25 Years Of Bubba Dudley / Bully Ray

Do you prefer Bubba Dudley / Bully Ray as part of the Dudleyz or on his own?

David Gibb: That’s a tough question, but at the end of the day, he’s a legendary tag team wrestler who had a strong singles run late in his career. I think of him as a Dudley Boy first, although he was excellent in both roles at various points.

Juan Bautista: I will take either. The Dudley Boyz were amazing, but when Bully Ray was a singles star, it was a break from the routine and something fresh.

John Corrigan: He’s a great heel, but I love those damn Dudleyz. At Lockdown 2009, they went into the corridor of the Liacouras Center, took my Team 3D shirt, signed it and scored a huge pop from the crowd.

Steven Jackson: It is a bit of both. I like Bubba as part of the Dudleyz, but he’s such a strong presence, his best work has definitely been as a singles wrestler. Without doubt one of the best heels of the past 15 years.

Chad Gelfand: The Dudley Boyz are one of my favorite tag teams of all time, so while he did great work as Bully Ray in TNA, I have to give the edge to the tag team that’s going to go down as one of the greatest of all time.

Jack Goodwillie: Here’s the deal: Bubba/Bully/Mark, whatever you prefer to call him, is not always going to be everybody’s cup of tea and he’s certainly not mine. I liked the Dudley Boyz a good bit as a tag team, though they really hit their stride in the ring in TNA. D-Von is the ying to Bubba’s yang, as he’s a lot more likeable and has had a great career in his own right. The Bully Ray run was a breath of fresh air, and Bubba’s the better promo of the two, which helps, but that run was overrated in a sense because of all the praise it gets despite being mired in an Aces & Eights storyline that, keeping with theme, was just not my cup of tea. I would have liked to see how he would have translated the character to WWE.

Is Bubba Dudley / Bully Ray underrated on the mic?

Gibb: I don’t think he’s underrated by those who have seen him cut main event promos. He could conceivably be underrated by folks who have only seen his WWE work, however.

Bautista: Yes. Heatwave 99 is an excellent promo. Bully Ray’s promos in TNA were also great.

Corrigan: Absolutely. He never gets mentioned in the mic masters conversation. He’s even gotten better with age, as evidenced by his ROH run.

Jackson: Bubba is really good on the mic, but I wouldn’t say he is underrated. I didn’t appreciate how good he was until he truly broke out as a singles competitor. However, I always knew he could talk.

Gelfand: Bubba was adequately rated. When he became Bully Ray, he was widely praised for his mic work, and when he was in ECW, no one was better at instigating a crowd.

Goodwillie: He gets due credit for his mic work. Again, I always thought he was the better promo out of him and D-Von. He may have even been better in the ring, at least once he slimmed down a bit. But it’s not like he’s the best promo in wrestling, or ever was for that matter. That said, mic work is one of the first things you’ll hear about in a conversation about Mark.

Greatest match for Bubba Dudley / Bully Ray …

Gibb: As a tag team wrestler, I have to say the Triangle Ladder Match at WrestleMania 2000 or the first TLC at SummerSlam later that year. As a single, I liked his match at Slammiversary XI against Sting a lot.

Bautista: In a tag team, TLC 2. As a singles competitor, Bully Ray against AJ Styles at Bound For Glory 2013

Corrigan: The tables match against the Hardyz from Royal Rumble 2000.

Jackson: Bully Ray vs. Chris Sabin from Destination X 2013. It was a match which had the classic heel bully champion vs. babyface underdog challenger dynamic down to a tee. The crowd was red hot and the chemistry was wonderful.

Gelfand: The WrestleMania X-7 TLC match. That match is the standard for TLC matches and one of the best matches in WWE history.

