Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Bully Ray: The 2 women he'd wrestle, AEW is like ECW, why Vince said no to a singles run, Mae Young

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

Bully Ray (Bubba Ray Dudley) chats with Chris Van Vliet from his home in New York and they cover absolutely everything from his almost 30 year wrestling career. He talks about starting out in ECW with a character that wasn't set up for success, pitching the idea to Paul Heyman of teaming with D-Von to form the Dudley Boyz, being part of the first TLC match in WWE, what his favorite TLC match was, putting Mae Young through a table, leaving WWE and going to TNA as Team 3-D, breaking away from D-Von to have a singles career that led to him becoming the 2-time TNA World Champion, the idea he had for the finish of the Sting vs. Jeff Hardy match at Victory Road 2011, Eric Bischoff coming up with the idea for him to be the leader of the Aces and Eights, his thoughts on Moose as the TNA Champion, Tessa Blanchard as the Impact Wrestling World Champion, which one of them he'd rather have a match with, his future plans and much, much more! Thank you to Bespoke Post! Use the code BLUEWIRE for 20% off your first curated monthly box at http://boxofawesome.com Also a big thanks to Bet Online for supporting this episode. Use the code BLUEWIRE at https://www.betonline.ag/ to get a welcome bonus on your first deposit. And we couldn't do this without BlueChew! Visit http://bluechew.com and get your first order for FREE when you use the promo code BLUEWIRE. Just pay $5 shipping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This is the Chris Van Vleet Show. Chris Van Vleet Show. Ladies and gentlemen. Chris Vee. Well, welcome back to the Chris Van Fleet Show. This episode is brought to you by Bespoke Post, Bet Online, and Blue Chew, and, oh, man. Oh, man, what a good episode this is. bully raise on busted open radio.

You know that. You hear him every day. But he's never really done a long-form, introspective interview about his career as a whole. So I am super, super grateful that he trusted me with this one. It was supposed to be an hour long. And as you can see from the runtime here, it went closer to an hour of 45, although I feel like we could have talked all day.

What a brilliant mind he has, not just for wrestling, but just in general. And hearing his take about what's going on right now in wrestling and also the way that he views his own career is fascinating. And his career, by the way, is far from done. Actually, it sounds like he has some very interesting ideas for what's next. And guys, guys, we are almost at that goal of a thousand reviews on Apple Podcast. And thank you for being with me on this ride. You know that we just adjusted the goal of The goal was originally a thousand reviews this year, a thousand reviews in 2020. It got changed to a thousand reviews before the podcast turns one on January 24th.

So we're about a month away. We have 950 reviews, which is amazing. So 50 more reviews in like 33 days. Totally, totally doable. My birthday, by the way, was this week. It was Tuesday, May 19th. Yeah, don't tell Kane. about that date. But yeah, the best birthday present that I got was all of the reviews that came in

in the last week or something. This was the biggest week we've had for reviews. So thank you. If you haven't left one yet, you know what? I'm okay with having a belerted, belated birthday present of you leaving one today or tomorrow or or sometime in the next 33 days or so. That's okay with me. like this one from Eric S. 1982. This was the review here, the title on this, is Chris Van Vleet does not have Vagulls. Well, thank you, Eric S.

Chris has traveled everywhere to do interviews. That's dedication and it doesn't go unnoticed. CVV is an incredibly talented interviewer. Mr. Van Vleet knows how to treat the talent and fans. The interviews offer a real, honest, and clean look in the world of professional wrestling. If you haven't listened to Chris's interviews, There's a backlog of gems.

Keep up the tremendous work, Chris. Your goals are certainly not vague. Well, thank you, Eric S. 1982. And I hope that you, Eric, have been setting some specific goals for yourself and just crushing them. And thank you to everyone who's been part of these interviews, whether it's on here, on the podcast, or it's on YouTube. Because with everything going on right now in the world, especially with COVID right now, these interviews are my main job. So thank you for the support.

And just by listening right now, just by listening and doing nothing else, if you never left a review, if you never took a screenshot and tagged me, if you never followed me on Instagram, just you listening right now. Help support me so much and help support the awesome podcast network

that I have, Blue Wire. So thank you. And man, what a conversation this is. I mean, we cover everything in Bully Ray's almost 30-year career. He talks about how he was basically set up to fail in ECW with the Dudley family gimmick, but he fought through it with Devon to become the most accomplished tag team in the history of pro wrestling. He talks about going to WWE and how that first TLC match came to be, which TLC match became his favorite,

of course putting May Young through the table. leaving WWE and going to TNA, why they couldn't be the Dudley's there, why they had to become Team 3D, then having a very successful singles run, which led to him becoming the two-time TNA world champion. It tells us a really interesting story about how he had an idea to save that debacle of a match

between Sting and Jeff Hardy at Victory Road, and it was that idea to save that finish of the match, which didn't end up happening. His idea didn't happen. But Eric Bischoff just saw something, in him and decided to make him the leader of what he called at the time a biker gang. Of course, it led to become aces and eights. He also says he was this close, this close to being able to bring the bully rate character

to WWE. But eventually Vince said, I can't do that here. You'll see exactly why. He also draws really interesting comparisons between ECW and AEW and talks about what's next for him and why it might have something to do with Tessa Blanchard. Maybe. So there's so much to unpack here. Let's get right to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, bully Ray. Bobba. Well, thank you so much for making this happen. Are you excited? I'm excited. Are you excited? Should I be? Yeah.

I mean, I should be more excited than you are. But I got a bit of a bone to pick with you because the last interview we did was November 2017, Ring of Honor. and you told me and you told everybody else that you were retired. For which time? Four, fifth, six? I believed you this time, though. Yeah.

You did. Yeah. Yeah. So what happened there? So I just want to, I come on your show and 30 seconds in, like, it's already, I got a bone to pick with you. No, like, hi, hello, how are you? Are you doing okay? We'll get to that, I'm sure.

You're doing okay? You're doing all right? Come on, dispense with the pleasantries. So what do you want to do that in 2017? Well, how long did that retirement last? I have no idea. It lasted as long as the story dictated it to last. It's funny because it seemed like it wasn't a wrestling storyline retirement.

Like it seemed like a legitimate. retirement. It felt like everyone had bought into it too. That's that was the plan and that's the beauty of it. In my world of wrestling, nothing is supposed to is supposed to come off planned and it's supposed to be able to take fans like you, educated fans like you, and make them go, wait a minute here. I don't know about this. I think, this is, you know, legitimate. And that's the ride that I like to take people on.

You walk this like very, very thin line between who bully Ray the person is and who bully Ray the character is. Has that always been the case for you throughout your entire career? I'm an old school kind of mentality when it comes to taking your persona or your character. With me, it's really not a character. I know a lot of guys say that. It's like the cliche answer, but I've really been saying that for, you know, close to 25 years. It's never canned.

It's never forced. I am as good with people as they are with me. Most of the time, what you get from me is based on how I'm receiving you. So, you know, is bully Ray in the wrestling ring, the same thing? way he is at home or in the grocery store? No, because I don't think I can mafia kick 80-year-old women, although I did make a career putting women through tables, so you never know. But I enjoyed that eight or nine months of storytelling because I took something that was, you know, taboo in the wrestling world, which is concussions. And, you know, how dare you do a storyline

about concussions? Yeah. In the world of pro wrestling that I come from, nothing is really really off limits. Like I won't go near like religion or or race or things like that or probably politics. But everything else to me is is on on limits and can be turned into a storyline if the story is good, if it has depth. But most importantly, if you have the right characters. Well, look, I'm glad we got that out of the way. But seriously, how are you doing with everything? We're about two months into this thing. How are you holding up? I'm totally fine. All is good here. You know, I'm being as safe as possible, you know, all of the necessary precautions.

It's all good. And I'm glad that, you know, Busted Open is on six days a week for wrestling fans to be able to keep up with us. I mean, if you look at the world of pro wrestling right now, there are only three constants, the WWE, AEW, and Busted Open. That's all live programming or as live as you can get every single week. And we're doing our very best entertain wrestling fans and keep them updated on what's going on in the world of pro wrestling. And I'm having a lot of fun with it. So you're signed to Ring of Honor. Obviously, things are kind of on hold with their shows right now. What would you have been doing had this pandemic not happened with Ring of Honor?

I don't know because the way I plan my things is it's very on a per case per person per character basis. Well, when I got to Ring of Honor, what I wanted to do is I wanted to look at the landscape of their talent and see how I could apply bully Ray to their talent there and help their talent out. Who could I help to elevate? Who could I tell good stories with? Who could get the most out of, you know, working with me? And that's what I tried to do with like, you know, when it was me and Dreamer versus the briskos or bully versus Flip or bully versus Haskins. or bully versus anybody. I try to take that bully character

and put it with the right people so those people can stand up to the bully. They can flourish and they can get over in the process. I think it's been so amazing watching your whole career from everything you've done as a tag team wrestler to a very successful singles wrestler. Now to being like a great broadcaster, did you always, I mean, you're always great on the mic,

but did you know that you had this in you as a, broadcaster. You know, one of my good friends is Buckethead, and he's a radio personality. He was in Orlando. He was in Tampa. He's down in Atlanta now. He's got a big, you know, morning show. And I always would talk with him about radio. And I always knew that I was interested in radio, but never, there was never the right opportunities, nor did I have the time. And I, and I always said, it's something that I'd like to try out. And Busted Open has been around for like 10 years. Yeah. And I always used to listen to Busted Open, Dave and Doug, talking about the world of pro wrestling.

