D-Von has since went on to fully embrace the WWE producer role.
WWE and TNA Hall Of Famer D-Von Dudley began his in-ring career in the early 90s. Throughout his in-ring tenure, D-Von tallied up multiple championship wins in companies such as WWE, TNA, New Japan Pro-Wrestling and ECW.
D-Von’s last sanctioned match was in 2016 when he and Bully Ray competed for the House Of Glory Tag Titles. D-Von formally announced his retirement from wrestling in May 2020. He guest appeared on The Cut Pro Wrestling Podcast (quotes were passed along) and said he never wanted to stop wrestling. When the opportunity presented itself to work behind the scenes for WWE, it took D-Von years to embrace it but he has grown a love what he does.
Just for the record, I never wanted to stop wrestling. I never wanted to be a producer backstage for WWE. I enjoy it now but it took me some years to actually embrace it and like it. Bubba decided, during that 2016 run, that the Dudley Boys were not being treated fair in terms if the position we were [in]. And I get it to a certain degree but you have to understand, the attitude era was gone. And I even said that to him, ‘It’s gone, it’s not coming back.’
So I’m not coming back to WWE to relive the attitude era. In my opinion and my opinion only, in terms of between the both of us, I didn’t feel that way, like he felt. Like they were messing up the legacy that we chose. A title doesn’t mean anything at this point and stage of the game when you’ve won 24 already.
So to have another title that says you’re the tag team champion at that point didn’t really mean anything. What meant to me coming back to WWE, was helping the young talent out, being able to pass that torch and go back to a place that I felt, back in 2005, that we didn’t leave the right way. There was still some stuff left on the table that I felt we had to come back to WWE in order for me to finish out my career the way I wanted to.
D-Von dove into he and Bully Ray’s split and detailed the timeline up until that decision. According to D-Von, Bully Ray did not want to agree to WWE’s contract offer and when he did come around, WWE was not interested. They’ve gone their separate ways and do not do business together anymore. D-Von added that there is no issues or anything of the sort between he and Bully.
When people ask me, ‘What happened with the Dudleys?’ Well, Bubba didn’t want to play fair. And I know Bubba will have his own opinion about what happened but again, that’s the majority of it. They gave us both the contract. I signed it. He didn’t want to sign it, and it left a bad taste in their mouth. And by the time he was ready to sign it, some time had already went by. Let me give you a timeline. When Shane McMahon came back in Detroit…that was when I signed the deal. That was in March. So the deal actually came to us in February of that year. Now they’ve been trying to get us to sign it and Bubba wouldn’t sign it. Now all of a sudden we go forward and I’ve signed it and he hasn’t because there’s still things he felt he had to take care of on his side. By the time he got through that, the company was like, ‘Nah, we don’t want it anymore. We’re not dealing with the headaches.’ And they decided not to do it. 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. Even the wrestling school, he has the wrestling school in Connecticut, I have the one in Winter Park over here. So we both individually own our wrestling schools but we just do things separate now. That’s all.
D-Von last appeared on-screen for WWE at the Raw Reunion show in 2019 and he was in FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler’s) corner for their match against The Usos (Jimmy & Jey Uso).
