When I first heard the DOI was releasing a shoot interview with indy ref Sean Hanson, I admit I was somewhat skeptical. The DOI? Doing shoots?….With a referee???? I’m a fan of shoot interviews but lately, everywhere you turn, another shoot interview (or variation thereof) is hitting the market. Having been burned a couple of times, I have grown more discerning in my purchases.

Initially, I was disinclined to spend my hard earned canuck bucks on an interview conducted by a company unproven in the genre, with a NE indy ref I had never really heard of and knew nothing about, personally or professionally. Still, the idea of an in depth interview with a referee intrigued me…I can’t recall anyone else exploring the business from that particular point of view before.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and spend the eight bucks. Hell, even if it stunk, eight bucks ain’t THAT big a risk. (Here in Canada, you can’t even buy a pack of smokes for eight dollars.) I ordered both the Ref Hanson shoot AND the Carmine Sabia one. Hey, if I was gonna wager $8, I figured I might as well wager $9 more on what was then, the only other interview the DOI offered. Plus, Sean the MiC cut me a deal on shipping to Canada by ordering both. Somehow, a drunk and a hashhead worked out the details of international currency exchange rates and I mailed the check.

The DOI contacted me that the funds had arrived and my purchase had been shipped. I eagerly awaited delivery, the feedback and comments posted on the board by people who had already seen the Hanson shoot further whetting my appetite and desire to check out the DOI’s inaugural DVD launch. One week passed. Two weeks. Three, and…..nothing.

In due course I contacted The MiC and informed him that the shipment had mysteriously vanished in transit. Either it never made it out of the USA or the Canadian Postal Service had once again fucked up and even now Eskimos in Nunavit were discovering that their shiny new round disc-knives didn’t skin seals worth shit!

Sean handled it like a pro! So well in fact that a certain HONORable company could learn a thing or two about CUSTOMER SERVICE from the good folks at the DOI! The MiC immediately reshipped my order and stayed in frequent contact. He called it’s delivery arrival right to the day and surprise, surprise…he included a copy of the new Kevin Kelly shoot along with my original order! Now, THAT’S customer service my friends! His quickness to deal with a situation not of his creation, coupled with his generous inclusion of another shoot free of charge, “to make up for the wait,” sets the DOI head and shoulders above a number of well established companies whose idea of customer service can best be summed up as vampirism run amok!

So, after all that…was the Ref Sean Hanson shoot worth the long wait and the eight bucks? Damn straight it was! It’s been described as funny, outrageous, shocking, controversial, potentially libelous and yes, it’s all that, and more! (*id’s note: The price has gone up to $10 + shipping but it’s STILL a hell of a deal!) Buy it now at:

http://www.declarationofindependents.net/doi/pages/DOISHOOTp.html

So who the hell is Ref Hanson? I was about to find out…

The Shoot opens with a number of printed disclaimers distancing the DOI from Hanson and his comments. Citing legal reasons (read: threats) brought upon by the nervousness of certain wrestling companies and individuals over what Hanson says during the shoot, the fine print explains the ‘missing 3 minutes’ and audio censoring they felt compelled to do. (Naturally, this serves to hype the shoot.)

First impressions of Hanson when the interview begins are that he is every bit as weird looking as the grainy DVD cover photo would suggest. He’s twitchy too. REAL twitchy. Constantly adjusting his cap and shirt, fidgeting in his chair and gesturing with his arms, he is in almost constant motion. His rapport with interviewer Sean The MiC is apparent immediately.

So too, is Hanson’s most endearing quality…his self effacing humor. Describing himself as a huge fan since age 3, ref Hanson admits to being a big WWF and World Class mark as a child. By the time he describes his senior year in school during which his aversion to math played a huge role in his introduction to the wrestling business, I found myself smiling at his antics and comments. It wasn’t long before I was laughing out loud.

He describes how a friend hooked him up with Viscous Vin which in turn led to his meeting Carmine Sabia. He and The MiC have a good time joking about Sabia during this but it’s obvious Hanson holds Sabia in high regard and is grateful for the role Carmine played in getting his training started. Hanson describes his training and tells some funny stories about getting to the school and trying to make ends meet at the same time.

Hanson didn’t want to be a referee (He hated Danny Davis), but since he was “skinnier than Keenan Quinn’s left calf” it seemed like a better option. Skinhead Ivan got him into a match and Fat Frank saw it. This led to further opportunities. Hanson started studying tapes to watch established refs in action. His biggest influences were Mike Chiota and Brian Hildebrand. He admits to stealing a lot from Hildebrand’s style.

