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Watch the Darkside of Dan Severn on YouTube
I am reading Mitsuhiro Matsunagas book and it has a small section on his "fight" with Severn, I will share some tidbits on it.
According to Matsunaga the fight was offered to him three weeks before the event due to his stature in Pro Wrestling and he was paid 10k for it. He trained a little bit of Sambo for it.
Another thing is that Severn at the time used to search for footage of his opponent, but because Matsunaga did not have any footage, he "studied" his Deathmatches and Severn was shocked of how much punishment Matsunaga could take and had doubts if Matsunaga will give up even if he had a broken limb.
But this is the interesting part...Matsunaga says that Severn is a fighter who "doesn't play along with his opponent, but he played along with him, so the Japanese audience would say that he had an interesting fight with Matsunaga".
So there it is, Matsunaga himself accepted that everything that happened between him and Severn was a work.
Bigelow said his fight with Kimo was a work, but if it was I hope they paid him well for that damage he took. The Severn fight on the other hand was very goofy with those weird slams and the fact that Severn did work in the IWA one of the hardcore promotions Matsunaga wrestled in.