Bubba Ray & Road Dogg ribbed Scott Dawson for a heel Tweet, and everyone worked themselves into a shoot

Here’s one that’s sure to fire up the debate about what’s kayfabe and what’s real when every wrestler has an internet platform.

A tag turmoil match to determine the #1 contenders for the brand’s titles was announced in advance of SmackDown last night (Nov. 22). There was a fair amount of fan chatter online about this being an opportunity to debut the recently deposed, two-time NXT tag champs, The Revival. One member of that team, Scott Dawson, sent out this Tweet:

Dawson’s Twitter is always in-character. You won’t find him sending 140 character messages about things like supporting the local animal shelter - his Tweets are things he’d say on-screen.

So why did a couple guys who are WWE tag team royalty like Brian “Road Dogg” James & Bubba Ray Dudley seem to take issue with the this one?

Great job. You managed to insult the entire creative team and your FELLOW workers in one tweet. Complete disrespect...

- Bubba Ray Dudley (@Bullyray5150)

Having two likely Hall of Famers - one a main roster producer (James), the other the tag & business partner of one (D-Von Dudley is now a WWE agent) - jump on him understandably shook Dawson, who deleted his original Tweet and posted an apology:

Admittedly my last tweet was stupid. I've worked w/ all those teams & have the utmost respect for them. Stupid tweet to try to rile fans.

— Scott Dawson (@ScottDawsonWWE) November 23, 2016

Fans, however, didn’t think the Top Guy needed to apologize, and criticized James and Dudley for calling Dawson out for being a good heel and keeping kayfabe online. At that point, the veterans claimed they were only joking. Road Dogg even said he called his friend Dawson to clear things up when he saw the NXT talent had taken the Tweets seriously.

Dawson then deleted his apology (as Dudley did with his original Tweet, which is kind of strange if it was just a gag), so it seems like things got smoothed over. James & Bubba, of course, can’t let it go without poking fun at fans and claiming they “worked” us all...

At least one guy is taking it all in stride - and still keeping things officially kayfabe:

What happened here, Cagesiders? Are we a bunch of jabronie marks without a life?

Or did some workers work a work and work themselves into a shoot (brother)?