He talks about what it’s like to ref and the “politics” that can make it such a pain in the ass. Although The MiC tries to keep the topics together, Hanson jumps all over the place. There’s some great info and details about working indy wrestling, some funny stuff about Fat Frank and then Hanson just fucking rips on Jay Lover (?) for always treating him “like shit.” He talks about meeting The Hit Squad and becoming their personal referee.

He talks about meeting Homicide for the first time and why he thought Homicide was wasted as a hardcore wrestler. He has lots of good things to say about Low Life Louie and Franky Stars but takes some good shots at Keenan Quinn. Hanson describes how Big Dick Dudley was single-handedly responsible for giving him the break that enabled him to move on from Jersey All Pro and SSCW. Mentioning Carmine’s old fed brings another session of ribbing the house-bound but Hanson doesn’t rip on him. His respect for Carmine’s take on the wrestling biz is evident.

Hanson tells a great road story about The Hit Squad (or in this case, The Shit-Paper Squad) and I can’t help but think there’s a lot more great stuff he could have gotten into here. He describes how working the Low Ki / Sabu / Billy Reil match made him realize he had “made it.”

Lots of funny stuff about when he first started working WXW. Samu asked him to go on a tour of Alaska and Hanson immediately quit his “real job” to make the tour, which was then cancelled. He talks at length about the Middle East and South Pacific tours, describing them as “awesome” experiences. He also admits he still doesn’t know who was responsible for the “Kuwaiti Sausage Rib” that he was the victim of.

Hanson describes working ring crew for Frank Goodman and says Goodman paid for his license so he could work matches. Hanson talks more about the USA Pro workers and how fun the locker room was than he does about Goodman at this point.

He describes his time in ICW working for Jac Sabboth. He says the ICW shows were better than Goodman’s at that time. He describes how ring crew duties at ICW “sucked” but working for Sabboth was never the problem other people have described it as. “He never stiffed me….his shows were the shit man!” Good story about working the Low Ki / Xavier ladder match, including a hilarious impersonation of Low Ki. (Actually, Hanson does imitations of various people throughout the interview and he’s a fucking hoot to watch.)

Hanson touches on JCW and Ricky O but his lack of enthusiasm for that fed is obvious. He liked getting paid and it was close to his house but for reasons not explained, he doesn’t give a lot of detail about working there. The MiC doesn’t press for more info because (and I’m guessing here) most people don’t have a fucking clue who Ricky O is and couldn’t care less about JCW.

Hanson cracks a beer before getting into the meat and potatoes of the shoot - Ring Of Honor. After a brief rant about Valentina (political, ratted around, lied, sucked as a valet) and describing how he “fucking hated” Dimitri (sp?) who he says “was rocking the cradle before the Feinstein scandal” Hanson settles in to describing the meteoric rise of ROH. He asked Rob & Doug if he could work for them but it was Gabe, whom he didn’t know, who hired (and later fired) him over the phone.

He says he first thought ROH would be just another indy but soon realized it was something special. Hanson says that Rob and Doug used their time with RF Video shooting other feds to scout talent for ROH. He says, in the beginning, ROH wasn’t different than other feds - just better. At the shows he said Rob just kind of hung out, Doug worked the camera and Gabe just sorta walked around. He says ROH targeted smart mark former ECW fans and they took indy wrestling to new levels, drawing 500 fans to their first ever Boston show. (Watching Hanson scratch and pick at his nose while he rips on the “fucking stupid assholes” who smoked pot right outside the front door and cost them their building in Boston is very funny.) He puts over the ROH locker room and says he felt every ROH match was a main event.

MiC asked about the reported rivalry between ROH and JAPW and Hanson says it’s all “political crap,”

ROH was way better, with never an empty seat. He says ROH dominated JAPW and everyone else. This lead to a segment where Hanson talks about a lot of different people. He describes his friendship with Danny Maff and talks about Slyk Wagner Brown and April Hunter. He comments on Balls, Axyl, The Carnage Crew and describes Homicide by saying: “He needs to wrestle or he’ll break out in hives.” He totally buries some guy I’ve never heard of (Wrecka?) and says when he worked with guys like Homicide and Low Ki, he always thanked them for the match. Hanson says Homicide and Trent Acid always “rocked” and compares Acid to Bret Hart. He also compliments the Backseat Boyz.

Hanson lists the top three ROH matches he worked and describes in detail his favorite ROH moment - The Muta / American Dragon match. Great story here about slipping Muta his bag of powder during the match. He says at that time he was on top of the World. He and his best friend Maff had made the big time and all was good in his personal life. He describes it as “the perfect year” Of course, that would soon change for him, and everyone else in ROH, when the Rob Feinstein scandal broke.

