D-Von Dudley has officially announced his retirement from in-ring competition.
The former WWE Tag Team Champion revealed on the “Table Talk” podcast to make the announcement. Dudley said, outside of any special appearances on WWE programming, to not expect him to wrestle again. In addition, Dudley admitted that he was a little frustrated that he couldn't wrestle more with his last match taking place back in 2016.
“Even though I am a little frustrated, I was a little frustrated of not continuing to wrestle for that one more year that I wanted, I’m extremely happy now being a producer and not wrestling. I am officially announcing I've hung it up, except for different appearances that they may want me to do on the show, but no more wrestling. No more fighting for the titles, none of that anymore. I’m done. I’m officially done. I'm done guys. I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fame and it was a good ride, it really was. The old timers used to tell me, 'Don’t blink because when you do, it’s over and it goes that fast,' and it did. It did feel like it went really fast,” Dudley said.
Dudley then talked about his long-time tag team partner Bubba Ray Dudley, also known as Bully Ray, and how the two of them were able to find success as a team for decades when they were originally not meant to be a long-lasting partnership.
"But a 28 year career, always being on top and never taking a break, regardless of the injuries or anything like that, we did it and I think Bubba said it best during our Hall of Fame speech. We did it our way. We went out there and we conquered and we became synonymous in terms of using our name when tag team wrestling comes up. We will always be put in with some of the best and arguably some people will say we were the best, but I’m just happy that, when you do mention tag teams, the Dudley Boyz's names come up. Not too many people can say that could happen throughout their careers. One guy from Long Island, the other straight out of Brooklyn and from the projects got together as a tag team, one white and one black and that wasn't unheard of... I'm really happy that a tag team that was supposed to be a joke and wasn't supposed to last that long became arguably the greatest tag team in the history of this business. With that, I always say, 'That was chapter one. Chapter two begins and if you thought chapter one was great, wait until you see chapter two," D-Von said.
D-Von, along with Bubba Ray, won dozens of tag team championships across multiple promotions from WWE to TNA to NJPW to ECW and more. The two of them were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame back in 2018.
You can check out the podcast at this link.
