Bully Ray Criticizes AEW Refereeing As “Sheer Ignorance”
Bully Ray isn’t shy about speaking his mind, which is why he recently was very critical about what’s wrong in AEW with the refereeing.
As a WWE and TNA Wrestling Hall of Famer, Bully Ray (aka Bubba Ray Dudley in WWE-ECW) has been a big part of the wrestling business over the last 30 years. While he’s not in WWE anymore, Bully Ray is a part of Impact Wrestling and the NWA while also working as a co-host on the popular Busted Open Radio show on Sirius XM.
At Impact Wrestling’s Hard to Kill pay-per-view in January, Bully Ray lost to Josh Alexander in an Impact World Title Match. Prior to the match, Bully got a lot of heat by doing cheap attacks on Alexander and torturing his family a bit as well.
While Bully is known primarily as a tag team wrestler, he is also a former two-time Impact World Champion that was also the leader of the Aces and Eights stable that was very successful in Impact about a decade ago.
During a recent episode of his Busted Open Radio show, Bully Ray was critical of AEW refereeing. As most AEW fans know, the refereeing in AEW is very erratic. When wrestlers leave the ring, the referees are not consistent with a ten count. Sometimes they do it and other times they do not.
Another issue is regarding tag team matches, especially teams like The Young Bucks, because random wrestlers will go into the ring to do spots even though it’s not legal and the referee is left to wave their arms in the air looking helpless. Some people that watch AEW don’t like it and speak up while other simply ignore it.
Bully Ray made it clear that he doesn’t support the inconsistent ways of AEW referees.
“I’m bringing to light the refereeing issues in AEW which continue to happen week after week for no good reason other than complete, utter, and sheer ignorance or laziness. And that’s all I can chalk it up to.”
As he continued, Bully Ray pointed out a spot during the Orange Cassidy-Jay Lethal match that opened Dynamite this week. When both wrestlers were out of the ring, the referee should have been counting, but instead, the referee did nothing.
“The refereeing s**t just bothers me to high heaven and I think it needs to stop. To me, the referee is as important as the competitors. They’re part of the story of the match.”
The ECW Original Bully Ray has a big match coming on March 24th when he faces his former best friend Tommy Dreamer at the Impact Wrestling PPV called Sacrifice when Bully and Tommy face off in a Busted Open match.
— Bully Ray (@bullyray5150) March 10, 2023