WWE Hall of Famer D-Von Dudley announced on Thursday that he has left the WWE. The heavily-decorated former tag team champion initially returned to the company in 2015 as a competitor, but a year later he was working backstage in a producer role. He had most recently worked as a backstage coach at the WWE Performance Center.ย
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Alongside Bubba Ray as The Dudley Boyz, D-Von captured tag team championship gold in WWE, ECW, New Japan and TNA. But while he had pivoted to a backstage role, Ray is still wrestling as an active competitor for both Impact Wrestling and the NWA. The pair made headlines last year when they allowed The Usos to adopt their 3-D finisher as the 1-D (One and Done).ย
D-Von hasn’t wrestled a match since 2016 and officially confirmed his retirement back in 2020. He wrote at the time, “Even though I was a little frustrated about not continuing to wrestle for that one more year that I wanted, I’m extremely happy now being a producer and not wrestling. I have officially hung it up, I’m done. Except for different appearances that they may want me to do on the show, but no more wrestling. No more fighting for the titles. None of that anymore. I’m done. I’m officially done.”
“I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fame and it was a good ride. It really was. The old timers used to tell me don’t blink, because when you do it’s over. It goes that fast. And it did feel like it went really, really fast,” he continued. “But a twenty-eight-year career, always being on top and never taking a break, regardless of the injuries or anything like that. We did it. And I think Bubba said it best during our Hall of Fame speech. We did it our way. We went out there and conquered. We became synonymous in terms of using our name when tag team wrestling comes up. We will always be put in with some of the best and arguably some people will say we were the best. I’m just happy that when you do mention tag teams, the Dudley Boyz names come up.”