I enjoyed their show because they were super fans who also were very respectful towards the wrestling business, were respectful towards the talent. And even if they didn't necessarily like what you were doing or had something to say about your character or story or whatnot, they said it the right way. So I always enjoyed going on the show, became buds with those guys. And then one day, I'll never forget, I was standing. and outside the Team 3D Academy in Kissimmee, Florida. And I saw LaGreca comment on Omega Okada, their first match. And he said, that's the greatest wrestling match I've ever seen in my life. And I walked out of the academy and I texted him.

I go, are you serious? That's the greatest wrestling match you've ever seen in your life. I go, you're a flare steamboat mark. And that is the greatest match you've ever seen. And we got into this whole discussion about Omega Okina. and I just put it, I just put it out there and I said, did you ever think about taking the show to the next level? And he's like, well, what do you mean? I go, you and Doug are great, but what if there was somebody else there? Kind of like when you watch ESPN and you have the,

you know, the former NFL player and the analyst or, you know, any kind of those, you know, first take or, you know, head to head, whatever shows they have on like ESPN or any sports talk radio. So my intent was to kind of be a part of the Dave and Doug show as that, as that third person that, you know, quote unquote expert, a guy who's been there and done that. And it kind of just morphed into me and Dave and we just kind of got in there and, you know, grip it and rip it and three years later, here we are and it's been going well. And I enjoy doing wrestling radio. I have a lot of fun with it. And I think it's turned into like a morning show for wrestling fans, not just a,

a wrestling show for wrestling fans. And you're able to do this from your home, right? Yeah. Yep. Got the studio here behind me. What you're seeing right now is what they see every day on Busted Open. Right now, we're two hours live every day, but before the pandemic, it was three hours. I'm sure when this is all over, we'll go back to three hours.

And we cover anything and everything in the world of pro wrestling. If it's topical, we're going to talk about it. And we try to stay ultra, ultra positive about everything. We don't get into like the, you know, the dirt sheet stuff or any of that stuff that I just don't, I don't feel as worthy of our time. We try to bring a more fun vibe to the pro wrestling business and hopefully, hopefully it's working. Is it difficult because obviously you're friends with a lot of people in pro wrestling? Is it difficult when you have to speak about a negative situation on Busted Open? No.

No, if when I'm, if I have to speak negatively of a talent, very rarely am I speaking about that talent's performance as an individual. If somebody has a bad day at the office in the ring, I'll just say they had a bad day at the office, just like you could have a bad day doing an interview, where somebody could have a bad day flipping burgers and McDonald's, or somebody could have a bad day at the stock market. it's it's all relative so here case and point taker versus goldberg right in Saudi Arabia everybody wanted to shit on that match you know and I understood what happened that a moment in time where a bad day at the office happened and that's what I said and listen man it's 50 50 you know it takes two to tango in that ring and you know you got to dance together and you know everybody wants to point the finger at goldberg well goldberg's wrong

Goldberg's wrong, go over a drunk. Okay, fine. But mistakes can happen to anybody. And they have happened to everybody. Whoever the greatest pro wrestler is in your mind, they've had an off night. Now, whether that off night was, you know, hurting somebody or, you know, coming as close to hurting taker as it happened, you never know. But I went on the show.

I was as honest as I could possibly be about it without saying things like Goldberg sucks or anything like that. because I just don't think that's true. So most of the time it's me critiquing the creative that any particular company will give to a performer because that's what it comes down to. It comes down to creative. And so many times you see fans, you know,

on social media or online bitching and moaning about something like, oh, this guy sucked or, you know, this guy didn't perform or this gal, whatever. And most of the time it's like, well, creative handed them this. they're doing the absolute best they can while working in the confines. When I say the confines, most of the time I'm talking about the WWE. Because if you watch AEW, you know there's not the same kind of handcuffs in AEW, if any handcuffs like you have in the WW. I just love that you guys put a positive spin on everything because when you listen to a lot of people

that are critiquing wrestling out there, it's like 90% negative. And they're just trying to talk about all the terrible things. I like that you guys take a positive attitude towards it. I don't know why we would take a negative attitude towards it. You know, God bless the world of professional wrestling. I mean, especially in these times, it keeps going and going and going. I mean, what is that, first of all, I could never talk negatively about the professional wrestling industry as a 27-year veteran now. This business has been awesome to me.

And any time I can, I try to help. the business back. Is everything perfect in the business? No. Is everything always great in the business? No. But for the most part, my journey has been awesome. And if I can help people understand wrestling better, then I'm doing my job. To me, I like to help fans be smarter on Busted Open, not smart marks where they're kind of negative about things. I like them to help appreciate the product better. So they're not looking at it through those like those real negative glasses sometimes. Like I'll encourage them to watch raw or watch dynamite or whatever and then call in the show and then I say, if there's something you didn't understand or something that you don't,

you don't quite get. I'll try to explain it to you. And hopefully you can see it through a set of eyes that'll entertain you a little bit more. Perhaps one of the best things that come out of busted open is people actually get to know who like you are. Because there's a razor thin line here and you've certainly earned this reputation of a lot of people think you're an asshole because of the character that you've played. People are finally able to see who bully Ray the person is through this. You know, there are people within the course of wrestling history where the perception and the reality are two different things. When it's time to do business with me, I am very, very stern. And it's because I've had to have been.

You know, if you take a look at the Dudleys and the history of the Dudleys, I mean, look at a picture of me and Devon from day one. Were those guys ever supposed to succeed? Seriously. Yeah, no, you're right. I completely understand what you're saying. Were those two schmucks in tie guys and those glasses with all of the other Dudleys around them, were those guys ever supposed to become?

something? How did we, how did we become something? It's because we had to do it our way. And our way sometimes rub people the wrong way, but so be it. You know, Devon was a little bit more laid back. If we would have, if we would have taken DeBon's, you know, route, I don't know if we would have gotten as far as we have. And I'll be the first one to admit, my mouth has gotten me everywhere I've gotten in pro wrestling. But my mouth has also gotten me everywhere that I am in pro wrestling. It's a double-edged sword because you're going to piss a lot of people off on the way. And if I did, okay, so I had a great career. I can sit back and look and go, everybody that I worked with, we told some good stories, they may have helped got me over and I helped get them

over, left behind some legendary matches, made some great friendships, made a boatload of of money. And yeah, so what? You pissed a couple of people off on the way. What's that old saying about if you don't have enemies, you're not doing it right, or if you don't have haters, you're not doing it right? You know, there's this fake niceness in the wrestling business sometimes that is completely phony. And with me, you'll never get that phony. It's 100% honest all of the time. And honesty in the wrestling business is, sometimes it's an option. mon because people don't like it if you're honest with them. But as the years have gone on, like younger wrestlers or even fellow wrestlers,

if they want brutal honesty, they'll come to me and ask them because they know I won't sugarcoat anything. And if your match was great, I've had so many times where people have come up to me, Bubba, how is my match? I really liked it. It was great. No, really. What did you think?

I'm telling you, it was great. If I say it was great, it means you entertained me. me. I don't know if it's a five-star classic. I can't even believe I said that. I don't know if Rick Flair would think the same match is great. But for me, you entertained me and you asked me my opinion. So I gave it to you. You don't have to name names here, but you said you pissed off a bunch of people over the course of your career. Are there still people that you have heat? Not that I know of. Do you know of? Not that I know of. That's why I'm asking you. here's the thing if i have if somebody has heat with me i'm going to bring it up to them to their

face and it's not going to be getting in their face and saying you have heat with me i'll be the first one to talk to somebody i have had many a talk with many a wrestler in a room by myself hey man let's talk about this i really shouldn't say many it's only been a handful of guys and you realize that it's just a lack of communication or somebody may have said saying something that they don't mean, but I always believe in, you know, never handle on social media that which can be handled face to face. And that's kind of been my whole career. If I have an issue with somebody or if I think somebody has an issue with me, hey man, let's go talk about this. And, you know, so far so good. If I don't like you, I'll always be cordial with you, you know,

because that's what the wrestling business dictates. And we might have to do business together. hello, goodbye. We're not going to be best friends. We're not going to travel together. We're not going to eat together. We're not going to drink together. But we do have to work together and be professionals. So if those guys, you and Devon in the original photo in ECW, you know, weren't set to succeed. What changed it? What one specific thing took you guys down the path that you ended up on in your career? Me and DeVon's willingness to succeed, to do anything to succeed, to do anything to succeed, to realize that we had a special chemistry and our finish. I knew that the finish would be instrumental in making the team.

And I knew that right from Jump Street, we had to have something different that nobody had ever done before that's going to stand up and make people take notice. And, you know, invented the 3D, the Dudley Death Drop, and that was like the first thing. That's the first move that me and Devon ever did together. So when I look at the, you know, when I look inside the ring, I base everything around the finish.

And then when I look outside of the ring, it's just, we went out there to steal the show every single night. Nobody was going to top us, and people would be walking away from the arena saying, oh, my God, did you see the Dudleys and whoever they were working with that night? On my Hall of Fame ring, you know, they asked you what you want inscribed on it. And I remember the phone call. And Sue Aitchinson had called and said,

Bubba, what would you like on your Hall of Fame ring? Love Sue, great lady. And I said, I want my way. And she's like, oh, my way by Frank Sinatra. I said, no, my way by the sex pistols. And she's starting to laugh, you know, because she's English. And to me, my way represents not just me, my way. It's more about our way, me and Devon's way.

