Jonathan Coachman returned to SportsCenter this week, and his usual spot hosting "Off the Top Rope" on the 9PM edition.
His guests on April 26 were the Dudley Boyz. With Raw in nearby Hartford (ESPN is headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut), Bubba Ray and D-Von sat down face-to-face with Coach for an interview. They covered a lot of ground, pulling back the kayfabe curtain to tell stories, talk history and give us a glimpse of their "old school" approach to the business.
In the above video, Bubba answers Coachman's question about there signature table spots with a bit of a history lesson:
Me and D-Von will be the first to admit, we're not the guys who invented putting people through tables. I mean, other people... Ric Flair and Terry Funk. Terry Funk piledrove Ric Flair through a table. You know I remember it like it was yesterday, seeing it. They were some of the first guys to do it, and other guys had done it over time.
What me and D-Von did was we took the idea, we made it cool, we made it special, we put some fan interaction around it and "D-Von! Get the tables!" has become, I'd say, has become one of the more signature tag lines in the WWE Universe.
And their history with Hall of Famer Mae Young, who they did table spots with when she was 80 years old:
I always say, and D-Von always says, Mae Young is the toughest man we've ever met in pro wrestling. She was so, so tough. We put her through a table in the middle of the ring and I'll never forget, after we were done, she went to Vince McMahon and she goes, "I want them to do that to me off the top of the steel cage."
It was awesome for me and D-Von to get to work with a legend like Mae Young, who not only did she help get us over, so to speak, but she became our friend.
In this video, both guys talk about their history-making and fan-favorite tables, ladders and chairs matches in 2000-01. It's here that I wish WWE stars on ESPN would go a little further to educate the wider audience about wrestling as an art form. D-Von hints at how important it was that all six men in those bouts didn't suffer in-the-moment injuries, but I think some casual fans or the folks who dislike "fake" fighting on SportsCenter might be interested to know how important taking care of your opponent is - and how challenging that is in these kinds of spotfests.
Bubba: We are extremely proud of those TLC matches with our brothers Edge & Christian and Matt & Jeff Hardy... We're proud that we were able to leave our mark on the wrestling industry with those matches.
D-Von: You know, six guys going in that ring, and putting their bodies - their lives on the line... it's one of those things, you know, our hearts are pumping, we're nervous, we're scared, yet we know we had to make it happen. And for us to walk out of those matches, not in one broken bone, not cutting nothing - we escaped with our lives.
I just remember when it was all said and done, after every single on them, we hugged each other, we grabbed each other and just told each other how much we just really genuinely cared for one another. Cause we could not have done it without the Hardyz. We could not have done it without Edge & Christian. And they could not have done it without the Dudley Boyz.
It also would have been interesting to get a follow-up question about the Dudleyz concerns about the long-term effects of those matches, and their style, considering Edge's retirement and the recent deaths of ECW contemporaries Balls Mahoney & Axl Rotten.
Speaking of wrestlers who died young, Coach gets the tag legends on record about an Attitude Era contemporary who we lost last week, Chyna:
Me and Bubba have been in the ring with her, and let me tell you, if you didn't give her respect, she would knock it out of you.
Plus, we get the usual Raw recap - although this week without any of the usual "Top" match, move, line, etc. breakouts: