Reason Why WWE Removed D-Von Dudley From ECW Reunion Event
D-Von Dudley was nearly fired by WWE recently due to a recent booking that the company did not want him to be a part of.
During his WWE Hall of Fame career, D-Von Dudley was part of the legendary tag team known as The Dudley Boyz. Together, D-Von and his “brother” Bubba Ray Dudley had a career that led to many people considering them as one of the best tag teams of all time.
They won the Tag Team Titles in every major wrestling promotion during their time as a team from the early 1990s until the 2010s decade. Some of the promotions where they won tag team titles were WWE, ECW, WCW (after WWE bought them), NWA, NJPW, and TNA/Impact Wrestling.
During their WWE careers, The Dudley Boyz won the Tag Team Titles ten times (that includes the one reign as WCW Tag Team Champions). They were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2018 after being inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame in 2014.
Currently, D-Von works as a backstage producer in NXT. In September on The A2theK Wrestling Show, he spoke about his role in NXT:
“I can do this for the next 30 or 40 years as a producer, I don’t have to take another bump in my life, which I can’t now after my back surgery. I don’t have to take another bump in my life and be paid very well and my thing is helping out the younger talent.”
“How I got to be in NXT … When I found out I was going in for back surgery, when I found out how bad it was, I just, I couldn’t do the traveling anymore, you know? I didn’t want to be in a plane anymore, I didn’t want to be in and out of the car. I’m 45 minutes away from the Performance Center, so I’m home in my bed every night.”
While he is busy in NXT, D-Von Dudley can also take outside booking occasionally, as long as WWE approves it. Recently, D-Von was scheduled to appear at Tribute to the Extreme, an ECW revival event in Philadelphia. However, he was taken off the show by WWE. Here’s some insight into what happened courtesy of the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.
“WWE did pull Devon Hughes (D-Von Dudley) from the event, both the live show and the convention. He was scheduled to be in the corner of Bubba Ray for his match with Matt Cardona. He went through John Cone in talent relations who reportedly approved of the booking and he believed based on his contract, since he’s not a wrestler, that he was able to do things like that.”
“Bruce Prichard nixed the booking and it ended up on the desk of Paul Levesque. Hughes has said he was going to do it because he gave his word on it and Levesque didn’t give approval and he was basically told if he did it, he’d be fired, so he didn’t do it. There was no real reason past the claim that they didn’t want him in a physical risk, but I’m not sure how much physical risk there is in pulling out a table since he was not scheduled for any physicality himself.”
D-Von Dudley’s former tag team partner Bubba Ray Dudley still wrestles for Impact Wrestling as Bully Ray and will headline the Hard To Kill pay-per-view on January 13th when he challenges Josh Alexander for the Impact Wrestling World Title.