As WWE star retires from program he built, others step up to advance local pro wrestling

By John Hult, for Pigeon605

In real life, Damien Julian is a 41-year-old father of five with a blue-collar job and a wife who teaches third graders.

On the weekends, he cosplays as “Money Made” Julian Richards, an arrogant “1 percenter” who flaunts his riches until people punch him in the face. 

Or throw him through tables. 

Or feed him dog food.

Photos by Kayla Stensland

Julian is among the Sioux Falls-area residents who’ve learned the craft of pro wrestling since Indiana native and former WWE star Nick “Eugene” Dinsmore moved to the area six years ago to launch the city’s first wrestling school and independent promotion under the name Midwest All Pro Wrestling.

More than 150 locals have trained in the high-energy vaudeville that is pro wrestling since 2016. About 45 of them made it through to wrestle a match. Julian is one of the dozen or so who’ve been involved from the start.

“It’s a brotherhood back there for sure,” Julian said of the local performers. “I’ve built really strong friendships with the people in that group.”

This year, those wrestlers will begin to write the next chapter in the story of independent wrestling in the city.

Dinsmore sold the promotion to two of his trainees in December to embark on an open-ended “retirement” tour. The new owners, Vinnie “Dagz” Olson and Nick “Lucky” Lund, aim to take the stable of local talent and the promotion they’ve built to a wider audience by rebranding it, moving it to a larger venue and adding more regional and national performers to the match cards.

The first show under the Flagship Pro Wrestling banner is set for Feb. 27 at The District and will feature former WWE star Mike Bennett, who wrestled as Mike Kannellis.

The Midwest All Pro brand will live on as both a training school and venue for all-local “house shows,” with Lund serving as the primary trainer at the Harrisburg facility. Olson, a musician, promoter and the one-time owner of Boonies Bar & BBQ, will lead the business on the marketing side.

The idea is to draw a clear line between the “big” shows and storylines that might draw larger audiences while still offering space for those just learning the craft to have the spotlight.

“With this new promotion, we’re going to be able to appeal more to the casual fan and not just the die-hards,” Olson said. “I want people to be glad to come to these shows, not just be dragged there by their kids.”

Olson, Julian and Lund have nothing but gratitude to Dinsmore for the door he opened in Sioux Falls, they said. Dinsmore, a nationally respected trainer, was surprised to learn the city didn’t have an independent promotion when he decided to move to his wife’s former city in 2015 — they met in Sioux Falls before one of his WWE performances. 

“I’ve wrestled for promotions in Beaver Dam, Kentucky (population 3,500), where they’ve got Cousin Itt out there wrestling,” Dinsmore said. “That’s one of the things that attracted me to Sioux Falls: There was nothing.”

South Dakota had a vibrant fan base, and the state has produced two of pro wrestling’s biggest stars. Webster native Brock Lesnar has been a top WWE draw for decades, and Lincoln High School graduate Shayna Baszler more recently has become a huge player in WWE storylines on the women’s side. Before WWE stardom, Baszler wrestled at the Coliseum in the second of Dinsmore’s Sioux Falls shows.

It was perhaps little surprise that the city quickly embraced Midwest All Pro. 

“I didn’t know what to expect because I’d never run a wrestling company before, but I feel like Sioux Falls accepted us better than anywhere else I’d been before,” Dinsmore said. “It was something that was new to them, they really had no preconceived notions about independent wrestling, and it felt like everybody was there and ready to help. The fans turned out, and they’ve built this really great community.” 

A core group of MAP fans appear at every show to cheer on friends and family as they fly off turnbuckles and “sell” the story of each match. Crowd reactions help guide the performers as they improvise their way to an ending that gives the audience their money’s worth.

The commitment of those fans and of the performers who’ve spent so many hours learning how to put on a show for them was top of mind for Lund and Olson when Dinsmore began floating the idea of stepping down.

“I knew we had to find a way to step in and keep this going,” said Lund, a father of four himself who owns and operates Harris Burgers between bouts and sessions at the training center. “This city was ready for it (independent pro wrestling) 20 years ago.”

Lund almost left Sioux Falls in his teens to pursue wrestling after a few years of participating in unsanctioned backyard matches. Dinsmore’s tutelage gave him the chance to rekindle his dreams of ring glory, but it also taught him how to work safely in what can be a dangerous business. In six years of taking body slams and kicks to the face, he has yet to sustain a serious injury or to have injured another wrestler. 

The same is true for Julian, who also dabbled in backyard wrestling as a teen. His only serious “injury” after training as an adult was a story point that allowed him to step away from the action shortly before his wife — who’d conspired with Julian’s mother to pay his training center tuition as a birthday present a few years earlier — gave birth to their fifth child.

“I got choked slammed through a table from the top rope at C,” he said. “I got carried away on a stretcher … but it was a show for the fans.”

Dinsmore, who plans to stay in Sioux Falls as he focuses on his retirement tour and stand-up storytelling performances, believes the promotion is in good hands. Lund has been his right-hand man for the past year or so and has grown into a quality trainer, and Olson’s excitement and promotional experience should serve MAP fans well. 

“These guys have been listening to me for six years, and now they have some of their own ideas on how to run things and keep it relevant,” he said. “I feel like I instilled in them the proper way to have a show, what we should do and what we shouldn’t do.”

For Midwest All Pro, that has always meant family-friendly shows and community engagement, including donations to groups like Feeding South Dakota. The notion of holding “hardcore” matches filled with bloody gimmicks never sat right with Dinsmore. Olson and Lund are committed to carrying on that tradition while growing into a larger space and drawing in performers with higher stature.

“We’ve got plans for some great shows and lots of big names throughout the year,” Lund said. “If we put on great shows, people will keep coming back.”

And with any luck, those shows could springboard a talented local performer to the upper echelons of sports entertainment.

“You never know who’s going to be the next John Cena,” Olson said.