D-Von Dudley Talks His TLC Legacy & The Lost Art Of Tag Wrestling
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D-Von Dudley was interviewed by Darvio “The Kingpin” Morrow of The Outlaws Radio Show when his podcast visited Cleveland Wizard World and got The Dudley Brother to reflect on his career as a tag team wrestler. D-Von knows that despite what he put his body through, the mark The Dudleyz, The Hardyz and Edge & Christian left on wrestling is indelible.
“We were rock stars. We really couldn’t go anywhere without having to shut things down. My 15 minutes of fame I’m happy to say that it was worth it with all the abuse that I took over the years from ECW, the WWE and of course unfortunately I’d like to say sometimes TNA…Aces and Eights, that was greatest thing that came out of that, but for the most part, we had fun. We did what we did and we had fun. We created history and if wasn’t for us, Edge & Christian, The Hardyz and The Dudleyz there would be no PPV called TLC and if it wasn’t for ECW and what we did, there would be no Attitude Era.”
D-Von does believe that the six of them having those TLC matches led to another boom in tag team wrestling even if tag matches were never a major focus in the scope of WWE.
“Well tag team wrestling is somewhat of a lost art nowadays, but you have to understand, WWE has always been a singles man competition type of deal. It’s never really been a tag team. So even when you go back to the days of Hogan and Andre, Shawn and Bret, even though they had great teams – The Hart Foundation, The British Bulldogs, Demolition, The Warlord & The Barbarian, The Killer B’s, I mean the list goes on and on with how many tag teams they had back in the day. You had to fight to earn that position in the WWE at that time and get your respect of a tag team. You had to be somebody and I think when the Hogan and Andre era was gone, I think people thought that tag team wrestling was really a lost art until six guys that were unknown came in and changed the face of tag team wrestling and that’s exactly what we did.”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can listen to the entire episode below (D-Von’s interview begins at 8:24):