjective. “Where the Big Boys play. Look at the adjective play.” He then pointed to Scott Hall and himself to point out they were big boys. “We ain’t here to play.” Anyway back to the rant on Danhausen.
To act as though they have to 100% be true to a slogan is ridiculous. Not every ECW wrestler was Extreme. Nintendo wasn’t always playing with Power. Genesis didn’t do everything Nintendon’t. You get it.
But you don’t say you’re Nintendo, playing with Power, then make something as bad as ET for Atari 2600, the game that helped cause the home console crash of 1983 that you’re avoiding comparisons to. You don’t carry the worst examples of bad wrestlers and then tell people you are where the best wrestle. They will just ask, okay, then why is Danhausen on the roster?
And that’s the major issue with keeping Danhausen for as long as AEW did. From what reports claimed, his contract expired last year but All Elite Wrestling decided to extend his contract due to injury time. I like to say this was done specifically to bother me and only me, because why else would you? You’re not using him. Why pay him and not use him? Who cares if he goes to WWE? The only logical reason is to annoy me.
Okay, I’m probably not that important. But it felt like it.
Of course, just a month prior to finally letting Danhausen go, AEW signed The IInspiration who just back in January had an absolutely terrible match in TNA Wrestling. Once again, two wrestlers in Cassie Lee and Jessica McKay who are dreadful in ring (Cassie is mediocre, Jessica is atrocious) but because they make people laugh sometimes and AEW needs a women’s tag team? They got signed. So far all they’ve done since is a two minute match on AEW House Rules Australia.
This tag team has been around since 2015 and I don’t know if anyone would ever say they’ve had a good tag team match. Yet a decade later they are being signed by All Elite Wrestling “Where The Best Wrestle” and it just bewilders me. Why not just, I don’t know, not sign them? Use them here and there? Oh well. Not my money.
But having such wrestlers on the roster doesn’t ruin your show entirely. It’s just a stain that didn’t need to be there. Danhausen, Billy Gunn, and the IInspiration end up standing out as the worst on your show. Again, if you enjoy them? That’s great. Keep on doing it. But don’t try pretending you’re watching great wrestling from them. Be honest. It’s hard to proudly proclaim AEW as “Where the best wrestle” while also saying you watch for Danhausen. It’s hard to say this company is all about pro wrestling then sign two wrestlers who just came off of one of the worst matches in the past six months.
Hard Lessons to Learn
I doubt anyone who enjoys Danhausen made it over 1,500 words to come to this conclusion and that’s okay. I don’t have a problem with someone enjoying his gimmick. Honestly I hope he does great in WWE. People like him, I’ve heard he’s had good fan reactions to fans at everything from conventions to indie shows, he doesn’t sound like a bad guy.
I know that matters so much to people these days to the point where they will enjoy bad pro wrestling so long as it’s not coming from a “bad person” so let me be clear. I don’t think Danhausen is a bad guy.
But that’s not my line when it comes to what I watch for pro wrestling. I want to watch great pro wrestlers apply their trade in the ring. If I can’t get great? At least give me good. Danhausen could never provide that.
My hope is that he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams in WWE. I hope they catch HausenMania fever. I hope he gets to be a wrestler like he wanted to be in AEW and has absolutely atrocious matches in WWE, a company where a bad wrestling match is still appreciated. That isn’t pro wrestling the way Disney on Ice isn’t Olympic figure skating. I hope Danhausen wins Royal Rumbles there and main events WrestleMania’s in Saudi Arabia. Very nice. Very evil. All that.
The more successful he is in WWE? The less chance he’ll have to coming back to AEW. I hope he gets to wrestle in WWE for the rest of his career and retires as their favourite mascot. I wish him all the success in the world. Just don’t do it on my television screen.
So yes, even if he hasn’t shown up in years, even if he was just a face on a roster page and a couple shirts in the AEW Shop? I’m glad he’s gone. I hope All Elite Wrestling learns from this, but probably not. This company launched on The Librarians, something people tend to forget.
All Elite Wrestling is in a very successful period right now where a lot is going right, and it’s usually during that time the company starts to make mistakes that they wouldn’t had they been still grinding to change momentum. It was 2022 when Danhausen got signed, right in the middle of the first hot period of AEW since their debut. The fact a lot is going right leads to a lack of focus, and people convincing Tony Khan to get their friends signed. It’s an inevitability, it already happened again with The IInspiration, so unfortunately there’s no lesson to be learned.
At least we’re finally rid of one of the worst pro wrestlers of the past decade in All Elite Wrestling.