Because we knew we were never supposed to make it. We knew people weren't going to take us seriously. You know, it's like we said in the Hall of Fame speech, you know, we weren't the road warriors, you know, we weren't the workers that, you know, Ricky and Robert or Orne and Tully were. so we had to do things differently. We had to make ourselves stand out. And I'm happy to say that we did.

I'll never sit here and tell you that the Douglies are the greatest tag team in wrestling history because that's so subjective. What I can say factually is we're the most successful team that ever existed. And those two guys that got together, you know, for that in that very, you know, that very first night in like 1996 and South Philadelphia. really were never supposed to succeed. Tell me about some of the finishers that you guys thought about that, you know, just didn't quite make the list. None. I came up with the 3D watching Dean Melancho versus Ray Mysterio on, I think, a nitro.

I saw, I saw Dean shoot Ray in and give him a pop-up, like pancake face bump. And I said to myself, oh, wow, wouldn't it be cool if you could shoot a guy, so high in the air that you could spin underneath him and catch a diamond cutter. That morphed into the bubba cutter, which I used a couple of times. I used, and I use it on Devon once. And then me and Dee and Devon got together, I said, we need to do a tag team version of the diamond cutter because it had never been done before. And we went to the ECW dojo in Long Island.

We took Spike with us. And that little bastard, that tough little son of a bitch took her out. a hundred of the ugliest 3Ds ever. And if you look at the first 3D, we hit on him, it's brutal. It's brutal. It took a lot of time, you know, to perfect the move and get it down. But we knew right from the beginning that that was going to be it. I don't think we ever worked on another tag team finish.

How long did it take Paul Heyman to see that you and Devon were indeed the real thing? that would be a better question for Paul. I knew that I saw it because when Devon first came to ECW, me and him feuded. And the feud went well. But people were getting really tired of the stuttering, dancing, baby-faced Bubba. And one night I had a match against Jimmy Del Rey and he completely exposed me, but exposed me in a good way where I was like, damn, I got to become a better wrestler. because when I was trained originally, I was not trained well at all.

And to this day, if I ever see the guy that trained me, I'm going to have a talk with him. Talk. So what were we talking about? Concussion syndrome kicking in. The legit concussion syndrome, can't remember what we were just talking about. You were just saying that, you know, I'd have to ask Paul, but you believed in yourself. And Jimmy Delray kind of exposed, you know, your inability. Babyface Bubba wasn't getting over anymore. They had Devon teaming with Axel rotten,

but it wasn't working in the ECW arena because everybody loved Axel and everybody hated Devon. So it's like, do we cheer for Axel or do we, you know, voo for Devon? And it was getting such a mixed response. And I knew that me and Devon had chemistry fighting each other. I'll never forget the night, I went to Paul and Dreamer. They were both sitting at a table. And I said, listen, this baby face shit ain't working anymore. I said, I think I can pull off the heel version of, you know, of Bubba. I go, why don't you put me and Devon together and let's see what happens? Paul said, okay.

That was it. Wow. That was it. Much like ECW, that was the creative process. If a wrestler felt strong about something and you went to Paul or you, or Tommy, you know, at the time, because Tommy worked hand in hand with Paul. And you presented it in a certain way, let's do it. Because it's either going to work or it's not going to work.

And if it works, we might catch lightning in a bottle. And if it doesn't work, we don't have to do it anymore. So that was the beauty of working in that company. And, you know, if he doesn't say yes on that first night, me and Devon probably don't get to achieve the level of success that we did. I mean, from the stories that you're telling, the stories I've heard from guys like Tommy Dreamers, so much more creative control in ECW. And there's been a lot of comparisons from AEW to ECW. You were an ECW original. How do you feel about the comparisons between AEW and ECW?

I know there's a lot of younger wrestling fans out there who get pissed off at me when I compare AEW to ECW. and I try to remind people on Busted Open every chance I get that if I compare AEW to ECW, it is the highest compliment I can possibly pay AEW. And it has nothing to do with the product. It has to do with the lightning they caught in the bottle with that relationship with their fan base. It's that sense of urgency that they've created for their fans to have to see their product, want to see their product. Yeah. Everybody in ECW will tell you the most important part of ECW, the most important aspect in ECW was our fan base.

It was our fan base that made us so unique and so special. Wrestlers would go to war for Paul and our fans would go to war for us. Look at how ECW fans took over Monday Night Raw. Look at how ECW fans took over Nitro. The ECW chant changed wrestling forever. There's a reason why people still chant ECW. This is not me waving the ECW flag 30 years later. This is me just acknowledging legit history.

So I'll ask you, you're a fan of wrestling, right? Right. Why do people still chant ECW, but don't chant the name of any other company? I don't know if they've ever chanted WWF or WCW or any of those things. I think a lot of it's nostalgia. I think that I think a lot of wrestling fans saw a little piece of ourselves in ECW. You know, I think that there's a lot of underdogs there. And I think that the every man went, I could be like Spike Dudley, Balls Mahoney, Bubba Ray, whoever it is.

I also think it's because it was taken away from us when we weren't ready. It's like when that girlfriend breaks up from you and you're like, what do you mean? I wasn't ready for this thing to happen. But don't you see the same thing happening within AEW? look at Marco's stunt. That AEW fan base loves Marco. There's your spike. You know, the AEW guys are some of the WWE guys who needed to flourish,

or maybe guys and gals that weren't given an opportunity. So they are doing something very fun in the wrestling business right now. And the word fun is so key because I believe it's what wrestling fans need. They need to have fun. At the end of the day, it really is entertainment. We could dissect the, you know, is it a sport? Is it not a sport? Pro wrestling, sports entertainment.

It's entertainment. And if you want to entertain people by giving them a sporting competition of wrestling, or if you want to do the, you know, the bubbly bunch or the newly bro game or Otis and Mandy, it's all subjective. Some people love some stuff. some people hate some stuff. Just the way a movie gets a great review, and then it gets panned by critics. It's always going to happen.

But within the world of wrestling, the idea is no matter what you're doing in that ring, you always want to be entertaining. I guess what's so interesting to me about AEW, and you spent obviously a lot of time in TNA, you're currently signed a ring of honor. AEW became, quickly became the number two company in the world before they even had a match. Like if we were having the same conversation last year before double or nothing happened, they were already number two. Like how were they able to leapfrog ring of honor and impact like that?

Cody and the Bucks, while under contract for Ring of Honor, convinced Ring of Honor that they were going to do their own thing. And in 28 minutes sold out 11,400 seats. Do you need anything more than that? What was Ring of Honor's biggest house? Ring of Honor was the number two, right, behind the WWE? Yes? Yeah, I guess.

Yeah. Okay. So here come Cody in the Bucks and they decide we're going to put on this show called All In. The most amount of tickets that Ring of Honor had ever sold up into that point, I believe was like New Orleans Supercard at the New Orleans Arena, something like, I don't know, 6,6,600. Wasn't that Kenny versus Cody? Right. Yeah. So they did 6,500 people. Let's call it 7,000 with comps. 7,000 people. And now all of a sudden here come Cody and the bucks. They do their own thing. And when I say their own thing, their own thing, their own thing as far as coming up with

all in, booking the card and things like that, they sell 11,400 in 28 minutes. You tell me who the number two is, perception-wise. It's impossible for fans to not go, holy shit. What is this? How, who, when, why? What? Lightning in a bottle. And right then and there, you know, those guys were off to the races.

So, no, listen, behind the scenes, Ring of Honor did help out, you know, Cody and the Bucks with All In, you know, from a production point of view. And there are a lot of aspects of All In that Ring of Honor, you know, was very, very, you know, instrumental in. Sure. But the average wrestling fan doesn't know that, nor do they care. Yeah. All they know is that Cody and the Bucks, two acts within Ring of Honor that we love so much

are doing their own thing. And in 28 minutes sold 11,400 tickets. And I saw a naysay is all over the place. How could you possibly knock that? No other wrestling company ever, not ECW, no startup, no bootleg indie, no nothing, had ever done what they did on that night. Would you be interested in making an appearance with AEW if and when you're able to? I get questions like this a lot about, hey, what do you want to do next?

Where do you want to go? You want to do AEW. You want to stay in Ring of Honor. You're going back to the WWE. I've done everything that I have wanted to do. There are not many, if anything left, things left, places to perform, things to do on my bucket list. When I look at the landscape of the wrestling business, I do see one or two things that really interest me just because I know how the bully character would fit with a certain other character. So if it's, if it's meant to be in any of

those companies, including impact, maybe it'll happen. I have confidence in what I bring to the table with the character no matter where I go. So it's a question of the people that I see that I could have a good story with seeing it the way I see it. I think that's it. I think the one thing that's really missing is a missed opportunity for you to be the bully Ray character in WWE. Was that ever approached? Was that ever a possibility?

Hmm. That close. What happened? 48 hours away. There's a lot to the story. And I've told 50% of the story. There's another 50% of the story that one day, maybe I will tell. but it's not the right time for the world to know.

I will say this. I had three meetings with Vince, sit downs one-on-one, and not just Vince giving me the obligatory five minutes. These are real talks. And I'll never forget, Chris, sitting there with him, and I told him, I said, Vince, I'm not doing the Dudley thing anymore. I said, I'm done with this.

