When you get into your chosen field of work, you want to be remembered for something you did well. In wrestling, you want to be remembered for a great match you had or a definitive championship victory. As we all know, things don’t always go the way you want them to. This is how things went for the Dirt Bike Kid, a wrestler who is most well-known for being on the wrong side of a shoot beating by Great Sasuke.
Dirt Bike Kid has a relatively short career of a little over six years, but in those six years he bounced around America, Europe, and Japan. He had several matches in ECW, feuding with guys like Mikey Whipwreck and Sabu inside and outside of the company. His CAGEMATCH.net page chronicles only 34 matches over those six years, but those few matches hold more known names that one would expect. Dirt Bike Kid is a man remembered by few wrestling fans and remembered favorably by even fewer. Videos of him on YouTube are full of negative comments and his CAGEMATCH rating hovers below 1.5 out of 10. He found some success during the 90’s wrestling boom, but his flame burned out quickly. Let’s take a look at the fascinating and short career of the Dirt Bike Kid.
Getting on the Bike
Before he wore the motocross jersey, Jason Harrison was first trained by a wrestler named Bill Anderson, a man who found his greatest success as a jobber on WWF house shows in the 80s.
According to Harrison, he was just one of the great names to study under Anderson, joining other names like “Ultimate Warrior, Sting, and Louie Spicolli.” Harrison was a British wrestler, but got his start in America. Dirt Bike Kid made his debut in AWF, the American Wrestling Federation, on April 11, 1994 in a losing effort against his trainer.
In 1995, Harrison would dabble with another gimmick, sometimes being known as the Shark Attack Kid. His first recorded use of this name was in a losing effort in a handicap match, teaming with John Eaton against the Vampire Warrior (who would go on to become better known as Gangrel) in NWA New Jersey.
Dirt Bike Kid would have his first big match July 7, 1995 when he met Sabu in the main event of a show aptly named Sabu’s European Break. You may be wondering why Dirt Bike Kid was so high on the card. Well, he put himself there because it was his show. Harrison owned and operated the EWA, European Wrestling Association, and we’ll go into more later, but he tended to book himself on top a lot.
This match with Sabu is fascinatingly bad. Things go off the rails once DBK goes for a moonsault and misses. Based on Sabu’s reaction, I would assume this was an accident. Sabu puts DBK on the top turnbuckle and slams him to the mat with a Frankensteiner. Sabu goes for the pin and then breaks it himself at the count of one. This match has less psychology than your regular Sabu match to say the least.
Later on DBK kicks the referee’s knee out for seemingly no reason other than to buy time for Sabu. The low point of the contest comes when Sabu hits two dives to the outside on DBK, who is laying on a table, and neither attempt manages to break the table. The match mercifully ends when Sabu finishes off Dirt Bike Kid with an Arabian Facebuster. Sabu carries his end of the match well enough, but the Kid was too inexperienced to be in a 15 minute main event and deliver.
Luckily for Dirt Bike Kid, this match would lead to bigger and better things for him.
The Dirt Bike Kid Goes EXTREME!!!!!
The Shark Attack Kid made his comeback, this time parlaying his match with Sabu into some dates in ECW. Shark Attack Kid was squashed two nights in a row by Taz in early February 1996. His outings here earned him a spot in the opening match of ECW’s Cyberslam. Dirt Bike Kid, making his ECW debut using this name, was on the losing side of a trios squash match teaming with Dino Standoff and Don E. Allen against Judge Dredd and the Bad Crew. This match can actually be seen on the award-winning WWE Network.
Dirt Bike Kid would return to ECW in August of ’96 to defend his EWA European Junior Heavyweight Title against Mikey Whipwreck. As owner of EWA, DBK awarded himself this championship earlier in the year. Whipwreck became the first man to win the title in an actual match when he defeated the Kid.
In November, DBK looked to regain his title in another ECW match against Whipwreck, but came up short. Before the end of 1996, the EWA Junior title would change hands again, this time going to Sabu after he beat Whipwreck and Dirt Bike Kid in a triple threat match.
It’s worth noting that the EWA show that this match took place on had a seven match card with only eleven different wrestlers being used throughout the night. Let it never be said that Dirt Bike Kid didn’t know how to budget his shows.
Dirt Bike Kid returned to ECW in April of 1997. He would actually find himself victorious in a match against Super Nova on this night.
Over a year later in August of 1998, DBK made his final ECW appearance, teaming with Danny Doring in a winning effort against Super Nova and Blue Meanie.
