WWE Announce Dudley Boyz As Hall Of Fame Inductees
Team 3D get top table at annual jamboree.
WWE this afternoon announced that former 10-time tag-team champions The Dudley Boyz are to be inducted into their hallowed Hall of Fame at the 2018 edition.
'Brothers' Bubba Ray and D-Von join Bill Goldberg as the names already confirmed to receive the special ring come 6 April at New Orleans Smoothie King Center.
The reveals so far correspond with those touted a few months back, meaning we can probably expect a few more names from the list to be announced in the coming weeks.
After establishing themselves in the business as part of Paul Heyman's renegade ECW troupe, the Dudleys - just two of the Philadelphia promotion's extended family - made the jump to Stamford in 1999. The story goes that the pair asked Heyman for a raise of one single dollar to stay with his company, but as the ECW honcho was already in cahoots with Vince McMahon as a supplier of talent, it was denied.
The Dudleys had gained some considerable momentum with their furniture-shattering antics back in Pennsylvania, and their innovative violence proved the perfect seasoning to add to WWE's increasingly spicy product. It was through their extreme encounters with The Hardy Boyz and Edge & Christian that tag-team wrestling saw a huge revival in the company, with the trio of trios arguably as fundamental to WWE's late-'90s success as anyone on the roster.
Then there was the time Bubba planted octogenarian Mae Young through a table. Who could forget that?
In 2005, the two left for pastures new, with Bubba eventually reinventing himself as top heel Bully Ray in TNA. When the so-called siblings reunited in WWE in 2015, that whole chapter was erased, and fans were treated to a straight nostalgia trip.
Just this past week, the brothers-from-another-mother joined in the Raw 25 celebrations, with Heath Slater taking the brunt of their traditional wood-splitting honours.
There have been a lot of raised eyebrows at some Hall of Fame inductees of recent years, but few would vigorously argue against the Dudleys' inclusion.