Bully Ray Reflects On How He Convinced Dixie Carter To Do Memorable Table Spot
Recently appearing on GAW TV, Bully Ray looked back on putting then-TNA President Dixie Carter through a table after months of teasing it.
It happened on an episode of Impact Wrestling on Spike TV in 2014.
“My idea to put Dixie through a table actually came to me in Birmingham, England at the NEC arena in Birmingham. I remember talking to John Gaburick, who is the Head of Creative at the time. I said, ‘Listen, I got an idea. It’s a story that will play out for about six months. And I guarantee you by the time we get to the end of this story, the ratings will be up and we will pop a rating for this final moment. We’ll catch lightning in a bottle.’”
“And he’s like, ‘All right, what do you got?’ And I gave it to him and I told him the story of Bully and Dixie and everything that would happen after the Aces & Eights. And I said, ‘It culminates with me guaranteeing to put Dixie through a table at a certain time, at a certain place on a certain day.’”
“He looks at me. He goes, ‘You’re out of your f*cking mind.’ And I said, ‘okay,’ and I got up out of my seat and I was walking out of his office in the arena, and I turned around and I go, ‘You know it’ll work.’ Before I can get both feet out of the door, he goes, ‘Wait, wait, wait. Come back in.’ And he goes, ‘How do we do it?’ Then I knew I had him on the hook right there. So then I said, ‘This is how we do it. This is how we play it and this is how we make it happen.’ I had to remind him that my entire career was spent putting women through tables (referencing Mae Young, Stacy Keibler, Terri Runnels).”
Because of the spot, Carter suffered two hairline fractures in her back.
“I told Gaburick about the idea. I said, ‘This is how we’ll go about it.’ And for six months, this entire story played out. I’m very proud to say that by the time we got to that final episode, we did a 1.4 rating. And when you think about it, a 1.4 rating for [TNA] was real strong. It was a really, really strong number. So that’s really the Dixie story.”
“She said she broke her back. When she went to the doctor, I guess they found like two little hairline fractures that she probably could have got like slipping in the bathtub also. She did, she did a great job. She took it perfectly. It’s probably one of the cleanest of all of the table bumps that I ever gave to a woman. It might be the cleanest one ever.”
“She really did it. She did a great job with it. As you saw, if you remember, the arena went crazy. The boys went crazy. And I told her, ‘You’re going to be, in the fans’ eyes, you will be a martyr for TNA. They’re going to appreciate you for what you did.’ I said, ‘You’re going to be so over on social media’. Eyes lit up. The case was closed.”
H/T to WrestleZone
Counting down the 5 DEFINING TNA Moments!
5. Bully Ray Powerbombs Dixie Carter through a table (IMPACT, 2014) pic.twitter.com/SLn9tAsbIb
— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) March 8, 2020
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