Demo heads to Bristol

Come October, Celina native Dustin Woods is taking demolition derby to a national arena.

Woods, as the founder and CEO of Demolition Entertainment Motorsports Organization, coordinated a national event, D.E.M.O. I, at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee on Oct. 3-6.

"What we are branding demo as, and D.E.M.O. I specifically at Bristol as, is the introduction of combat motorsports to the world," Woods said. "We use the term, we coined that term combat motorsports, because this isn't just another event. This isn't a normal demolition derby. It's literally a combat motorsport, and we are a professional, official sport."

Demolition derby has traditionally been a grassroots sport, revolving around county fairs and regional organizers. In that context, Mercer County is one of the main hubs of the sport - "the Mecca of demolition derby", as Woods put it.

For Joey Braun, a Celina driver who will be competing in the team portion at Bristol, it's a family affair. Both his parents and his uncles competed in demolition derbies as he was growing up, and he started off in the Mercer County Fair at 15. In 2018, he won $10,000 at the Bash for Cash in Chillicothe.

"It was a family thing," he said. "Something we transferred into when we came of age. Just kind of always been a part of my life."

Woods, who played baseball in college and coached Marion Local from 2014-15, said that watching the likes of Toby Highley, Trent and Trace Braun and Scott Zizelman compete at the Mercer County Fair inspired him to try demolition derby at 18, before he went to college.

After taking three years off, he went back to the Mercer County Fair, then started running in independent shows around the region. But the piecemeal nature of different derbies pushed him to get into promoting about five years ago, with the long-term goal of creating something bigger and generating more recognition for derbyers.

That was the genesis of D.E.M.O. I, which has been a year in the making.

"Although we haven't had necessarily an event yet, to be able to showcase it, we have a prototype or a vision of what this is going to become, and that's made it a little easier," Woods said. "And we've kind of got a group of people across the nation to move in one direction for the first time. But the hardest part is this whole sport has been fractured for so long that getting people to move in one direction, it's been pretty difficult."

D.E.M.O. under Woods has also been serving as a sort of governing body, setting out rules for the different classes in collaboration with drivers and inspectors.

D.E.M.O. I is built around four-man and two-man team events. It has two divisions - full size pro and full size pro lite - for the four-man teams, three for the two-man features - full size pro stock, full size elite lite, and compact elite - and four divisions for two-man single events.

Woods had 18 charter teams in D.E.M.O., with another 14 teams coming out to compete at Bristol. The 32 teams will be split into two classes of 16, and the highest-finishing non-charter team in each class will be offered a charter spot.

"Both of those classes will pay 100,000 to win, which has never been done," Woods said. "Not even once, let alone twice."

He asked the Brauns if they would compete as a family, but they decided they couldn't this year. As a teacher, Joey had time this summer to put together a car for the derby, so he is teaming with Devon and Brady Allen of Lima and Jeremy Hinen of Columbia City, Indiana.

All four are familiar with each other, having crossed paths many times before in the world of demolition derby. Hinen beat Braun for first place at the 2022 Bash for Cash, for example, with Brady Allen third.

Although Braun has always competed as an individual in the past, he said the team concept just brings the alliances out into the open.

"Honestly, there's always been a little bit of teaming - unofficial teaming - in derbying, so now it's just official," he said. "And I think that because of that, the pace will be a lot faster, because the politics are out of it and everybody knows what the goal is right off the rip. So I think that the action will be a lot higher. There'll be a lot less feeling each other out and more a lot more hitting."

One of the challenges, he said, is that ordinarily, after something like the Bash for Cash, he'll spend a month or two reworking the body, fixing the suspension and making any other necessary repairs. At Bristol, they'll have to manage it in a day, three times in a row.

Braun drives a 1976 Chevrolet station wagon, the same type that he started with at 15, but he said the process of building it has changed a lot.

"Honestly, it feels like feels more like we're building race cars than derby cars at this point with the the amount of parts we're putting in," he said. "The amount of fabrication and welding and engineering that goes into a derby car is a lot different than it was 18 years ago. It's definitely not crush the windows out and go."

Woods, with his background in promotion, is basing his work with D.E.M.O. on how the Ultimate Fighting Championship built its brand, such as the sequential numbering of events. He said a documentary company called Serif Creative approached him about making a docuseries starting with his King of Ohio derby in Allen County in June and leading into D.E.M.O. I, and he's hoping to get 10,000 fans in Bristol, especially since he said the local population turns out to support motorsports of all kinds.

"I think derby world has a bad habit of, we're a tight knit family, and we don't bring a lot of new faces into the world or a lot of new audience members," Braun said. "Like, when you sit in the stands, it's usually all Derby people. So getting out on other platforms and getting to somewhere like Bristol Motor Speedway will hopefully help grow the audience and bring that to the next level."

Looking ahead, Woods said his goal was to make future D.E.M.O. events into a full-time circuit, like NASCAR or IndyCar, and get demolition derby recognized as a professional sport.

"In five years," he said, "I expect for guys to make a living running demolition derbies."

Braun opined that there are two types of derbyers, the ones gunning for big money and a big stage and the ones just driving with family and friends at county fairs, and he said he wasn't sure which group he fell into. Professional derby driving, though, he doesn't see in his future.

At Bristol, his main goal is to show the rest of the country how good demolition derby in western Ohio is.

"I think Celina has some of the best derbyers in the country," he said, "and I hope we can do a good job of representing everybody at Bristol."