It was the last thing that Dennis Anderson wanted to have happen. The first qualifying run of the new season, the debut of his much anticipated Grave Digger’s 25th Anniversary in Monster Jam in the Minneapolis Metrodome, and a strange bounce left the icon with an injured shoulder. With a packed schedule of major events coming up to celebrate his quarter century in the sport Dennis would be unable to race or freestyle for months. It seemed to be a worst case scenario, but it turned out to be a great anniversary campaign after all, and according to Anderson, it ended up being a year in which he learned things he might not have if was driving every week. So the end result just may be that by spending most of a season on the sidelines the three-time World Champion will get back in his Grave Digger for 2008 the best that he has ever been.
Maybe the most important decision that Dennis made after suffering the injury was to put his son Adam in his Grave Digger, and he decided to accompany Adam and the team for all of his commitments in the first quarter of 2007. He couldn’t drive, but he could be there with his fans and he could coach his son through the rigors of the annual week-to-week major stadium grind. Adam did a phenomenal job representing his father on the historic campaign, and Dennis got to enjoy watching his son’s amazing progress. The unexpected benefit was that Dennis learned so much about his truck watching his son put it to the test.
“It really truly was awesome. I mean to watch him go I honestly learned a little bit about my truck watching him drive it as hard as he did drive it,” Dennis explained. “You know when you see runs on the TV footage it’s great, you see a lot, but there are things that you don’t see on TV that I can see trackside and I’m not kidding you, when I got back in the truck he honestly made me step the fuel up in it. If you don’t think so get a report from Stafford Springs. Me and Tom (Meents) battling it out there.” Reports from Stafford Springs were that the two most famous names in the sport gavc the fans a full blown, classic, Grave Digger versus Maximum Destruction battle.
Dennis went on to describe how working with his son and his team from outside of the cockpit allowed him to step back and to make some changes to his own way of driving. “He got me into the Hans device,” Anderson said, speaking of how Adam driving his truck has influenced him. “I’ve always been old school with just a neck brace. I don’t want all that new junk, too many gadgets. Adam is the one that pushed me into this Hans device. And I got that thing on and I said ‘you all are in trouble now’. I should have been doin’ it before. I should have been doing it, I’m not kidding you. I had put it on and I had been uncomfortable with it. I would race with it on. I’d put it on and run around for a little bit and just say ‘get that off of me’. But I slowed down (during the injury), and then I was catching my breath a little bit on the summer heat tour and I went ahead and wore that thing and now I’m used to it. We got to work on the shocks while Adam was in the truck too. Let me tell you, we are going to be rough and tough this year because the old guy is coming back fastest and badder than ever.”
Dennis has shown that already. After not racing the entire winter season he healed from his injuries just in time to get back into the Grave Digger at Monster Jam World Finals 8, driving like he never missed any time at all, making it all the way into the championship race at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas where he narrowly lost to new World Racing Champion John Seasock and Batman. To Dennis Anderson, he regards that night as his greatest non-winning performance ever. “As far as Vegas goes, I really surprised myself,” Anderson remembered. “Usually I’m not satisfied internally with second place in anything that I do, but this year in Vegas I really was. It’s not because I’m getting old and I’m getting soft, it’s just because I was out all year long and I came in without even driving the truck. They said ‘do you want to practice?’ I said ‘nah, it is what it is, you know’. I’ve been doing it for 25 years: it is what it is. The way I looked at it was, when I went into Vegas if I did really bad and yucky, so what, I didn’t drive all year, I had an excuse. Well, I carried it all the way to the finals, and I was really internally glowing because of that. I’m not kidding you, when I went out the gate and made that first round and won, and didn’t crash into the wall I said ‘I got it man’. My confidence came back up and it was awesome.”
Anderson wanted to win that race and another world title desperately, but he understands that he can’t win them all, and says that if he couldn’t win another World Championship in 2007 he is extremely happy that veterans Seasock and his Grave Digger teammate Pablo Huffaker were able to win the first championships of their lengthy careers. “It is (great that Seasock and Huffaker won the titles), because they’ve got fan following out there too. And you’re exactly right. If Grave Digger won every single time out there, and in a lot of peoples minds I do win all the time, but in reality down on the track I am really kind of proud that I don’t win all the time because I just feel like it makes the longevity of my popularity go on and on. I mean if Grave Digger wins every single time you get sick of it. You know I used to watch these guys race, and I don’t want to call a bunch of names, but I used to hate those guys ‘cause they beat me every time. And even the fans were doin’ it. So I’m kinda one of those guys where I’m a 50-50 shot. And I’ve been a 50-50 shot for twenty-five years. And I love it like that.”
It is an interesting time in the Monster Jam life of the sport’s most popular performer. He is relishing the opportunity to develop his sons to follow in his extremely large footsteps while still being a prime time player at the top level of Monster Jam. Working with Adam this winter, and seeing how amazing his son was in his truck left Dennis beaming with pride. And there is another young Anderson coming, and coming fast. Dad says his son Ryan is chomping at the bit to get his career started in Monster Jam. “Yes he is. He is stormin’ and steamin’ more now than he ever has,” Dennis disclosed. “He’s gotta finish school. He’s got a few little hurdles to jump through and he’s gonna be there. He’s already been field-testing trucks. We’ve been building brand new trucks in the shop and testing new shock designs and he’s been driving them and field testing them. And he’s ready.” Ready not just to get into Monster Jam, but ready to create the biggest family rivalry this sport has ever seen. “He wants his brother!” Dad continued, talking about Ryan’s desire to get a shot at his older sibling. “You know what I mean, it’s a born war right in the family. He wants his brother so bad it’s ridiculous.”
With Ryan close to getting into the sport that his Dad helped build on a full time basis, and with Adam already considered one of the best drivers on the circuit at the ripe old age of 21, it seems to be inevitable that the Anderson family Monster Jam wars will soon be playing out all over the world. Dad plans to be a part of it for sure, but if the boys think they’ll just roll in and start beating the old man, they might want to think again. “The best thing that could ever happen to me in my career, I mean in my career of monster truckin’, or in my life of monster truckin’, before I step out from behind the wheel – I’ll never leave the track, but I’ll leave the wheel one day – is to have those guys (Adam and Ryan) in the World Finals,” Dennis claims while looking into the future. “I used to always say they would win, and beat me, but I don’t want them to. I would love to retire with both of those guys on my tail, and me kicking their butts. That would be the sweetest thing, just because it would be history. It would be like they don’t want to mess with me because I’m the ex-Big Daddy, I’m their Dad, you know. And that day’s gonna come.”
So get ready Monster Jam fans, coming soon to a stadium near you, and surely to be televised on Monster Jam on Speed, it will be the war of the generations, when the sport’s icon, Dennis Anderson, takes his Grave Digger into competition, not just against the other superstars in the sport, but to be challenged by a pair of budding stars who share his last name: Adam Anderson and Ryan Anderson. It will be incredible when that day comes, and it will be coming soon. But the confident youngsters had better keep one thing in mind. The old man has still got a whole lot left in the tank, and as proud as he is of them both, he is relishing the though of showing them that he’s still their Daddy, and that goes for on the track as well off of it.
