During a recent appearance on Chris Jericho’s podcast, Bubba Ray Dudley commented on why his “Bully” character never appeared in WWE:
“I told him about Bully Ray, and me and Vince McMahon had three really good and serious conversations about Bully Ray and he was totally into it. He said that nobody loves the bully character more than me. He said that is who I am, but he said that I cannot call you Bully Ray. I can’t use the name ‘Bully’ and have the Be-A-Star program.”
“He said that it is a great idea, but by the time we get there I will get slaughtered by the press. He felt that it would be too long. You have a Be-A-Star program but you have a guy called Bully. By the time you get to the payoff, I would have endured too much negative press by then. My backup was the Intimidator Bubba Ray. I wasn’t even going to go with the Bully Ray name and that was it, and I saw the look in his eyes where he liked that and we can do that. One of the things that was important to me separating from D-Von and becoming the Bully Ray character was that I had to turn on D-Von. D-Von was the piece of the puzzle because if I turned on D-Von I would immediately have heat. If I turned on a generic wrestler it wouldn’t have any steam or history, but Vince wasn’t feeling it. I presented it to him a few more times and we actually shook hands. On my last SmackDown before our contracts ended, he said that we were going to run with this and will do it. We shook hands and hugged; it was a done deal.
Our last night that was on Raw was supposed to be the night I turned on D-Von. A few days before Raw, Vince McMahon calls me himself and said, ‘Pal, I’m sorry, we’re not going to run with it. We’re not quite sure we see the money in the feud.”
