Former ECW and WWE star Spike Dudley reveals the most painful bump he ever took in his wrestling career
Former ECW and WWE star Spike Dudley did an interview with Chris Van Vliet. Here are the highlights courtesy of ChrisVanVliet.com…
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 moon salt 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 shit like that. And 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.”
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, 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 the chair shot from Lita as part of his WrestleMania 17 cameo during TLC 2: “I never realized the noise volume. Because when I look back at WrestleMania 17, that was my first time in one of these giant mega domes. What I remember about volume was it was so loud, you could not hear anything. Even when somebody was like, right next to you, you couldn’t hear, it was like white noise, because it was just [loud]. So the sound of the chair shot, I don’t recall. It was TLC 3. Lita had been in ECW, and she had obviously jumped in with the Hardys, and was huge star and all of that. But when it was time, as you go over the matches, and it’s like, ‘Okay Lita you take out Spike with a chair.’ I told her, ‘Don’t try to fake this, you swing that sh*t with everything you’ve got. I’ve been hit with the chair by guys 300, 400 pounds. There’s nothing you can do swinging as much as hard as you can that’s going to be heavier than the stuff I’ve already taken. You swing that with everything you’ve got, because I don’t want it to look bad.’ And she had no problems. ‘Okay, Spike, that’s what you say. No problem.’ Lita was great. That’s one of my proudest matches, it was a match with Lita. Right after that, I worked with her. I don’t know if it was like Raw or if it was Sunday Night Heat but it was one on one, me and her and I put her over. But that was actually a match I’m very proud of, because I put her over. I gave her a lot of the spots that I do with big guys, but I had her do them with me, and it was a fun match. And then Bubba and D-Von came down, and Jeff and Matt came down. It was just like a quick little 10-minute match. But I would say I’d put that up there as one of the matches that I’m most proud of.”