Posted on 8/19/125 by Colin Vassallo
Former pro wrestler Spike Dudley sat down with Chris Van
Vliet in Providence, Rhode Island to discuss his many brutal
bumps and which one hurt the most, taking the first-ever 3D
from The Dudley Boyz, his matches with The Undertaker and
Steve Austin, his appearance at TLC 2 at WrestleMania X-
Seven, the moment he decided to step away from wrestling, a
possible Hall of Fame induction, and more!
On whether there were any spots he said no to:
“No, not really. But here’s the thing, that was all taken
with consideration. I never did anything I didn’t think I
could walk away from. There were things that I could not do.
I’m not a moonsault guy. So doing like any sort of 180, 360,
wasn’t even on the table. But nobody ever asked me to do
something that I can think of that I went, No, I’m not going
to do that. If I knew I could do it, I was willing to do it.
For me, it wasn’t the physical pain, a bump is going to
hurt. It was am I going to get injured doing it? And no, I
can’t really think of anything. I mean, on the Indies after
WWE, I’d go to these indie shows with kids with light bulbs
and sh*t like that. I’d say no to that stuff. But in ECW,
WWE, TNA, nobody ever asked me to do something that I didn’t
feel comfortable with.”
On his most painful bump:
“I’ll be honest. That one bump that I was telling you about
when Bubba and D-Von tossed me over in ECW. That was my
idea. So the setup is it’s me and Balls against Bubba and D-
Von in the ring. Bubba and D-Von are standing next to each
other. Balls picks me up and tosses me at them and in
theory, they’re supposed to take a bump, but I’m so small
that they catch me. They catch me in their arms, cradled
side by side, and they just back straight up to the ropes
and blind chuck me over the top. This was my bump. I called
this bump. But what happened was, when they tossed me, the
guard rails were those metal things, my heel hit the top of
the guard rail, and exploded. I didn’t think I got hurt. I
certainly didn’t need X-rays, but I was like ow! That hurts,
and I was kind of hobbled the rest of the time. But that was
the one I remember as like, ah, can I go on? Am I able to
finish the match? As the most painful I would say, yeah,
definitely. I’d go with that one.”
On deciding to retire from wrestling:
“My wife was pregnant and okay, so this is what happened.
This is how I officially got out of the business. My wife
was a few months pregnant with our first daughter, that’d be
2010. I was working for 2CW in Syracuse, New York, which is
a great promotion. It’s no longer there, but at the time, it
was an awesome promotion, just great, great guys, truly,
aside from like ECW, this group is the group that’s closest
to my heart in terms of the boys and all of that. They used
me a lot at that company, but they booked me in a match
against Sabu again, RIP. I drove up there, it’s about a
five-hour drive. Drove up and I did the show, and I got my
arm sliced. It wasn’t bleeding that bad. It was a slice, it
was just from a gimmick. Honestly, going into it, I was like
it’s gonna be my Sabu match, I’m gonna do my arm, so self-
inflicted. So I saw it, I just taped it up, I got into my
car and I drove home, and I got home at like, four or five
in the morning. My wife, she’s like, ‘Are you okay?
Everything all right?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I fell
asleep, and I woke up at like nine the next morning, and I
start to peel the tape off, and blood just starts gushing. I
was like, ‘Honey, I think we got to go to the emergency
room.’ But then that was the moment where I realized, Okay,
I’m gonna be a father. I can’t be doing this crazy stuff
anymore, because physically, that’s what I did, was take
bumps. And no matter how indestructible we all think we are,
you hit a wall where you cannot do that anymore. So I was
40-41, something like that at the time, and that was the eye
opener that okay, I can’t do this and be a responsible
parent any longer. So I got my stitches and I called it
quits. I had a couple of matches after but that was the
signal that you’re done with the business.”
On taking the first-ever 3D from The Dudleys:
“We practiced it at House of Hardcore, at the school,
different variations of it forever, for weeks before we
debuted it. Yeah, that first 3D is not the way 3D is
supposed to go. And thank God for Bubba. He was at 400
pounds or something like that, because I landed on his
chest. My head never hit, but it was a straight spike
piledriver. Had he not been so big and my head hit [the
mat], I would have broke my neck. But, yeah, that was ugly.
That was not the way the 3D was supposed to be. I mean,
honestly, because that was the big thing. When Bubba and D-
Von decided they were going to do the tag team it was like,
we need to have a finisher. And we would go to the gym
coming up with variations of some sort of the diamond
cutter, it was the thing. So yeah, I sat there and took,
‘try this, try this, try this, try this, try this.’ For
hours, me as the crash dummy, testing it. And yeah, the way
it came off on that first one was not really the intention.
That wasn’t what they were looking for. But it did look
devastating, But yeah, then they said, Okay, we can’t do
this with everybody, so we got to figure out a different
way. And then they figured it out where D-Von picks the guy,
but if they flatten out versus head straight into the
ground.”