D-Von Dudley was promoted for an appearance at Battleground Championship Wrestling’s Tribute to the Extreme at the old ECW Arena in Philadelphia last weekend. He didn’t work the show, and reports indicated WWE pulled Dudley (who currently works as a coach and producer in NXT) as they weren’t happy with the independent promotion running a show centered around ECW — intellectual property they own.
BCW announced D-Von was off the show in a defiant-sounding Facebook post. A few days later they backtracked, writing the earlier post off to miscommunication between the parties involved.
This week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter has more on the story.
Dudley apparently went through WWE talent relations exec John Cone to get initial approval for the booking, which he believed he could take since he’s not under contract as an on-screen performer. When Bruce Prichard found out about it, he nixed the deal and brought it to Triple H. D-Von asked for permission to work the show, wanting to honor his word to BCW.
Triple H wasn’t swayed. Dave Meltzer’s WWE sources say the company ”didn’t want him [D-Von] in a physical risk,” even though the plans for Dudley at Tribute to the Extreme only called for him to pull out a table for Bully Ray after a video of Terry Funk telling him to get the tables played in the venue. What’s more, Hunter apparently told D-Von WWE would fire him if he kept the booking.
Meltzer went on to speculate that BCW’s second statement was meant to smooth the waters with WWE and prevent issues with booking other legends in the future.
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