Hanson describes how he had just lost his ‘real job’ when he got the news on his answering machine about Feinstein getting caught in the PJ sting. He describes the dismay he felt, thinking the “good thing” they had going with ROH was over. The MiC is relentless with his questioning about what Hanson believes happened. MiC pulls no punches and asks Hanson flat out if he thinks Rob likes sex with kids, is he a pedo and what’s his opinion of Feinstein today. To his credit, Hanson fires back with some honest and passionate responses. He doesn’t think Rob actually did it, (“he’s smarter than that”) doesn’t want to know what Rob’s fetish might be (“if you’re gay, you’re gay”) and still considers Rob his friend. Hanson said Rob had to leave ROH or the whole fed would go down the toilet. He dismisses the notion that Rob secretly ran ROH after that and defends Doug saying “if your best friend killed someone your first instinct would be to defend him.” He says Doug left ROH after a fight with Cary. This is a riveting look from an insider’s point of view into the scandal that rocked indy wrestling and certainly worth the purchase price of the shoot on it’s own.

He describes what ROH was like after Rob & Doug left saying Gabe became boss by default and Cary Silken knows nothing about the wrestling business. He says that house figures didn’t drop as a result of the scandal but the ROH aura was gone. Hanson comments on the statements made by Maff and Samoa Joe and accuses Gabe of driving the guys to say what they did. He says ROH was changed forever under Gabe’s leadership - “not stale, just different.”

Obviously worked up, Hanson launches into a tirade about Bobby Cruise (“Fuck him!) and loses it on Sinclair (“idiots go on message boards!”) He says ROH started using “idiots” as bell ringers and that contributed to the events that led to his leaving ROH. He talks about the ‘blown count’ in the Evan’s match and tells a hilarious story about an in-ring blow-up he had with Cruise.

When MiC asks how he got fired he mentions first the pinfall screw-up during the Jack Evans / Roderick Strong title match against the Havana Pitbulls, blaming the “fucking timekeeper” for the mistake. I was howling during this as Hanson describes how Gabe was fuming in the back and “got all Ultimate Warrior and shit.”

He describes the earlier ‘you saw the chair! You blew the whole fucking match!’ scenario that pissed off Gabe and others, particularly CM Punk, who got right in Hanson’s face backstage. There’s some obvious bitterness over the way ROH treated him. He said he thought some of the heat was because he was working a Fusion show Gabe believed Rob was involved in but when Gabe told him at the December show that his work was bad, he knew his days were numbered. Hanson says by that time the ROH locker room had broken into cliques - the west coast guys, the New York guys and CM Punk by himself. Hanson says “everyone kind of hated Punk” but no one (but him) would admit it. Hanson says in three years he never got a raise or a bonus and was extremely loyal but got shit on for something that wasn’t his fault. This is where Disc 1 ends and it’s a good thing because I was laughing so much my sides hurt and I needed a break.

Disc 2 opens with Hanson listing some of the “sacrifices” he made for ROH and admits he would go back if given the chance. “Me and Gabe will never have Thanksgiving dinner together, I guarantee that, but of course I’d go back - this is wrestling.” Funny stuff about Gabe firing him over the phone while he was at his ‘real’ job and he goes off about Cruise again. (He REALLY doesn’t like that guy.) Hanson talks in detail about the reaction he got from other wrestlers over his termination, calling Maff and Samoa Joe “real” but lashing out at Punk for being plastic and fake, calling him “Gabe’s right-hand man.”

Hanson then expands on his relationship with Garry Morere, who he’s been referring to as “Faggot Garry” throughout the shoot. This segment is where the infamous edits and censoring show up as Hanson just goes off the deep end here. This too, is worth the price of the DVD. To say that ref Hanson is a little bitter towards Garry is like saying Yokozuna was a little on the heavy side. I had to back up and watch this again as I was laughing so hard the first time, I missed a lot of it.

Hanson says Garry would work for little or nothing and stole a few gigs from him as a result. While Hanson and Turner were struggling to make it to shows, Garry got plane tickets and hotel rooms paid for because he was (censored) the owner. Hanson figured out Garry was gay when “he wouldn’t go into a porn shop” and said Garry drove Punk around and got lots of perks because of his ‘relationship’ with (censored.) Hanson also says Garry was a “mole” for Gabe, filtering information about what the boys were saying behind his back. No doubt Hanson feels betrayed by Garry and thinks Garry being gay was an unfair advantage. He then launches into a speech about homosexuality in general that brings some more edits. It’s absolutely hilarious!