I'm like, your version of the Dudley's doesn't work for me anymore. you told us what you wanted on day one you paid us very handsomely we did what you asked us to do Bobo we want you to work with the new day we want you to work with the usos we want you to work with the wets we want you to work with any team that we can throw in front of you and help get them to the next level okay Vince no problem but after a year it was getting a little I didn't like the way the Dudleys were being kind of stepped on now Vince only owns the name, Vince own the, you know, the right to do whatever he wanted to do with the Dudleys, but I wasn't into it anymore. So I went to him and I said, I'm done with this Dudley stuff. If we're going to continue to do the Dudley stuff, I'm going to split. I said, but I do have something that I'd like to pitch to you. And he looked at me and he goes, I know all about bully Ray. And for the first time and a long time, I got stopped in my tracks. Because you don't expect Vince. to acknowledge something that happened in another company.

And that kind of told me that whatever I did over there kind of got back to him, which is kind of cool. So we had the bully discussions. We had the bully discussions. He couldn't get around the word bully because of the Be a Star program. Right. So I told him, I said, I said, Vince, listen, here's how we go about it. We do bully Ray for a year.

I said, and when we get to the end of the bully, Ray, you know, story or run, that one baby face, that Uber baby face makes bully understand the error of his ways and why you shouldn't be a bully. And now bully Ray can go do all to be a star, you know, talks with the younger kids and, you know, don't be a bully. I learned from my ways. You know, it was an in the ring and out of the ring kind of concept. And he goes, my God, I love it. It's great. He goes, but in that year it'll take to get to that, I'll get killed. in like the media because how can you have a be an anti-bullying program but call somebody bully ray now they can have characters that act like bullies but they're not directly calling somebody bully

something you know whatever so that was 50% of it the other 50% of it i'll say for a story for another day could you not have been baba ray dudley but just a heel version that looked and acted like bully Ray? The backup name was going to be the intimidator, Bubba Ray. Okay. That was it. He loved it. So why? This is where the other 50% of the story comes in. That like I said, I'll tell you what, Chris, the day I decide to talk about that other part of the story, I'll talk about it with you. I look forward to this. Whenever, wherever, we will make this happen. I mean, the only reason I'm assuming that you became Brother Ray or bully Ray is because of the trademark that WWE had? WW didn't have the trademark outright. They bought the Dudley name. So that's why we weren't allowed

to keep it from Paul? Well, the Dudley boy name is original intellectual property of ECW. And when WWE bought ECW at a bankruptcy court, you get to purchase all of the assets. And intellectual property is an asset so they can claim, you know, the rights and ownership to the Dudley name. And I'll never forget getting the phone call from one of their, you know, lawyers, you know, the day me and Devon, me and Devon did not get released from WWE. Me and Devon did not quit the WWE. WWE and the W's decided in 2005 after one night stand, we're just going to shake hands and call it a day for now. And we're going to part ways. And we, you know, and we parted on good terms. But then they called and said, yeah, we own the Dudley name.

And I flipped out. I was on a plane. I was like, I was dropping F bombs and everything. I called a lawyer friend of mine who was a really, really strong intellectual property, you know, like attorney. And he said, listen, I can get you this name back. But if I charge you friend prices, it'll cost you and Devon $100,000. Wow. just wasn't worth it to me because this is where I kind of thought to myself,

you know what? If the road warriors can call themselves the Legion of Doom and everybody still knows who the hell it is, the Dudleys can call themselves Team 3D and everybody will still know who the hell it is. And it was pretty seamless. And if you look at the careers of the Dudleys and Team 3D, I can make an argument that team 3D had just as successful as a run as the Dudleys. I would certainly agree with that.

you look back at the time in WWWE before that, did you ever think about having a singles run before 2005? I never got into the wrestling business to be a singles wrestler. You know, Austin says if your goal is not to become the WWE heavyweight champion, you're in the wrong business or you have the wrong goals. My thing from a kid was, if you're not in the business to become the WWE World Tag Team Champions, you're not in the right business. You might be the only person like that. That's amazing. You know, Henry Hill said, you know, I always knew I wanted to be a gangster. And I always said, I always knew I wanted to be a pro wrestler, but I wanted to be a tag team wrestler. From the first time I saw Grea and Martel, Fuji and Saido, the Samoans, the moon dogs, the strong bows.

I was hooked from day one on tag team wrestling, and I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I never had aspirations to be a singles guy. Devon wanted to do the singles thing. He always wanted to branch out and do it. So when that draft came in WWE, I told Vince, this is not a good idea. And he said, why? It's because nobody wanted to see Hawk and Animal wrestle by themselves. And nobody wants to see me in Devon wrestle by ourselves.

And I wasn't quite sure how it would go. Did I have confidence in myself? Yeah. Did I have confidence in Devon? Yeah. But I knew we had never done it without each other. So I just didn't think that the people were ready for Bubba by himself or Devon by himself. And months later, Vince put us back together in the garden.

And I always looked at it as it was kind of a failed experiment. Right. Well, it worked out for Batista. Oh, absolutely. Dave was DeVan's bodyguard. And it wound up propelling him to superstard him. So something good came out of that split. Well, I think one of the best memories for me and a lot of fans during your first run in

WWE was the TLC matches, which it completely changed everything. Who came up with the original idea for the first TLC? The word TLC first got uttered after the triangle ladder match in Anaheim at WrestleMania 2000. We had just finished the match. We're in the back. We're huddled together. And we were all on cloud nine.

And Michael Hayes was with us because Michael Hayes and Dr. Tom Pritchard were our agents. And that was a triangle ladder match that we incorporated the chairs and the tables into. And Michael wound up saying, you know, my God, I love the way you boys and calls. operated, you know, the tables and the chairs also. That was great. And I, and I think I uttered, or one of us uttered, yeah, if we ever do this again, we should call it TLC. And what I was thinking, like the, you know, like tender loving care or TILA, you know, you know, and the reason I say, I think I said it is because I remember after I said it, I felt like a fool for saying, because I'm like, oh, my God, that's so stupid.

And that's where it was uttered, like, I don't know, 10 minutes after the match, that's where the name was invented. So I'm not saying that I invented it. We invented it. Bubba, Devon, Matt, Jeff, Edge Christian, Michael Hayes, and Dr. Tom, you know, invented the term TLC. Which of the TLCs that you were part of was your favorite? they're all to me they're all great in their own right for different reasons but i guess i have

to say too because tlc2 took place at what many consider the greatest rassalmania of all time which is rassalmina 17 and many people say that tlc2 was the best match at ressalmania 17 so if you're going to tell me that you have an opinion that our match that our match stole the show at the greatest WrestleMania of all time. So be it. Who might argue? I got to ask you about

the May Young stuff that you guys did. And whose idea was this? And when you first heard this idea, what was your initial reaction to this? I don't remember my initial reaction to May. I remember my initial reaction

to Vince suggesting that we put Terry Runnels through a table. Right. Some of you think, so, my God, I got it. These people are going to hate you. You're going to put a woman through a table. Me and Devon are like, sorry, boss. That ain't going to work.

Just, you know, and then, you know, I've told so many stories about May and the stories haven't changed. I have so much respect for her because May is one of the people that got me and Devon over. You know, if she doesn't do. all the things that she did for us. We're not memorable for moments like that. And May, I always say,

May is the toughest man I've ever met. Shoot tough. She grabbed me by my wrist and she smartened me up real quick. She told me, this is how we're doing it. You better not take it easy on me. If you're going to slam me, you slam me like one of the boys. And after we put it through the table off the stage,

dude, she walked right into Vince's office, right in front of us. And she was like, I want those boys to do me off the top of the cage. Oh my God. Wow. We want to take the super bomb from the top of the cage. Wow.

No fear, so tough. And to be able to look back and know that me and Devon were friends with May and Mullah, like when we would see them, they would come up and give us hugs and kisses. And, you know, these are... These are, this is royalty to me in the wrestling industry, these women. And to have a camaraderie and a friendship and a respect level, it meant a lot to me. You know, you talked about the fact how when you and Devon first split up and went your own ways and were doing singles work that you weren't ready then. What made you ready in TNA to go on the run that you went on to be two-time TNA heavyweight

champion? Who's nothing left to do? if we didn't split up, I had I had nothing left. He had nothing left. When when that moment came, we had wrestled every place we could possibly wrestle. Ring of Honor really wasn't an option at that time because Ringamander was much smaller.

So, I mean, we had won, you know, all these tag team championships, been to Japan multiple times, four Tokyo Dome shows, you know, all these accomplishments, but then we get to the point we're like, all right, who we're going to go work with? What are we going to do? Yeah.

And I always knew Devon kind of had the itch to do the singles thing. So I was like, all right, now's the time. And that's where I came up with the story of, you know, having Chris Saban kick out of the 3D because that was going to be,

you know, the first domino to fall in the bully story. because since nobody had done it before, and him kicking out of the 3D forced me and Devon into retirement, that's where I turned on Devon, told him he was the weak link, told him he was the co-star, told him that if it wasn't for me, he would have been nowhere in pro wrestling.

And that's how we got the ball rolling for that. And the reason I'm proud of that story is we took something like a finishing move, and we were able to use it as the foundation of a story to be told in the future. When you first started the singles run, was there any talk about, you know, if this goes well, we'll put you in the main event picture, we'll put you in the title shot. Nope. Zero, nil, not a zilch. They were just letting me do bully Ray because it was something for me to do on my own. And I knew one of the things, the first thing, you know, much like when me and Dvon, together and I said, we need a tag team finish and we need it now because we need people to

sit up and take notice. I knew by myself I needed to do something to make people take, you know, take notice. So I dropped about 100 pounds. I got in the best shape that I've ever been in, and I made people turn their heads. That was, you know, the whole like, you know, the whole idea, busted my ass harder than I'd ever worked in the gym in my life. Um, you know, people are like, you know, they're, they're talking about bully. It wasn't until the night that, that Jeff Hardy, remember the night Jeff Hardy had that bad night where he really couldn't make it to the ring against Sting? Of course. You know, I don't remember the name of the pay-per-view.

I just remember, you know, Jeff was banged up at the time. It wasn't a great night. And I remember being at the guerrilla position and Eric was flipping out. And I said to Eric, I go, let me go down there. I'll save this for you. And he goes, what are you going to do? I said, I'll slide in. I'll attack Sting.

I'll pull out a table and I'll have Sting put me through the table. I said, as long as that table breaks and that's the last thing the people see, they'll go home happy. And he's like, uh, um, uh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no big deal. He made a judgment call at the time. I don't even remember how that show went off the air.

No grudges, no nothing. I was just trying to step up to the plate at the very last second and try to help save the show. I remember him coming to me like the next day or whatever it was or the next week. And he's like, man, that was, you know, I really appreciate that, blah, blah, blah. you know, thanks for stepping up to the plate. Whatever he said, he was acknowledging the willingness, you know, for me to go out there and allow myself to get put through the table and, you know, try to, you know, help the show out.

That actually would have been a much better finish than how it went down. Basically, I don't know if you remember, Bischoff just came out to the ring, kind of talked with them, and then Sting rolled up Jeff Hardy in like 20 seconds. I know it. I know it was memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. So I guess that stuck with Eric. And then one day, Eric just pulls me on the side and he said, how would you like to be the leader of a motorcycle gang? And I was so turned off.

Really? Oh, God. It was not what I had envisioned for bully Ray. A motorcycle gang? Ew. You know? And I wasn't a, I never watched Sons of Aner. So I had no idea how much that show was, you know, liked and appreciated by people.

And I guess that was the pop culture thing at the time, you know, Sons of Anson's of Anarchy. I didn't get it. I wasn't into it. But I knew that it was opportunity knocking. And if, you know, the head guy at the company, the booker, the head of creative, whatever Eric was at the time, comes up to you and says, I have something for you, you're going to want to run. with it. So I said, and my exact words to Eric were, if you think that that's the best utilization of the bully character, I'm on board. And then Dixie tried to get rid of the bully name. Dixie tried to get rid of the bully name for the same reasons why Vince didn't want to

use the bully name, because TNA at the time had an anti-bullying campaign, and she was so against the name bully being in like a main event kind of role. And I was, I was super pissed. And Bruce Pritchard, you know, to his credit, I'm always honest about anybody who's ever helped me or, you know, or went to bat for me. Bruce Pritchard went to, went to Dixie and said, no, this has got a stick because this is going to work. What was your name going to be? There was, there was no discussion. In my mind, there was no other. name. Huh. Well, I mean, look what Aces and Aits ended up doing for your career. It obviously started off as an idea that you weren't interested in, but what you and everyone else in Aces and

AIDS transformed this into might be the best faction in TNA history. I appreciate that. Thank you for saying that. Like, it's all subjective like we always talk about. Sure. I loved it. And the reason I loved that entire run had nothing to do with being the world heavyweight. champion, had nothing to do with being the focal point. I loved it for two reasons. Reason number one is I never, ever thought that I could be a successful singles wrestler in wrestling because it's not why I got into wrestling. So to me, it was like this new experience that I never thought was going to happen and I was really enjoying the ride because it was never a goal of mine. It was never a bucket list thing. And I think in the back of my mind, I kind of

said to myself, well, Devon always wanted to do this on his own. Maybe I should smoke them. A little bit of friendly competition. Never heard anybody. Yeah. And the other reason was it gave me the opportunity to finally work with guys that were higher than me on the card. I never in a million years would I think I get to work with Sting or Hulk. And being able to wrestle Sting and be on the mic with Hulk, I now had a gun to my head for the first time in so long in the wrestling business.

Now I had to work up to Sting's level, work up to Hulks level, and every time I was in the ring with them, I was foaming at the mouth. I wanted to beat the shit out of Sting and I wanted to just smoke and annihilate Hogan every chance I got. Just because I didn't have that desire in me for so long,

because we're getting T&A, we never really had the opportunity to work with guys that were above us. I mean, yeah, we got a little bit of a run with the Steiner's, you know, and that was fun. You know, we had done some stuff with Kevin Scott, but these were like one-offs. This was something that was going to be a story that got to play out over a long period of time. And I really, I had a blast with it. I need to take a quick time out to thank our sponsors for this episode. Up first, bet online. And there is no shortage of action going on at our exclusive partner, bet online.

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and you don't need to go to the doctor's office or spend time waiting in the pharmacy line. Blue Chew's online physician is free of cost and once approved your order shipped straight to your door in discrete packaging. So here's a great deal for you guys. Visit bluechew.com and get your first order for free when you use the promo code, Bluewire. Just pay $5 shipping. Again, that's bluechew.com, B-L-U-E-C-C-C-E-chew-E-C-E-chew. dot com and the promo code is blue wire. Was there anyone in TNA that you didn't get a chance to work with?

No. Yeah, I don't think so. No. No, there wasn't anybody there that I knew, like, that I had got to work with Kurt. I had got to work with AJ. I loved my matches with AJ. The last man standing match I had with AJ, the match at Bound for Glory, where AJ, you know, beat me for the TNA heavyweight championship,

the storyline of trying to recruit AJ into the Aces and ATS. To me, it's all about storytelling. And if you have the right storytelling with the right characters, the matches become so easy. Because if you think about it, you know, the wrestling that I grew up on and that, you know, people seem to appreciate most of the over the years is when you have the foundation of a great story.

I mean, you were with TNA for the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. what happened with TNA? Like TNA was rolling and it just kind of just fell off. What happened here? Management. Management. Did you see anything wrong with the talent? No.

I mean, no. I was a bigger TNA fan than anything, probably 0607-08. At TNA's height, how many million viewers were they doing every week? Was it three? No, I think it was two. Okay. I think it was two million viewers. And even when they had evened out, what were they doing?

Yeah, I was still in the one, one and a half, something like that. Yeah. One, I think they might have got, I know when I, I know like being there, eventually, like, it came down to maybe like a one point two. But still, one point two million viewers guaranteed live programming every week. Yeah. And company was doing well. You can't look at that locker room from its inception. And I can only say up until I left,

because that's all I can speak about, because I don't know what the locker room was after I left. You can't look at the locker. And you can't look at that cross section of talent from the icons like Hogan and Sting to the homegrown talent like the AJ's and the Joes, to the team, the homegrown teams, the beer monies and the motor city machine guns,

the legendary teams like the Team 3D, the knockouts division. Dude, everybody wants to talk about the women's evolution, the women's evolution. The women's evolution happened a long time before it happened in WWE, and it happened in TNA. Yep.

With the likes of the Gail Kim's and the Angelina Loves and the Velvet Skies and the awesome cons and the ODBs and all of the other great women that went through that. I mean, give me Gail Kim versus Awesome Kong any day of the week. Yeah. Do you know what the highest, do you know who the highest rated act in the history of T&A was? I mean, I would have to guess AJ Stiles. Nope.

Joe? Nope. Okay. Who? The beautiful people. Wow. Okay. Original homegrown TNA talent that whenever they were on TV, just blew. everybody else out of the water ratings wise. AJ didn't do more, Joe didn't do more, Hulk didn't do more, Angle didn't do more, nobody did more. My point is, when you take that cross-section of that locker room and you look at all the talent that was there and how well the company was doing and how well we were doing overseas, the ratings we were getting every week, you just said you liked it more than WWE or anything else at the time. what the fuck went wrong?

Yeah. It's got to be management. Yeah. Can I think like to sit here and am I going to point fingers? I can point a couple of fingers on on things that I know went wrong because they personally went wrong with me or I personally saw them go wrong with my own eyes. But for the most part, it was management. I mean, you're now with Ring of Honor. Is there a chance here for Ring of Honor to?

to slide in and fill that void that impact wrestling has left. Ring of Honor has work to do in my eyes. They need to get in the game. And they need to get in the game with some kind of a television product that people can watch every single week on the same station. And this has been Ring of Honor's kind of problem from day one. Where do you watch Ring of Honor, Chris? Yeah, that's a great question. I usually watch it online. Where do you watch AEW? Yeah, Wednesday night, 8 o'clock TNT. Where do you watch Raw? Yes. Monday 8 o'clock USA.

So the Ring of Honor has been around long enough where we should be saying, I watch Ring of Honor at this night, at this time on this network. Right. Don't do that yet. They need, they need a dog in the race. They need a dog in the fight, horse in the race, whatever. They need a, you know, they need something. Plus, you know, Ring of Honor has been so important in the history of pro wrestling over the past 15 years. Look at how many guys have come out of Ring of Honor that have been propelled to superstardom. Oh, my God. So many. So many. More than ECW. Yeah.

