Former TNA World Heavyweight Champion Bully Ray joined the Chad Dukes Wrestling Show to promote his appearance with Devon at the Bowie Baysox “Legends of Wrestling” night on August 21st at Prince George’s Stadium in Bowie, MD. During the interview, he talked about his world title run as well as Dana White’s “fake” comment about pro wrestling. Down below are the highlights.
On his TNA World Championship run:
“I’m very proud of that time by myself and I will go on record to say that when when I was the World Champion at TNA and the whole Aces and Eights angle was up and running and that entire storyline with Hulk and Sting and the whole nine yards, that was the last time that there was truly some really great stuff going on storytelling-wise in TNA and the ratings proved it. I don’t care what anybody says, the proof is in the pudding. Bully Ray versus Jeff Hardy in the cage, a bigger house for TNA than they’ve ever done before and the ratings were great. I really sunk my teeth into that whole thing because being Bully Ray was just really an extension of Bubba Ray Dudley in ECW. I really never got into wrestling to be a single wrestler I always knew I want to be a part of a tag team and once me and Devon had accomplished everything that we possibly could accomplish, we decided, “Hey, let’s let’s go our separate ways and you know we’ll see what happens.” And we were both very successful in doing it. So I’m very proud of that body of work.”
On Dana White’s “fake” comment about pro wrestling:
“Fake is such a horrible word to describe pro wrestling. When it comes to the in ring action and physicality of what goes on in there, there is nothing fake about it. I put up a tweet the other day comparing pro wrestling to Cirque de Soleil. Cirque de Soleil is a choreographed athletic performance, so is wrestling. Does that make Cirque de Soleil any less real? All of the things that they’re doing, all the physicality, the gymnastics, the trapeze, the flips, the falls, everything, it’s all real, just like it is in the middle of a wrestling ring.”
“The term that I have always loved for pro wrestling and I don’t think many people in the United States have maybe even heard this term. It’s cool I like to refer to it as fighting opera.”
“As far as Dana is concerned, listen, he went out there he said something and I fired back with how I believe. I was not pissed, I’m not mad, I did think that he should have apologized to the wrestling world, not me individually or anybody individually. Come out and say, ‘Hey you know what, sorry I used used the word fake it’s definitely the wrong word.’ Because listen, if it wasn’t for pro wrestling, things like MMA would never exist. Pro wrestling is the foundation. Pro wrestling is the grandfather of all of these types of mixed martial arts and anything like that that you see on TV. Whenever there’s a pro wrestling aspect to the UFC is when they draw the biggest number. And that’s not just me talking out of my ass, Brock Lesnar was a professional wrestler first and a UFC fighter second. When they do their highest ratings when the pro wrestling guy was there. You know why? Because he had personality and he’s larger than life. So to say what we do is fake or you know the professional wrestling business doesn’t matter. It’s kind of ignorant.”
You can read the entire interview here.
