D-Von Dudley has revealed that Vince McMahon pitched the infamous Mae Young table spot as a way to turn the Dudley Boyz heel, that he and Bubba Ray told Vince it would have the opposite effect, and that Mae Young came to the back after the first time it was done and slapped Bubba Ray for being too gentle with her.
Speaking on the Going Ringside podcast with Scott Johnson, D-Von said the setup began after an earlier attempt to turn the team heel by putting Terri Runnels through a table had backfired exactly as he and Bubba predicted.
“Me and Bubba both said that’s not going to work, because at that time the business had changed where the bad guys were becoming good guys and the good guys were becoming bad guys. We said that’s going to turn us baby face. He didn’t believe it, and it somewhat did. So Vince goes, I got an idea. We’re gonna put Mae Young through a table.”
D-Von said both he and Bubba pushed back on that idea too, telling Vince the same thing would happen regardless of the target’s age.
“Me and Bubba both said, no, that’s not gonna work. I don’t care if she’s 90 years old or 102. We put her through that table, that crowd’s gonna lose their mind. And that’s exactly what happened.”
The Dudleys were careful with Mae Young during the spot, treating her gently given her age. What happened backstage afterward was not what they expected.
“We get to the back and Mae Young said, you two. We said, what’s going on? And she slapped Bubba. We went holy cow. She said, next time you’re in the ring with me, just make sure one thing: you hit me like you hit one of the boys.”
D-Von also explained why he let Bubba Ray be the one to execute the powerbomb rather than doing it himself.
“I’m scared of heights, so me going up on the top rope to put somebody through a table was never my forte. Me going up there carrying somebody up there, especially an elderly woman. I think Vince getting mad was my biggest fear, because I might have dropped her or something happened. But Bubba was good with that.”
Jerry Lawler did not know the spot was coming. D-Von said Vince deliberately kept the commentators in the dark to capture a genuine reaction, and the broadcast shows it working.
“The commentators were left in the dark about a lot of things, because Vince wanted that natural reaction. When you go back and listen to Jerry the King Lawler, you hear him say, the Dudleys are not going to do this, somebody’s got to be coming from the back. And nobody came.”
The Dudleys performed the spot twice, once on Raw and once on SmackDown. After the SmackDown version, Mae Young approached them with a new request.
“She told me and Bubba that she wanted to talk to Vince about having a cage match, where she wanted to run down, she wanted us to hit her, put her down, then take it to the top and put her through the table from the top of the cage.”
D-Von said looking back on the moment still brings a mixture of disbelief and gratitude.
“Sometimes I look back and go, what the hell were we thinking? That was such a risk, but it worked. I’m just happy to this day that we can still talk about it and be in awe of what we did.”
D-Von Dudley runs the DDA Academy, the Devon Dudley Academy, at 2720 Forsyth Road in Winter Park, Florida.