Goodwillie: It’s gotta be one of the TLC matches, take your pick. I’ll go with a dark horse candidate: Edge and Christian vs. The Dudleyz vs. The Hardyz vs. Benoit and Jericho on SmackDown in 2001. It’s often stylized as TLC III, but the storyline addition of Benoit and Jericho into the match added an intriguing extra element and made for incredible television. Remember, this was the match Christian took arguably the greatest Dudley Death Drop of all time off a ladder and through a table, and when Jeff Hardy leapfrogged over a 20-foot ladder and delivered a leg-drop on Bubba Ray through the announce table.

Greatest moment/angle for Bubba Dudley / Bully Ray …

Gibb: The big “ha-ha gotcha!” reveal of Bully Ray as the leader of Aces & Eights was very well done, with the TNA production crew going back and walking the audience through every step of the deception to spell out the plot and put him over as a major schemer and villain.

Bautista: When he revealed himself as the leader of Aces & Eights. Bully had the gold, had the crowd throwing garbage at him and told the Hogans how he used and screwed them.

Corrigan: Power bombing Mae Young off the Titantron. J.R. screaming about Bubba’s look of euphoria afterward was hilarious.

Jackson: Bully’s greatest moment was probably power bombing Dixie Carter through the table on Impact. It harked back to the Attitude Era, and again, the crowd was so rabid.

Gelfand: The promo Bully Ray did right after he was revealed as the president of Aces & Eights. That angle overstayed its welcome, but that initial promo was great.

Goodwillie: From 1999 on, The Dudley Boyz became more of a serious, by the book tag team and weren’t involved in any out of this world storylines, unless you count the Paul Heyman/Undertaker “Do the Right Thing” angle. In the WWF, they were mostly used as a tag team to add to feuds or as somebody’s backup, at least until the draft split them up. In TNA, the duo really began to zero in on straight-up tag team vs. tag team feuds that were largely match-driven. However, in ECW, The Dudley Brothers could draw a TON of heat, largely because Paul Heyman gave Mark the green light to say anything he wanted to whoever he wanted. One night, it all came to a head at Heatwave 1999 when Mark got in the face of one fan, took a drink out of the hand of another fan and doused the crowd with it and proceeded to get into a spitting contest with a female fan. The thing is, while history remembers it as significant, it was really just par for the course for Mark and the Dudleyz in ECW.

Having left Ring of Honor earlier this year, what should Bubba Dudley / Bully Ray be doing today?

Gibb: Training wrestlers. Enjoying being his own boss. Waiting for Mox to run out of opponents.

Bautista: Bully Ray is doing quite well for himself with his radio show. If he is going to go to another promotion, maybe go back to Impact. Or go to GCW for a match with Nick Gage.

Corrigan: I love both Gibb’s idea of challenging Mox and Bautista’s idea of facing Gage. A run in MLW for The Restart would be fun, too.

Jackson: Bully should take some time away from the industry and then come back as a color commentator in Impact, ROH or even AEW. He’s so versatile on the mic and great at telling a story.

Gelfand: He’s good in the position he’s in right now as a broadcaster on Busted Open Radio, providing analysis and telling stories.

Goodwillie: Mark’s just fine where he is, doing Busted Open Radio. It’s funny, the narrative on him was always that he was a lot younger than he looked and had plenty of mileage on him. I don’t doubt that he still might, even at 49, but we’ve seen all we needed to see from Mark and his characters at this point. He did improve in almost every area once he made a concerted effort to lose weight in TNA and took on the look of a main event heel, and deserves due credit for that. That said, I don’t believe his later singles run was quite as good as some like to remember. The Brooke Hogan/Aces & Eights storyline was completely ludicrous and really killed him dead, though I can definitely say his matches began to meet a certain standard. Overall, the one thing Mark should be given a ton of credit for is his longevity. His ECW career began in 1995 and he just finished up in Ring of Honor earlier in 2020. That’s 25 solid years of service. He reinvented himself a couple times and showed that he could be much more than a tag team specialist. But as it pertains to today, he’s right where he needs to be.