The Taste of Gold
At some point in 1997, Sabu vacated the EWA European Junior Heavyweight Championship. To determine the next champion a tournament was held. The tournament took place on February 14, 1997 at EWA’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and the field was a bit more stacked than you might expect with Sabu and his tag partner Rob Van Dam in the mix. The finals came down to Dirt Bike Kid and Mikey Whipwreck. On this day, DBK would best his rival and take home the gold. Even though shortly after that Dirt Bike Kid’s company would cease operations, he continued to defend the belt in German companies and FWA. DBK would go on to hold the title for over 900 days before losing it in the final match of his career.
On August 5, 2000 Dirt Bike Kid met Sabu in the main event of FWA’s Evil Intentions in a title vs. title match putting Sabu’s XPW Heavyweight Championship against DBK’s EWA Junior title. The match is better than their previous encounter in 1995, but that isn’t saying much.
According to DBK himself, the match was doomed from the start:
“The Evil Intentions show was very badly run, to the point where they had given 20 minutes on the card to some stupid gothic dance routine… and having John Feltham (who is an ok guy, I liked him) come up to me to tell me that my match with Sabu, could only go…listen to this…. no more than 5 minutes, because they had already…gone over-time allowed.”
Sabu dominates most of the match, bloodying the Dirt Bike Kid with a fork. The two men implement the flimsiest tables the wrestling world has ever seen to the laughs and jeers of the fans. Sabu picked up the win, ending both Dirt Bike Kid’s title reign and his career.
The Rage of Great Sasuke
Shortly before his retirement, Dirk Bike Kid made a trip to Japan for Michinoku Pro’s Fukumen World League. Little did the Dirt Bike Kid suspect that this show would end up being the defining moment of his career.
Before the match began, DBK went into things with a bit of a target on his back. Sasuke wanted the match to be quick with Dirt Bike Kid dominating early on and Sasuke coming back for a quick win. DBK wasn’t a fan of that or the fact that he’d have to wear a mask (that the company had made for him). Before the match starts, Dirt Bike Kid rips off the mask, which honestly defeats the purpose of the potential to lose your mask in the tournament.
In the earlier referenced interview DBK says, “Now sorry, but the DBK isn’t a masked wrestler, so why the f**k did they want me on a masked-man tournament. I managed to compromise with them, and say that I’d wear it to the ring only, and then rip it off, where I would wear the usual biking-face mask that I usually wear during my ring-entrance. They didn’t like it, I could tell… but agreed to it.”
It’s safe to assume that he was always booked to lose because he could lose “his” mask with no real consequences. This was clearly never explained to DBK or if it was, he ignored it.
Just as the plan was, DBK dominates Sasuke in the early goings with some solid looking offense. Quite honestly, this is the best Dirt Bike Kid performance that I could find in my research. Sasuke takes everything that the Kid has to offer before the tide turns. Sasuke begins kicking the hell out of Dirt Bike Kid, who chooses not to sell any of it. DBK finally falls after Sasuke’s “kick caught me right under my ribs, where my cartilage injury was, and I just fell like a chopped down tree.” Sasuke puts the boots to DBK and finishes the match with a legitimately applied guillotine choke.
Just as soon as it began, it’s over and Dirt Bike Kid is a part of wrestling history for all the wrong reasons.
The End of the Self Made Kid
There’s something to be genuinely admired about Dirt Bike Kid’s career. He was a wrestler who wasn’t very good, but found himself main eventing shows against well-known American wrestlers. When he saw that he wasn’t going to be used as anything outside of being a jobber, he made his own company and put himself on top. With a little bit of business skills, DBK feuded with Sabu, Mikey Whipwreck, and got work in ECW as a result. This man had skills no better than a back yarder that spent the most time on the trampoline, but he made his stock rise and broke out of the losing streak that his gimmick had all but guaranteed him.
As an in ring talent, Dirk Bike Kid might be no better than the guy at your local indie, but good or bad, he managed to carve out a bit of a legacy for himself. Everything in his career led up to his fateful confrontation with Sasuke. If he hadn’t opened a company, he wouldn’t have been booked to wrestle with Sabu. If he hadn’t worked with Sabu, he wouldn’t have been booked in ECW. If he hadn’t worked ECW, he wouldn’t have feuded with Mikey Whipwreck over a title he made and had more matches with Sabu. If he hadn’t have done that, he wouldn’t have been booked in the Fukumen World League and if that didn’t happen, his name would have been lost to wrestling history like so many others.
So here’s to you, Dirt Bike Kid. You defied all expectations and had a career more interesting than many of your peers.
