Bubba Ray Dudley (now Bully Ray) recently spoke with ESPN to talk about his time in Ring of Honor. During the interview, he discussed his brief WWE return back in 2015-2016. He and D-Von Dudley both returned for one year and reunited the Dudley Boyz, they were mostly used to put over newer and more younger teams that WWE had at the time. After the nostalgia ran its course, fans were clamoring to see WWE use the “Bully Ray” character that turned the former Dudley into a main eventer. According to the man himself, those fans almost got their wish.
Ray stated that WWE was going to use the character but they decided to stick with his “Bubba Ray Dudley” character for one simple reason: the word bully is in the name. With WWE still working with their anti-bullying programs, it was a move that the company just didn’t want to make.
“We were one day away from becoming Bully Ray in WWE. One of the problems with having Bully Ray in the WWE was the word bully.” Ray said, “How could they have a guy named Bully when they had the ‘Be a STAR’ program? It was a little too risky for them.”
This then prompted Ray to head back out into the indys, while D-Von decided to put the brakes on his wrestling career and keep working with WWE in a backstage role.
Bully Ray is an accomplished veteran in the business, but never became a true top talent until he started using his “bully” character. He became TNA World Heavyweight Champion thanks to the character and proved to everyone how talented he really is on the microphone. Not doing anything with Ray is WWE’s loss, he also said he feels that he has a lot left to accomplish in wrestling. After leaving WWE, Ray said that ROH wanted to sign both he and D-Von, but the latter decided to stay with WWE. Bully Ray is currently signed to Ring of Honor and is holding the company’s Six-Man Tag Team Championships.