10-Time WWE Champion Officially Announces Retirement
A 10-time WWE Champion has called the curtains on his wrestling career.
Known for his hardcore approach to wrestling, Spike Dudley usually featured in non-traditional match setups. He joined the Stamford promotion from ECW in 2001, aligning with his half-brothers, Bubba Ray and D-Von.
Spike was immediately inserted into a three-way tag team war against the WWE teams of Hardy Boyz and Edge & Christian.
He distanced himself from his brothers after they betrayed him due to his relationship with Molly Holly, a member of The Holly Cousins, who were the Dudleys’ rivals.
After being released from WWE in 2005, Spike had multiple stints in Total Non-Stop Action (TNA) and also wrestled in the indies.
Spike Dudley recently appeared in an interview with Chris Van Vliet, and when asked about his current relationship with wrestling, he said he didn’t have one as he had retired.
I don’t really have one. When it’s time to get out, it was time to get out. My wife was pregnant and… Okay, so this is what happened. This is how I officially got out of the business.
My wife was a few months pregnant with our first daughter, that’d be 2010. I was working for 2CW in Syracuse, New York, which is a great promotion. It’s no longer there, but at the time, it was an awesome promotion, just great, great guys, truly, aside from like ECW, this group is the group that’s closest to my heart in terms of the boys and all of that. And they use me a lot at that company, but they booked me in a match against Sabu again, RIP.
I drove up there, it’s about a five-hour drive. Drove up and I did the show, and I got my arm sliced. It wasn’t bleeding that bad. It was a slice, it was just from a gimmick. Honestly, going into it, I was like, it’s gonna be my Sabu match. I was like, I’m gonna do my arm, so self-inflicted. So I saw it, and I just taped it up, and I got into my car and I drove home, and I got home at like, four or five in the morning.
My wife, she’s like, ‘Are you okay? Everything all right?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I fell asleep, and I woke up at like nine the next morning, and I start to peel the tape off, and blood just starts gushing. I was like, ‘Honey, I think we got to go to the emergency room.’
But then that was the moment where I realized, Okay, I’m gonna be a father. I can’t be doing this crazy stuff anymore, because physically, that’s what I did, was take bumps. And no matter how indestructible we all think we are, you hit a wall where you cannot do that anymore.
So I was 40-41, something like that at the time, and that was the eye opener that okay, I can’t do this and be a responsible parent any longer. So I got my stitches and I called it quits. I had a couple of matches after but that was the signal that you’re done with the business.
Ex-WWE Champion Bubba Ray Challenges The Hardy Boyz For Final Match
At TNA Slammiversary in July, the Hardy Boyz won the TNA Tag Team Championships by defeating The Nemeths.
As they celebrated, former WWE Tag Team Champion Bubba Ray Dudley appeared at the event and congratulated them.
He spoke about their history as rivals before pitching a final match between Team 3D and the Hardys at Bound for Glory in October.
Both teams were recently in attendance on Night 2 of the WWE SummerSlam PLE.
Elsewhere, Spike Dudley revealed the scariest ECW match that he ever wrestled in.