WWE Hall of Famers The Dudley Boyz (Bully Ray and D-Von) will be in attendance for tomorrow night’s special NXT vs. TNA Showdown event, as revealed in a recent exchange on social media. Their appearance adds another layer of intrigue to the “Winner Takes All” match for the NXT and TNA Tag Team Championships between The Hardy Boyz and Darkstate, as well as to their own upcoming match against The Hardys at TNA’s Bound For Glory pay-per-view on October 12.
The news came via a series of posts on X. After Matt Hardy posted a message promoting the high-stakes match, his longtime rival Bully Ray quote-tweeted him with a surprise announcement. “Devon and I will be watching. From the front row…🤓,” Bully Ray wrote. A surprised Matt Hardy replied, “Was not expecting to see you two until Sunday…,” to which Bully Ray simply responded, “Surprise”.
The presence of The Dudley Boyz is significant given their storied history with The Hardy Boyz. Alongside Edge and Christian, the two teams revolutionized tag team wrestling in the late 1990s and early 2000s, most famously through their series of Tables, Ladders, and Chairs (TLC) matches at events like WrestleMania 2000 and WrestleMania X-Seven. This legendary rivalry has spanned multiple promotions, including WWE and TNA.
The two teams are currently set to face each other one final time at TNA’s Bound For Glory on October 12. The match was set up at TNA’s Slammiversary event, where Bully Ray confronted the newly crowned TNA World Tag Team Champion Hardys and challenged them to face Team 3D at the company’s biggest show of the year. On the September 25 episode of Impact!, both teams agreed to make the match a Tables match for the titles, with Ray citing that they were always bothered by losing the first-ever tag team Tables match to The Hardys over 25 years ago at the Royal Rumble.
The Dudley Boyz, who were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2018, will be watching as their rivals, The Hardys, compete in a historic cross-promotional match. The “Winner Takes All” stipulation means that either The Hardys will add the NXT Tag Team Championship to their TNA titles, or NXT’s Darkstate (Dion Lennox and Osiris Griffin) will leave with both sets of championships.
The NXT vs. TNA Showdown is a special event airing live on Tuesday, October 7, 2025, on The CW from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida. The show is the culmination of a months-long storyline that has seen talent from both promotions “invade” each other’s programming, made possible by an official partnership that began in January 2025. The special will air head-to-head with AEW’s Dynamite: Title Tuesday special on TBS.
NXT vs. TNA Showdown – Updated Card
- Winner Takes All Tag Team Match for the TNA World Tag Team Championship and NXT Tag Team Championship: The Hardys (Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy) (TNA) vs. DarkState (Dion Lennox and Osiris Griffin) (NXT) (Everyone is banned from ringside)
- NXT North American Championship Match: Ethan Page (c) vs. Mustafa Ali
- Winner Takes All Match for the NXT Championship and TNA World Championship: Oba Femi (NXT) vs. Trick Williams (TNA)
