At one point in ECW history, The Dudley Boyz were a comedic stable that included Dudley Dudley, Snot Dudley, Big Dick Dudley, Dances With Dudley, Sign Guy Dudley, Chubby Dudley and Little Spike Dudley. All were supposedly the progeny of the seminal (and extremely prolific, it must be said) Big Daddy Dudley (no relation to British wrestling hero Big Daddy Shirley Crabtree). It was a mad gimmick, for sure, but it worked. Sometimes in wrestling, comedy gets you over and this was one of those times. Eventually, a tag team was formed between Bubba Ray Dudley (who originally danced and stuttered his way to the ring) and DVon Dudley, the badass family traitor (who had helped Bubba to lose his stutter). Bubba and DVon soon wandered over to the World Wrestling Federation and began plying their savage trade there. In fact, WWF liked The Dudleys so much, that they allowed Bubba and DVon to simply go about their business, more or less ECW-style. Although, there was of course that lovely THOU SHALT NOT FU- (exasperated grunt) MESS WITH THE DUDLEYS promo at WrestleMania 2000, which stressed that there was at least one major difference between the two promotions, even then. As a fan of wrestling since childhood, I cant stress how much The WWF-era Dudley Boyz reminded me of my favourite childhood tag team, The Legion of Doom (AKA The Road Warriors) and I marked out completely as they went on to re-write the tag team rulebook in a series of never-bettered triple team hardcore matches with The Hardy Boyz and Edge & Christian. It is telling that five of those six men (the exception being DVon, bizarrely) went on to become World Champions in either WWE, ECW or TNA, respectively. Bubba Ray, who now wrestles as Bully Ray, has become arguably TNAs biggest star of recent years, holding their World Title as the leader of the heel faction Aces & Eights before turning baby earlier this year and feuding with The Carters. In addition to becoming respected as being one of the greatest Tag Teams of all time (and my personal favourite), Bubba and DVon held Tag Team Titles for WWF/WWE, WCW, NWA and TNA, making them easily one of the most decorated (and popular) teams in wrestling history.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
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Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
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Latcho Drom,
- CQ
