When Bully Ray left his proverbial boots in the middle of the ring at the end of his final match in Ring of Honor, a win over commentator Caprice Coleman, it felt like the end of an era for the man once known as Bubba Ray Dudley in WWE and ECW.
After partaking in his final match in a WWE ring under The Dudley Boyz name with his brother D-Von, Ray found a home in ROH following a year-long stint on the indies and did some of his best work in the company once owned by Cary Silkin, even if he lost most of his “big” matches. He feuded with Cheeseburger, feuded with Flip Gordon, and even got to do some ROH x NJPW matches against the likes of Los Ingobernables de Japon, Lifeblood, and even The Young Bucks, Nick and Matt Jackson. While he didn't secure any five-star matches or add any signature bout to his resume over that tenure, he did introduce a few new fans to the Dudley way of doing things and even made an appearance in the Battle Royal match at All In that also featured Billy Gunn, “Hangman” Adam Page, and even Orange Cassidy, whom Ray would go on to wrestle with once more alongside Tommy Dreamer, and Sonny Kiss at House of Hardcore 56.
And yet, since that fateful match with Coleman in 2020, Ray's run as a wrestler has largely been a sporadic one, with the multi-talented performer instead largely turning his attention to Busted Open Radio, his Sirius XM show alongside Dreamer, Mark Henry, and Dave LaGreca. He's wrestled six more matches, largely for Battleground Championship Wrestling in Philadelphia, but has largely remained outside of the mainstream wrestling world save an appearance in Bunkhouse Battle Royal during the pre-show of Ric Flair's Last Match.
Despite only being 51, which is younger than Chris Jericho, has the wrestling world seen the last of Bully Ray, or does WWE Hall of Famer still have one final run left in him? Well, if his newfound association with NWA and recent interactions with Matt Cardona are of any indication, it would fortunately appear to be the former. Why? Well, as Ray told Steve Fall of NBC Sports Boston – as transcribed by Wrestling Headlines – he takes issues with performers like Cardona calling himself a “Hardcore Guy” when he's only ever wrestled in GCW and for ducking him at NWA's Alwayz Ready show.
“It’s a double-edged sword there. Yeah, Cardona got hurt, and he couldn’t perform on a pay-per-view that was named after him. Personally, I think Cardona is ducking me because he talks a lot of shit on social media about how he’s this ‘hardcore’ guy just because he wrestled in garbage bag GCW, which is one of the worst ECW rip-offs I’ve ever seen in my life, and all of a sudden he’s this hardcore guy. You’ve never seen Cardona in the ring with a true hardcore guy, a true extreme guy. ‘Masters’ of the art of extreme. Who have you seen him with? Nick Gage? Oh my god, please. Please. Awful, awful.”
Granted, Cardona did try to punch back, calling himself an “ECW Original” thanks to his run in the then-WWE-owned promotion from 2007-10, but to really shut up one of the best talkers of the last 2- years, he'll need to take care of business in the ring.
You wouldn’t have lasted a day in ECW ‘94-‘99 https://t.co/wq0O63nRxa
— Bully Ray (@bullyray5150) August 22, 2022
Bully Ray delivers a hot comparison of NWA to a former WWE brand.
After being chokeslammed through a table at NWA's Alwayz Ready by Mike Knox, it was only a matter of time before Ray got back into the right to defend his reputation and honor against the biggest, baddest member of The Cardona Family. Fortunately, after being friendly with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame for quite some time, returning to the ring in NWA felt like a borderline no-brainer, as Ray further discussed with Fall this time via a transcription from Fightful.
“So I remember getting in touch with Billy (Corgan) because I like what the NWA does. I like the fact that the NWA allows their talent to be talented, to go out there and do what they do, to go out there and tell the stories the way they see fit, to allow talent to go out there without a script and basically just speak from the heart off the top of their head and go have the matches that they think the NWA fan wants to see. So I appreciate that type of freedom in wrestling company. Obviously coming up in a company like ECW, where there was the most freedom you could possibly ever want in a wrestling company, when I saw the NWA, I saw the comparisons, I saw the likenesses. I said at this stage of the game where I don’t have to do anything I don’t wanna do because I love what I do on Busted Open and being able to cover pro wrestling as much as I do on our show, I said, ‘Hm, I think I’d like to do something there.”
Goodness, calling GCW a garbage rip-off and then comparing NWA to ECW in the very same interview? You have to hand it to Bully, he certainly knows how to get his name in the headlines and generate some heat with wrestling fans the world over.
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