So many guys. And the Ring of Honor has been around longer than ECW. Sure. And the Ring of Honor style, that's. style is basically what nxte is i believe that nxte was able to i or hunter was able to identify this this section of wrestling fan and this this style of wrestling that people gravitated towards and really liked and said i'm going to make my own version of it if you watch the a e w style the a e w style really is the ring of honor style the ring of honor style was the ec w style so ring of a

So many companies have borrowed from Ring of Honor, whether it's the talent or the way the talent, you know, executed in the ring. Now it's time for Ring of Honor to take their talent and their style and bring it to the masses. That's the A number one thing I think they have to do. And when it comes to a product point of view, like, if you go to a Ring of Honor show, Chris, what are you going to see? What's happening in the ring? The matches.

Wrestling, right? Absolutely. it's like i look at it as you know i say wrestling should always be a buffet there's a tommy dreamer joke right there about buffets but i'll leave that for later you know when you go to a buffet you want a chicken dish you want a fish dish you want a steak dish you want a pasta dish you want a vegetable you want this and when you go to a ring of honor show it's like chicken prepared eight different ways because it's match after match after match after match i think i want to see them getting a little bit more into the entertainment aspect.

I think I want to see more character-driven stuff. I'm not saying that Ring of Honor should change. I think Ring of Honor should stick to at least 50% or 75% of the way they do things, but start to think outside the box a little bit. Let's have some characters that we can know and love. Here, watch this. The Bouncers, right? Yep.

Kind of a mid-card team in Ring of Honor, right? Sure, yeah. Not anybody that you're not. really give thought to. Not anybody that you think you'd hear me bring up off the top of my head. Two 400-pound guys who drink beer and chase girls. You're going to tell me that's not entertaining. You're going to tell me there's not a place on the show for that kind of.

If we can have Otis chasing Mandy, we can have Brian Malonis chasing, what's the girl's name from Scotland? Becky Lynch? No, no, no, Martina. I forgot her name. Sorry, girl. That's okay. Have you seen any sort of shift or change with Marty Skirl getting the book and, you know, and kind of taking over things in Ring of Honor? Nothing because I think that has kind of happened within this whole COVID time.

So I haven't, I have not seen any difference or anything. I think Marty's going to bring an interesting perspective to creative. Marty, if I had to guess, thinks the way like a Cody or the Bucks would think, I've always given Marty tons of credit for what he was able to do within that version of the Bullet Club. Marty was the most over member of the Ring of Honor version of the Bullet Club. There's no doubt about it. Merchandise wise, response from the people wise. So I think he'll bring an interesting perspective to the Ring of Honor creative process.

and we'll hopefully focus on some character-driven stuff also, not for himself, but for other talent. I mean, wrestling was red hot in 2019. AEW came on strong. It was the best time to be a wrestler, best time to be a wrestling fan. And because of COVID-19, this has all had to come to a screeching halt.

So where do we go from here, Baba? Listen, we have heard. hit the pause button on the world. And pro wrestling isn't going to be any different, but somehow pro wrestling has found the way to hit the slow motion button. WW is still giving us a product. AEW is still giving us a product.

You know, is it different without fans there? Sure it is. But pro wrestling, but AEW and the WWE are television products. They don't necessarily need a crowd to entertain you at home. I think little by little, as restrictions lift, you'll see fans coming back. AEW has done a brilliant job with allowing the boys and the guys and the gals to hover around the ring. It's just enough ambiance. It's just enough atmosphere so that if you're clicking back and forth between NXT and dynamite, it's that it's that atmosphere.

created by those dozen guys and gals around Rinside that's making it, for me, more entertaining. Is that to say that what's going on in the ring at NXT is not entertaining? Absolutely not, because we're getting some really great wrestling over there, but it's about the aura, the ambiance, the feel. And I think AEW has been doing a great job with that. Well, I think what's interesting is in the first few weeks of these shows without fans, because WWE was highlighting the thing that wasn't important. If you look at the first few episodes of NXT or RAW or SmackDown for that matter,

the lights were on the audience showing, look, everybody, we're wrestling in front of nobody. Then you flipped on dynamite and they were looking at the entranceway. The lights in the crowd were completely dark and all the focus on what was on what was important. The wrestling in the ring. And you mentioned the camera facing the entranceway, right? Yeah. Where did AEW get that idea? You tell me.

No, you tell me you're an educated wrestling fan. Well, that was, but I think the reason they did it in that setting was because that's how it had always been at Daley's place. When you watch Fighter Fest, that was where the camera setting was. But that's the Ring of Honor shot. Yeah, that is. It's always been the Ring of Honor shot. It's been the Ring of Honor shot for 10 years. And it was smart of AEW to borrow that shot because it made them look completely different.

And then what did the WWE do? they borrowed the shot. Yeah. It just makes it for a better, you know, a more appealing product right now or visual stimulation for the people at home as opposed to looking at empty seats or, you know, shooting the hard camera from a different perspective where you know there's nobody there. Yeah. I said fighter fest.

I meant fight for the fall at Daly's Place. Now, for you, is this the longest time you've been at home without being on the road? Yeah. Your whole career. It's rough. Are you in Velvet seeing too much of each other? No, no, not at all. We get along famously. We're, thank God, we're not people who can't be together in the same room 24-7. We get along so, so well. The reason why it's been traumatic for me is I've been on the go my entire career. There's never really been, I've never had like an off year. I have been, I mean, from E.C. to the W to the W, to the W, W, E, to TNA, to Japan, to Ring of Honor, to, boom, you know, on the go, on the go.

From 300 nights a year, to 100 nights a year, to a complete dead stop. Yeah. And it's, you become almost like, for lack of a better comparison, you become like a junkie. You just don't know what to do

sitting still for so long. I mean, I am getting acclimated to it. You know, I have a skis. schedule, you know, every morning with busted open. I try to do, you know, what I have to do. But it's been a little difficult to be, you know, staying in one spot for so long. Are you ready to just, you know, floor it and hit the gas again and go 90 miles an hour? No, because I have to have the right thing, the right story, the right person to work with for me to hit the gas and go 90 miles an hour. I will only take bully Ray someplace that I know is going to work. I don't,

I don't want to go someplace where, well, yeah, this may work. Well, there's a good chance. You know, if this happens, it could work. Nope. I have to know in my mind that there is 100% chance of success. Like I said, when I look back and I look at all the different companies, Ring of Honor, impact AEWWWE, I see one or two things there that I say to myself, wow, if the planet's ever aligned and this happened, it would really, really work. Can you give us a little taste of one of those things? There is somebody in the wrestling business right now that I have a real gripe with. Like a legit one.

gyp. Okay. And as I told you earlier in our chat, if I'm going to handle the gripe, I'm going to handle it face to face with them. And I don't know how that's going to sit with that person or the company that that person works for. I'm trying to figure out who this is. Huh. This person has, he said things that he probably should not have said. Hmm. He's, he's, he stepped on people's toes without even know he's done it. He's rubbed people the wrong way, me included, me a lot.

Um, and I think it's worth confronting the person, whether that's, um, if I were to see them in an airport or if that means going to their place of work when this all on this whole situation you know lifts and somehow some way having the talk with them. Are you are you able to work elsewhere or are you under contract only work Ring of Honor right now? I have made it a point since I've left WWE to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want. It's that freedom that I enjoy, that freedom that I love. And I don't want to be, you know, with Ring of Honor, I've been there for three years now. And I'm really proud of the work that I did with the briscoes. I'm really, really proud of the work that I got to do with Flip.

I was really happy with the Haskin stuff, although there was a bigger picture plan, you know, getting into it with Maria. A lot of good stuff. But when I look at the cross-section and the talented. I'm not, I'm not quite sure where my next story is with anybody there. But the freedom to go do other things where I could look at, you know, the other, you know, other companies and other talents, I say, wow, you know, there's something here. There's something there. But aside from that, like I said, there's one person that's kind of, mm, mm, mm, mm, should I know who this person is? You know who this person is. Huh. I can't wait to see everyone's comments here trying to figure this thing out.

Like I said, I just shouldn't have said some of the things that he said. Is maybe a Ring of Honor title run? Is that something that you'd be interested in? Only if there was the right person to challenge me for the title. Golly Ray doesn't need to be a world heavyweight champion. To me, story will always trump a championship. And only if you absolutely need to be the champion and it's right for the story, do I want to be a champion? Give me a story that I can sink my teeth into,

a personal story, a vendetta, a grudge, an issue, a gripe over a championship any day of the week. Not to say that when I was the champion with T&A, I didn't love it, but it was an integral part of the story. So, no, now, if I was to sit back and if I had the trusty pencil in my hand, I do think that if you take a look at Ring of Honor, who do you think is the most over baby face in Ring of Honor right now? Is Marty working as a baby face now?

It doesn't matter whether he's working as a baby face. Marty, Marty is the most over. Okay, let's call it Marty, since you're the one who came up. with that. If bully Ray ever became the Ring of Honor world champion, do you think that that would piss off the Ring of Honor fan base? I think if it was done right, no, I don't think it would piss people off. It would infuriate them. Huh. Because I represent everything that they despise. Ring of Honor has always been about the homegrown. If I came in and found my way into the world championship picture and won their world championship, that fan base would be irate.

