Bully Ray accidentally found out about first ECW Tag Team Championship win
Bully Ray found out about the first Tag Team Championship victory in his wrestling career by accident.
Ray recalled the story of his first ECW Tag Team Championship win with D-Von Dudley on Busted Open: The Master’s Class. The Dudley Boyz won the titles at Hostile City Showdown in 1997 from The Eliminators (Kronus and Saturn). However, Taz accidentally revealed they were winning the titles when he showed off the merch for the event.
“Now the only other memory I have of my first championship was from a T-shirt. The ECW Dojo was in Long Island, New York. The ECW Dojo was ran by Taz and Perry Saturn. I also had a quote unquote office in the Dojo because I helped out with a lot of things behind the scenes with ECW, much like Tommy did. I kind of came up with the I got the arenas for the building, I did the scheduling for the building, blah blah blah.”
“Taz was in charge of designing T-shirts. Taz designed the very first Barely Legal T-shirt, the one with him and Sabu face to face with the date. Now on the back of that T-shirt was the entire line up of the card. The T-shirts came to the ECW Dojo before the Dudleys had won their first Tag Team Championships on March 15th. So as Taz now I’m a young boy still just getting my feet wet. Me and D’Von are, you know, we’re starting to hit. Taz holds up the T-shirt to look at it, to show everybody there.”
“And when he turns the T-shirt around, it says the Dudley Boys Champions versus the Eliminators challengers. And I went ‘huh’ and he turned the shirt around, he said ‘You’re not supposed to see that. Forget you even see that. Go f*ck yourself.’ In typical Taz fashion. And I was like ‘Oh my God, we’re about to win the Tag Team Championships.’”
“And that’s my memories of my first championship, seeing it printed on the back of a T-shirt before we had ever won.”
Rosanne Raphael is a wrestling writer with over three and a half years of experience covering all things related to the industry. From a kindergarten teacher to PR Associate to turning her lifelong passion for the industry into a career, Rosanne is currently writing for F4W Online where she focuses on wrestling news, analysis, and storytelling.
Rosanne previously contributed to Sportskeeda as an Assistant Content Manager.
When not consumed by wrestling, Rosanne is a musician and an aspiring artist.