The MiC steers the conversation towards Hanson’s second run in WXW where he explains in detail the infamous ‘heart attack angle’ between Gene Snitsky and Afa. Like most of the workers, (and all of the fans) Hanson had no idea it wasn’t real and lost it on Doc Daniels when he found out the truth. This too, is funny stuff and leads into a discussion about what makes a good booker.

From there the shoot takes on a scattershot approach to a variety of feds and people in the Business. The MiC is in fine form here, eliciting as many laughs as Hanson. Hanson gives further details on Frank Goodman and UXW, saying he pays good and his shows are “a blast.” He buries Demanto’s commentating skills and wishes UXW ran every weekend. (Don’t we all?)

He talks about Carmine and SSCW’s revolving door of bookers and never-ending ticket sellers. “Ya can’t make chicken soup out of chicken shit.” He describes IEW as a “joke” and says Demanto should be a wrestler, not a promoter. He also says that like himself, Demanto says a lot of stupid shit but in his case “everyone knows I’m a looney tune.” (And if they didn’t before, they will after watching this interview!)

Hanson describes NWA Cyberspace as “money marks” running shows and thinks Firehawk books himself too much. Hanson talks about PW Unplugged and says Johnny Kashmere called him right after he was fired by Gabe. Hanson really puts Rockin’ Rebel over as a great guy and loved working their shows. He thinks JAPW’s Worldwide is awesome but feels the shows were more fun to be on when they were in their hardcore phase.

Hanson talks at length about how his breakup with Ariel affected his relationship with the Carnage Crew, who he said were at the top of the list of people who thought he was an asshole. (I imagine that’s a lot longer list now.) He eventually made amends with DeVito but refers to HC Loc as a “scumbag.” He describes his friendship with Al Snow with obvious affection and credits Snow with helping him get through some difficult times in his life, including the death of Chris Candido.

The shoot then covers Hanson’s relationship with Candido and the events surrounding his passing. Again, this alone is worth the cost of the DVD (and then some.) Hanson opens up and pours out his heart regarding Candido’s life and passing. At times poignant, humorous, insightful, passionate and sad, Hanson’s words on Candido are heart-felt and riveting. It would be a disservice to him, and Chris’ memory, for me to try and encapsulate them here. You need to hear it for yourself.

Hanson talks about the plethora of Candido ‘tribute’ shows and explains why he feels Frank Goodman’s should have been the only one. Anyone who thinks Goodman’s an asshole needs to hear what Hanson has to say. He also says Candido’s brother Johnny acted like a champ in helping others deal and says Tammy has a “huge support system.” (I wonder what he thinks of NWS right now?)

Hanson then talks about the rise and fall of the Hit Squad and goes into detail on the Maff / Homicide ‘situation.’ He felt trapped in the middle because Maff is his best friend and he was very close to Homicide as well. He says it sucks that a lot of the people Maff helped out won’t talk to him anymore. He says that Maff “has a life outside of wrestling” and Homicide has a good “heart.” It’s obvious that this situation affected more people than the two principles involved. In an ironic twist, Hanson said the only two people who called Maff after the shit hit the fan were Rob Feinstein and Gabe. (Feinstein to offer support and Gabe to ask for the ROH tag belt back.)

Being as the ‘situation’ between Maff and Homicide centered around a woman it was only natural that the interview then veered towards women in wrestling and Hanson once again goes off the deep end…. He talks about women in indy wrestling and how so many are rats. He calls out Valentina, Alicia and others during this tirade and exclaims “There should be an age limit to get into wrestling!” He does mention a few like Allison Danger and Cindy Rogers who “don’t put their personal lives out there.” Lots of good laughs during this which is good, considering the Candido and Maff / Homicide bits were so serious.

The shoot closes with an extended word association piece where Hanson fires off opinions on a number of indy workers like KC Blade, EC Negro, Papadon & Havoc, Eddie Guapo and others, including a wicked Eric Simms impersonation.

Final word: There are some technical quality issues throughout the shoot but electronic farts and bubbles aside, the DOI has delivered a scintillating debut effort. Any qualms I had about purchasing an interview with an indy ref vanished almost as soon as it started. Definitely not for fans who only watch WWE or TNA, this shoot offers indy fans, and NE indy fans in particular, an insider’s view of some of the biggest stories to rock indy wrestling in recent years. Hanson was there for all of it and his pull no punches opinions of those events makes for an incredible 4 hours. Buy the fucking thing!

Gordo, the wizard of id