And in them being irate, they would spend their last earned dollar to see a guy like Marty beat me. I think this sounds pretty great then. But let me ask you that. Let me ask you this. Sure. Could you see that happening? I could see you being easily, the biggest.

heel in Ring of Honor, whether you have the belt or not? That's just a story off the top of my head based on your answer. Let's say you would have said PCO is the biggest baby face. I could cut promos on PCO that nobody else in Ring of Honor could get away with. Because I've been around, you know, I mean, obviously Carl's been around longer for me, but I could just look at Carl and stand in the middle of the ring and go, dear God, what happened to you? You had to kill yourself to get over. For what?

For these schmucks? You destroyed your body. You only got a couple of matches left. You're only one stupid dive away from retirement. Carl. It's easy. Yeah, this is good. I like that.

I'm even going to write all my good stuff on your show. Were you surprised when TNA brought your championship back? The TNA championship is now. back on Impact Wrestling? I'm not really up to speed on what they're doing with it. If that's resonating with their fan base, then that's good. If it's working, that's good. I've been ultra-critical of T&A because I spent 10 years there and I saw how great the company was. I know how great the company could be. Current management, current ownership, doing a good job. They have definitely taken steps in the right direction, as opposed to who was there

right before them, which I did not agree with, and I didn't think was good for the brand at all. That's just my opinion. I think the new regime is definitely taking steps forward. I watch the T&A paper views. I try to stay as up to speed on the product as I can. I think that obviously Tessa is doing a great job and Sammy's doing a great job. And there are a lot of people that I'm a big Sue Young fan. Sure. I don't think anybody has immersed themselves into a character as much as she has since the undertaker immersed himself into a character.

And I've loved this stuff that they've done with her. But so Moose is the TNA champion. TSA is the impact wrestling champion. It's going to be interesting to see what happens when both of them can be on the same card. But hey, if you're able to work anywhere, you've got a claim to that belt if you want to wrestle Moose for it.

Bubba versus Moose doesn't interest me. Bubba versus Tessa? That's interesting. Wow. Is that a match you'd want to have? It's a match that I would consider. But you see, when you say Bubba versus Moose, okay, two big guys, a bunch of clothes lines,

bunch of shoulder tackles. Yeah. Bubba versus Tessa. Now you, now, now you get, now my ears just parked up. Now you got me, now you got me listening. Because Tessa's a really, really great women's wrestler, right? She's just a great wrestler. Yeah.

Great. Okay. Yeah, great wrestler. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think if I were to jump the guardrails and stick her with a power bomb into the concrete, that'd be interesting. Yeah. I know there's a lot of people that don't feel that same way about it.

or gender wrestling. You're okay? You'd be okay having a match with Tessa? When did the wrestling world turn into go so soft? What do you mean you don't like into gender wrestling? Turn on the attitude era. You weren't entertained by Rock and Trish versus the Dudleys? You weren't entertained by jazz and Molly Holly and all of those women having matches against the guys? When did we get so soft? Yeah. I guess I guess I guess I guess. I guess I guess. I guess. I Yes, the perception is when it's a one-on-one man versus woman, because all the matches that you just listed were six-man or six-person intergender matches. When it's one-on-one, I think that that might be the thing that people have an issue with. How could you have an issue with one-on-one physicality, but not a man putting an 83, 80-year-old woman through two tables off a 15-foot stage?

Well, that was like the ultimate heel move. That was amazing. But regardless, it's still physicality towards a woman. Let's take May Young out of it. Let's take physicality towards the other 15 women that I put through tables or whatever. Or the Godfather power bombing Victoria halfway to hell. Why is that so different than an intergender match these days? Listen, I'm not talking about punching a woman square in the face. I'm talking about having a wrestling match, an intergender match.

a hard whatever match sports entertainment and if the woman could be on the same level as the man at that particular moment in time and if the match is done correctly why can't you do it you see the problem with intergender wrestling

right now is you have a lot of guys taking offense from women that just doesn't make sense because it just it couldn't happen it's beyond the realm believability. But if you book your match believably, sure. A woman could do some stuff to men. Absolutely. You just got to make it believable. Let's go back to All In, right? Sure. Remember the end of the battle royal with Jordan Grace and Brian Cage?

Brian Cage? Yep. Remember all that crazy physicality that Jordan did to Cage? Yeah. Believable? Yeah, I see where you're coming with this. I understand. Yes or no, believable. I guess not. There you go. That's nothing against Jordan. That's nothing against Brian. It's just about believability. Could they have switched some stuff up to make it more believable? Absolutely. So let's play Fantasy Booker here. If Tessa versus Baba did happen, what kind of believable? stuff, could she pull off on you? Moves wise? Yeah. She could probably pull off any move on me that I allowed her to pull off. Name pick a move. I guess she could pull off a DDT? Absolutely. Could she

suplex you? Pick a power move. Could she suplex you? From a standing position? Absolutely not. If I was, if I was compromised on the ropes, could she possibly? Maybe because we have enough, we have enough rotational room. But is Tessa Blanchard going to lift 325 pound Bubba off his feet into a standing vertical? Absolutely not. Right. If Bubba missed two centons and, and Tessa went to the top rope and gave me a missile drop kick, would I bump for her? Absolutely.

Because it makes sense within the. storytelling and the realm of the match. It's not just a real big guy bumping for a much smaller girl for no good reason. Then it becomes gratuitous. And then we're just taking the art and throwing it out the door. Now it just becomes acrobatics for the sake of acrobatics. Right. I would imagine there's more years behind you in your wrestling career than in front of you. So do you look ahead three, five, ten, however many years and go, I want to wrestle for this much longer and then that's it? I will rest.

I've had the same answer forever for as long as I'm having fun and making money. The window of fun is closing because of the talents out there that I think I can have fun with. Hey, we were just talking about Tesla. I'll give you another one.

Nila. Nila versus bully in a tables match. You buying it? Sure. There you go. Couldn't. If Bubba was standing on the second rope and Nyla got up underneath him. Could she power bomb him? Of course. There you go.

I just gave you, I just gave you physicality. That could be done. I don't know that we'll see intergender one-on-one matches in AWW, though. That's fine. I was just giving you, I was giving you somebody else in another company. I was giving you their women's champion. I think there's a lot of possibilities for you. But you're still having fun, though, right? That's what it's all about. It's about having to be able to have fun. I want to be able to show up someplace and know that I want to work with somebody, that that person wants to work with me, and we can embroil ourselves in a good, fun story that people are going to be intrigued in. Do you think there's anything in the ring now that you can't do that you used to be able to do?

No. I love it. You're talking about like physicality or moves? Yeah. No. Yeah, because there's some guys that go, oh, I can't, you know, land on my ass anymore, my knees or whatever. The things that I do in the ring are very limited because I don't have to do anything else. You're not going to see me break out flamboyant moves or this stuff because I shouldn't be doing that. I don't need to do that. Every once in a while, I'll pull out something just to shock the people and pop their eyes out of their head. but bully ray shouldn't be doing anything that you know makes that pops the people i'm not a believer in heels doing things that pop a crowd if you're gonna if you're a heel the only thing you should be doing to that crowd is making them want to hate you

every second of the match because the more they hate you the more they'll love that baby face i mean there's been a lot of talk about you doing stuff as a singles wrestler is there any chance of you and devon getting back together for any sort of run? I'll put that question to you. If me and Devon were to get back together, who would you like to see us face? Well, I think it would have to be in WWE. That would make the most sense.

Why? Well, isn't that where DeVon works right now? Okay, I thought we were playing hypothetically. Okay, sorry. Okay, me and Devon in the WWE does not tickle my fancy at all. Well, then I think you go to AEW because they have the strongest tag team division. I'll tell you something that has worked in the past that I think could work phenomenally again, especially with the right storytelling. It's the Dudley's versus the Bucks.

Yeah. Me and DeVan worked with the Bucks three times already, and man, did we have a blast? Because I love the different styles. Me and DeBan on the ground and pound, those guys, the high flyers. We had, we had some matches in 2CW, which was an independent. And then we had one of my favorite matches against the Bucks for House of Hardcore up in Toronto. So when you have those difference in styles, that's to me what makes the match. I think this is exciting because I think that that's definitely the place where you guys could go and have some incredible matches. I mean, I think the chances of that happening are very small just because I think Devon's happy with his producer role in WWE. and I guess he just unofficially, officially retired or something?

I don't know. Well, we all know from the start of this conversation how wrestling retirements work. Yeah. I'm trying to beat Terry Funk's record. How many times have you retired? I don't think I've ever retired. That's the funny thing. Well, you've storyline retired then, I guess.

Oh, okay. Well, that dozens. Yeah. That dozens, really? Probably. I don't even know. I don't keep track of this stuff. I just, I look at your career and first of all, congratulations. It's incredible. I do. But I look at it and go, what more could you possibly do? You've done it all. That's why I'm enjoying the radio gig so much right now on Busted Open because it keeps me linked to the wrestling business.

And I'm able to look at it through a different set of eyes. I try to try my best every week with every product to look at it through the fan set of eyes. And then I have to look at it through the professional set of eyes. As far as must do have to do, there's really, there's nothing. I've been very, very blessed and very fortunate to have been able to accomplish everything I set out to do and then some. but with the right opportunity, with the right people, I know that there's some really great stuff left to be done with a completely different spin than you've seen

or are seeing right now in the wrestling business. Something new, something different, something fresh. Are you teasing this? Is this going to happen? I'm just giving you like an honest assessment of your question. I love this. Look, we were planning on talking for an hour. We've now gone for an hour and a half.

Really? Yeah, can you believe this? This is awesome. I thought we started like 20 minutes ago. This is so great. So this is the third interview we've done. One was when you were TNA champion. One was when you were in Ring of Honor and, you know, lied to me and said you were

retired. And, you know, obviously this one now. I appreciate your openness and how honest you are about everything. And when I first met you in 2013, that's who you were. And that's certainly who you still are now. Why not be open and honest? I don't understand what so many, there's too many people who hide behind this, this phoniness in the wrestling business.

Like everybody wants to be loved. Everybody wants to be appreciated. Everybody wants to run to their social media. and see how many likes or retweets they get. Just be yourself and let people appreciate you for who you are or hate you for you. It is what it is. This is me. This is my personality.

And, you know, I think you've had your Bubba moment. Do you know what the Bubba moment is? What's the Bubba moment? The Bubba moment is when you go, I think I like this guy. Right? Yeah. And you kind of take all of this perception thing that you heard and you go, wait a minute. Where did this all come from?

So I'll ask you, where did it all come from? For me liking you? For you going, like you started off the interview with, you said, you know, you've been known that you could be an asshole sometimes or a dick. Like, where did you get that information from? Well, the last time that I interviewed you, not even in character. When I interviewed you at Ring of Honor, I was like, oh, hey, man, it's been a while since I've seen you. And it's good to see you again.

And you're like, hey, are we rolling right now? Like, record. Let's not waste any of the good stuff. And I'm like, okay, all right. Hey, me telling you, let's not waste any of the good stuff. I was just trying to be nice. Is me looking out for you. I don't want any, any interest.

or action or anything to be said where you go, oh, man, I wish we would have got that on camera. So the quicker we start rolling, the better stuff you get. I completely agree with you, especially as someone who spent my entire career as a broadcaster. I completely agree with that. I just do find it so interesting how self-aware you are of who bully Ray, who Bubba Ray the person is. And then you allow that to either, you know, you either dial that up to 11. or you maybe turn it back down a little to like seven or eight. It really is just who I am, Chris.

And that's it. Like I said, I've come across so many people in the wrestling. I can't tell you how many people that you'll find other wrestlers go, oh my God, that person is so nice. That guy or that gal is such a sweetheart. Oh, I love them to death. And I'll be like, that person is a piece of. garbage. And they're being phony as fuck, but you people just don't see it. Because everybody's

got to put on their happy face and everybody has to be loved and everybody wants to be the baby face and oh, we just appreciate them someone. Come on. I think that we'd be remiss to not mention what's behind you here. For anyone that's watching on YouTube and not listening to the podcast, what funcos do you have behind you? Um, that is ace for Billy, Peter Chris, Angus Young, and Slash. Are these the only four funcos you own? Oh, there's more, okay. This is Ray.

And this is BB8. This is bully on the gas. That's 2013 bully. This is Bubba. Bubba bully. Bubba bully. Bubba bully. Yeah.

I think those are the only ones. Fans gave those to me. So, like, to me, it's like a fan goes out of their way to spend money and buying you. Like, they didn't just buy me any funco. They bought me funcos of rock and roll bands that I like. So I definitely wanted to have them, you know, on display. And then I got all my, you know, kiss stuff and my Star Wars shit and all my nerd stuff. As we wrap this thing up, again, thank you for this.

This has been such a great hour and a half. I've really enjoyed this. Me too. What's the best? piece of advice that you've received in your wrestling career that you carry with you to every venue that you go to? I don't know who gave me the advice or if I ever got the advice, but the advice that I've learned throughout my years in the business and the advice that I give to everybody who asked me are two words. And to me, it's the only two words that matter in the wrestling business. Get over.

If you get over, everything else will work itself out. That's it. You can't stop rock and roll and you can't stop a wrestler who's getting over. I remember seeing something on social media one day. It had like the top 15 rules, you know, to, make it in the wrestling business. And one was like, show up on time. Two was like, be the last one to leave.

Three was shake everybody's hands. All these rules and regulation. Like number 15 was get over. And I was like, fuck that. Do number 15 first and you can get rid of the entire list. Once you get over and you are a draw and you show that you can put asses in seats and sell merchandise, history has taught us that owners, bookers, will put up with you no matter what if you're over, hasn't it? Yeah, there's many, many examples of that.

Just get over. And so many people will say to me, well, how? I don't know. I'm not you. If you think going into the middle of the ring and crapping in your own hand and throwing it into the fifth row will get you over, go give it a chance. Go give it a try. It's, it's, what lies within you. Don't be afraid to go out there and do whatever it's going to take to wow them, the people, the ownership, the bookers. You're only getting so many opportunities to do this. It's up to you. So many wrestlers, you see, don't you come across a lot of bitter people in the wrestling business, Chris? Of course. Yes. My advice to every bitter person in the wrestling business is to look in the mirror and you'll get every answer to every question you ever had.

I find it very funny that almost everybody I've interviewed that left WWE has not a lot of nice things to say about their time in WWA. Okay. And I think that it's exactly what you're talking about, that that bitterness that, you know, Maybe they had an idea and it didn't work out, or maybe they didn't have a chance to run with something, whatever it happens to be. Personally, and I think I can speak for Devon on this one. Did we disagree with the WWE at times? Absolutely. How could we ever be mad at the WWE were Vince McMahon?

How? He allowed a tag team that was created someplace else. and allowed it to become the most successful team in the history of the WWE. Put an ungodly amount of money in our pockets and gave us the opportunities to steal the show at WrestleMania, along with two other teams. What is there to be mad about? Yeah.

I got the main event in Madison Square Garden a couple of times. I got to wrestle everywhere in the world. I was part of one of the greatest eras in the history of wrestling. Yeah. Are there things that happen there that piss me off to this day? Absolutely. But be bitter and hold a grudge against what? If you're bitter and you hold a grudge,

maybe there's something more that you could have done as a talent. Yeah. Now, it's definitely different now than it was in, you know, 97, 98, 99, 2000. There's a different set of rules. But for the most part, if you can go out there and get the job done, you're going to give yourself the best opportunity to make it. I think get over is just great life advice, too. It really is.

Are you married? I'm not married. You have a girlfriend? I do. How long have you been together for a year, just over a year. She just left so we can speak openly about her. Do you remember the first time you walked up to her to say hello? Of course.

Did you get over? I mean, I'm still here, so I guess so. There you go. It works in life, you know, whether it's that job interview. There's a hundred people interviewing for the job. How do I get the job? Get over. Do something.

Say something. Wow, that interviewer, that boss. So they go, him, her. That's the one I want. Yeah. I can't thank you enough. This has been so good. And I congratulations on obviously everything in your career, but also this new career that you're forging as a broadcaster. You're doing incredible work on busted open. Man, I just wish you all the best. Listen, I really appreciate that. You're a young

dude in this business. I wish you the best with all of your career because your best days are probably, you know, ahead of you. You got so much more to accomplish. So, I wish you nothing but the same. I've had so much fun. I like having this talk with you because it's a little bit different than a lot of the talks that I've had with. You know, I really don't do a lot of this stuff at all, Chris. Yeah, I know. So it was, it was fun to do this one with you.

And I was, I was kind of selective about this one because I knew I was only going to do like one outside of the box podcast. Like I can talk to Jericho all day long or JR. We can talk, wrestling, but with me and you. you really don't have a history. So I enjoy talking to people that I don't really have a history with. Well, I'm super grateful for your time. So thank you. And I'm excited to see what happens next for you.

It should be interesting. So good. Man, man, so good. Thanks for hanging out with us. Please take a screenshot. Tag me at Chris Van Vleet and tag bully on Twitter. He is at Bully Ray 5150. And you heard him. You heard him when he's ready to tell the other 50% of that story about Vince not letting him be bully Ray in WWE.

We're going to do it right here. So that means it's going to be in part two. Hopefully, hopefully it's soon. Sooner rather than later. So there's a lot in here, a lot. And man, I'm just super grateful for the opportunity to do this. Just super grateful that Baba bully Ray trusted me with this. So, and thank you for listening. It's a long one. I know. Maybe you broke this up over. a few workouts or a few walks or a few drives to work or whatever. But thank you. I really appreciate it. And thank you for being with us on this. So there's a lot. Let me know what resonates with you the most here. I had no idea. This would go this long. This is actually the officially the second longest interview in the history of the Chris Van Fleet podcast. The first one, of course, being the Austin Aries interview at an hour 54. So this one's like just short, you know, by like 10 minutes or And the crazy thing about both this interview and the Austin Aries interview is I feel like there's still so much to talk about with both of them. So I think we're going to stay a part two with both of them. All right. Next up. We have a live Q&A that we did on Instagram and Facebook with Vampiro. Very, very interesting stuff here. And then an interview with Kurt Hawkins. And then who knows what interviews we have after that. I actually haven't done any of you. So I don't even know yet. I have some ideas.

I have some ideas, but I haven't planned them out. And you know that we end every episode with a quote, but I think that we heard the best quote and the best advice in this interview. And it applies both to wrestling and to life. And you know where I'm going with this, but it's so good. Two words, get over. That's it. Get over.

In every aspect of your life, in every aspect of your career, get over. enjoy your week. Have a great weekend. We'll see you soon. Don't forget those birthday reviews, please. It'd be so kind of you. A Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock, but there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley. Whatever happened to Hammer Alley?

How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. Ever heard of them? Rock Bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987. I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Alley.

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