Admit it, professional wrestling is pretty ridiculous. Of course, it’s an amazing athletic achievement, an art, and all of that, but also, it can be pretty silly. Which is why I’m surprised more modern wrestling collectibles don’t reflect this silliness, and why when a new, ridiculous or silly wrestling collectible is created, I embrace it with all of my heart.
Take, for example, the All ECHH Lite Wrestling cards I previously wrote about, which combined the spirit of Garbage Pail Kids stickers with parodies of AEW wrestling talents.
Another recent, favorite example is the unauthorized (aka bootleg) Hulk Hogan Pastamania relic card, featuring “an authentic jumbo pasta sauce artifact,” created by Jack’s Attic.
But when it comes to ridiculous, silly wrestling collectibles, there’s one new product that absolutely takes the cake.
Doug Dreisel, Jr. (@greencircleyall), the creative force behind Dugg Trading Cards, has created a limited set of trading cards called the “Pooper Stars of Wrestling.” That’s right, this set of six trading cards features scatological parodies of some of our favorite professional wrestlers of the past and present, such as The Fart Foundation, Muskysmell Jacob Fartman, and Domin-icky Mysteri-ewww. It’s an artistic creation few have likely thought about, and it took a very unique individual to turn into a reality.
Driesel is originally from Southern Missouri, but he lived in Los Angeles for ten years before moving to Chicago, where he does home delivery dispatch for medical marijuana companies, as in he tells home delivery drivers where to go and when. On the side, he does voice over work and runs Dugg Trading Cards.
Driesel says he’s been a fan of professional wrestling since “two RAWs before the first Smackdown!” He was a fan of Hillbilly Jim and Junkyard Dog as a kid, but had fallen out of it by the time he turned seven. It wasn’t until his brother told him about Mick Foley in the late 1990s that he checked it out again. He “fell out” during college in 2002 when he didn’t want to pay for cable anymore, but he began watching again as research for his Professional Thumb Wrestling promotion in 2019.
I first learned about Driesel on Twitter while he was collecting wrestling ring mat relic cards. During a time when Driesel and his wife were living in Bentonville, Arkansas, he was able to run a successful eBay store and people were trading cards like crazy. He was pulling in a lot of cards but lacked focus, so he decided it would be a fun idea to try to collect an entire WWE mat canvas via mat relic cards. Driesel said, “I went two years and collected 600 square feet, out of 57,600, before ending the project.”
Driesel says he started making trading cards to promote Professional Thumb Wrestling, and while he stopped making episodes a few years ago, he’s still “super proud” of National Digit Wrestling Association. “It’s just like WWE,” he said, “but when it comes time to throw each other around the ring, we lock thumbs.” Driesel said, “We did a fully produced internet show, and to promote it we tried to do everything that WWE was doing, including cards.”
At the same time, the card market was booming, so he thought people might even buy trading cards with pictures of dog turds on them. And they did! “It was a gag thing,” he said, “but I made 25 packs [of dog turd trading cards] and sold out in under an hour with no promotion.”
Driesel said he couldn’t get the idea out of his head, so he found an artist on Fiverr named Kokin Komambar who did some “really gross and good work.” He put out another smaller set, also called Dog Turd Trading Cards, but this time it was art based, “not actual dog poop.” The idea was to combine the original Dog Turd Trading Cards with Smurfs and Garbage Pail Kids. Driesel said it was a successful Kickstarter, so later he did another smaller set called “Dog Turd Trading Cards: Cat Turds Attack!” which was also successful on Kickstarter. He had been preparing to release the next Kickstarter set when he got the idea to combine his hobby with his side hustle.
“I’m rather impulsive,” he said, ”and the preview release of my new set, ‘Dog Turd Trading Cards: All-Poo Series One,’ caused me to drop some coin with my artist to make six designs based on wrestlers (The Hart Foundation, Stone Cold Steve Austin, MJF, Rhea and Dom, Mick Foley, and John Cena).”
Driesel is a talented and creative individual, and it took years to develop these skills. Driesel said he was on the “movie auteur path through high school,” but when he moved to LA, he fell into comedy. “As a comedian,” Driesel said, “I made many different projects, including some web cartoons and puppet shows. This, as well as comedy sketches, are where I honed all of my graphic design skills until I could start to do that as a side hustle.” Driesel said he worked for a couple of radio stations for the seven years before COVID, which required a lot of use of his skills. Basically, he just makes sure that everything he does, he keeps using what he does and gets better at it.
In each of his projects, Driesel’s priority seems to be to have fun. Driesel said, “I know many people have different reasons for picking up cards, but for me this is all about fun. It’s kids stuff I’m throwing my adult time at. I better be having a blast. Most of life is boring and stupid. When it’s something you chose to spend your time on, you should really dig it.”
Follow Doug Driesel, Jr. on Instagram (@greencircleyall and @duggtradingcards) and X (@greencircleyall). The Dog Turd Trading Cards All-Poo Series One Kickstarter, featuring the Pooper Stars of Wrestling, will be live in early February.
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