During an episode of The Cut Pro Wrestling podcast, WWE Producer D-Von Dudley told the story of how him and his former tag team partner Bully Ray aka Bubba Ray Dudley stopped doing business together. According to D-Von, WWE offered them contracts in 2016 but Bully wanted to do his singles gimmick and Vince McMahon wasn’t interested in that:
“There was a contract given to us after the second run [from 2015-16] and Bubba didn’t want to sign it. He wanted to do the Bully Ray character and Vince said no. He didn’t want that, he wanted the Dudleys. He didn’t want us to break up. Regardless to what we did in 2002 when we broke up, it still lay fresh in their minds that we were better as a tag team. It’s his sandbox, you have to play in his sandbox or go home.”
“It wasn’t like the WWE did a bad thing by us. Let me put it to you this way – they gave us a contract that was great, and at 44 and 45 years of age, I even told Bubba, ‘We need to take the money and just go. We’re not gonna get another opportunity like this again. We just need to sign this contract and do another year. If you don’t do another year after it, don’t do it. I’ll go on my own.’ But I couldn’t make him sign it.”
“I wish him nothing but the best. We do not do business anymore. There’s no hard feelings and I don’t have any animosity towards him. It’s just he’s doing his thing and I’m doing my thing. Bubba and I are not at odds with each other. We don’t hate one another. We just went different ways like most tag teams do. This is not a Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels thing where we hate each other. We don’t. We just had a difference of opinions at that time and we went our separate ways.”
D-Von also talked about how he wanted to keep wrestling:
“I never wanted to stop. I even went to them and said, ‘Hey, listen. I’m not ready to become a producer, there’s still a lot left in me,’ and they said, ‘Well you know the old man, you know how he is. He wanted the Dudleys and Bubba didn’t play fair, so we’re gonna give you this opportunity to stay with the company,’ So I looked at it, and it was Triple H, and I said, ‘Do I have a choice?’ and he said, ‘No, not really.’ At that point I was going through a divorce and I would have loved to have gone back to Japan to finish my career, but going through a divorce at the time and having to travel 17 or 18 hours on a plane to Japan every week was not what I wanted to do. So I had to weigh my options and say, okay, here we go. I guess I’ll stay here and become a producer. I hated it at first, I didn’t like it. Now, I’ve grown into it.”
