On the July 6, 1998 episode of WWE Raw, D-Generation X (Triple H, X-Pac, Billy Gunn, Road Dogg, and Jason Sensation) parodied the Nation of Domination (The Rock, Ron Simmons, Mark Henry, D'Lo Brown, and Owen Hart) in one of the most infamous segments in WWE history.
The parody featured members of DX utilizing blackface to represent their counterparts.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight, D'Lo Brown reflected on the segment.
"No," D'Lo replied when asked if there was any concern brought up about using blackface when the segment was originally put together. "There have been a lot of stories out there. I can tell you that none of us had any big concern about it. In retrospect, we could have done that segment without the blackface and I wish we hadn't. It would have been just as good. Obviously, I wish we changed that. We didn't. Looking back with 2022 eyes, not a fan. In 1997-98 eyes, it was a way of getting these two factions to war because we knew both of our factions were over enough, or connected with the fans enough that we could go out there and draw money and fill houses with it and put up ratings on TV. We look at the individual matchups we could have and that's what piqued our curiosity. People look past the obvious elephant in the room."
D'Lo noted that "you couldn't pitch that idea three years later. You'd get laughed out of the building three years later."
WWE became a public company in 1999 and shifted away from the Attitude Era by the early 2000s.
D'Lo continued to say that the segment would have been just as effective if blackface was never used.
"It's so true. If there was never any blackface, you would have never known the difference and it would have been just as entertaining. That whole segment was DX entertaining everybody and they could have done that easy without the blackface. I get people looking at it with 2022 eyes going, 'were you mad, were you angry?' Today I am but in 97-98, I wasn't. We were just trying to create a good segment. It was a different time. Thankfully, we don't live in that time anymore and we're here today. I wish we could go back and retro book it and have it a different way," he said.
The segment has been removed from the WWE Network portion of Peacock.
D'Lo currently works as a producer and scout for IMPACT Wrestling.
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