On the latest episode of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s “Broken Skull Sessions” on Peacock and WWE Network, Bully Ray joined the Texas Rattlesnake.
WWE legend Bubba Ray Dudley talks about how he left WWE in 2005 and signed with TNA before becoming one of its most successful superstars.
Bully said:
We [The Dudley Boyz] go home for a couple of months. I get in touch with Johnny and Vince and said, ‘we’re sitting here doing nothing. You’re paying us, let us go to OVW and help some of the younger teams down there?’ So we go down there, and we start working with Mercury & Morrison, MNM, who get called up very shortly after that. So for me, that was a – I had a sense of pride because – I let the boss know, we’ll go down there, we’ll get some guys ready for you, we’ll get some young guys ready, and they did get the call.
So I was happy about that, and then we just sat home until ECW One Night Stand. They figured they’d been home for this long, why not just hold off for One Night Stand. It becomes a financial thing. It becomes, ‘we’d like you to take a little bit less of a downside,’ and we’re like, ‘we’ve been warriors for you for six years. We’ve done everything you’ve asked. Yes, maybe I can be a little bit difficult to do business with at times, but that’s only in the best interest of the business.’ I’m not a yes man. We just couldn’t come to an agreement on money, and that was it. Thank you, see you down the road.
WWE is different from any other company that Bully Ray has worked for by having accountability come through the curtain. Bully Ray stated:
Here’s where the WWE differs from every other company. The accountability of coming back through the curtain. With somebody looking down at you over the edge of those glasses like this. Vince is the ultimate accountability, and he’s right there when you come back through, and you know by that look whether you did a good job for him tonight or you didn’t do a good job for him tonight.
There were degrees of accountability in other companies, but never that type of accountability. I loved it. I enjoyed it. This is all personally I ever needed. I don’t chase the hug. I don’t sit in the hallway and wait for Vince to pass just so he can say, ‘good job tonight, pal!’ so I have a good 300-mile drive from Sheboygan to Madison. He’s gonna let you know. If he’s not happy, he’ll call you over.
I’ll never forget one night, Dudleys-RTC [Right To Censor] . Live SmackDown, Madison Square Garden, we went five minutes over on live TV. Five minutes. That’s grounds for – your bags are packed, they’re waiting for you. But we blew the roof off of The Garden. It went so well. I don’t even get one foot through the curtain, and he’s right here, and he says, ‘if you ever go over on my live TV again, it better be as good as that,’ and he walked away.