WWE legend battered Vince McMahon with backstage expletives after brutal in-ring concussion when move went wrong
Few bouts in WWE have created as much drama and devastation as the famous TLC match.
With its origins deep in the Attitude Era in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the spectacle is arguably on par with the Hell in a Cell match for its destructive risks.
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Standing for tables, ladders and chairs, the epic matchup involves individuals or teams doing battle with the use of any or all of the instruments as weapons, the goal often to ascend a ladder and claim title belts.
WrestleMania in 2000 saw a triangle ladder match between Edge and Christian, The Dudley Boyz and The Hardy Boyz go down in history – it set the foundation for what officially became ‘TLC’ matches later that year.
Given the frequency with which stars fall – or throw themselves – from ladders, get struck with chairs or get sent crashing through tables, the risk of injury was never far away.
With TLC still in its relative infancy in 2002, the teams of Christian and Chris Jericho, Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy, Bubba Ray and Spike Dudley were thrown together to face reigning tag champs Kane and Hurricane - though the Big Red Machine was left to go it alone after his partner was wiped out prior to the bell.
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It is safe to say that bedlam ensued, not least when the time came for Jericho to execute a bulldog from the top of a ladder on Bubba Ray.
Recalling the infamous match on the veteran’s Talk is Jericho , Dudley outlined how the move went wrong – with disastrous consequences.
“You were gonna give me the bulldog off the top of the ladder,” explained the tag team legend “…Because you’re not really good, you spiked my head into the mat, and it’s the worst concussion of my life!”
The sickening impact of Dudley’s head landing on the mat, not unsurprisingly, left him woozy. Inexplicably, he carried on with the remainder of the wrestling match – with a bit of help.
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Jericho, filling in the gaps, added: “Eventually you were supposed to be climbing up the ladder. I’m looking at you and you’re just out in space, just lost.
“I say: ‘You gotta climb the ladder’, and your greatest response was: ‘how do you climb a ladder?!’
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“I was like: ‘Just put one foot on the bottom rung and put another on top of it,’ and you’re just blank-eyed, starring, [and] off you go to climb the ladder, just on instinct, basically.”
The 53-year-old New Yorker went on to detail just how lost he was, saying to his colleague: “You told me to take the Van-Daminator, and I said: ‘from who?’ – I had no idea who did a Van-Daminator.
“You told me to go up and do the Bubba Bomb and I said: ‘How?’ I didn’t even know how to do my own move!”
The chaos wasn’t confined to the ring. After 25 minutes of madness is Las Vegas, Kane somehow managed to keep his team’s championship reign intact and the stars trudged backstage.
There, things escalated further. Clearly in need of hospital treatment, Dudley refused – and began hurling abuse at his boss Vince McMahon and, presumably, anyone else in the vicinity.
He explained: “The crazy part about it is, when I go back and watch that TLC today, watching you tell me everything and then executing it the way we did, it’s crazy how you go on autopilot.
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“My brains were destroyed that night, to the point where I told Vince to F-off that night.
“Remember when they couldn’t get me into the ambulance? I ended up going and telling Vince and Hunter (Triple H) to go F themselves.”
One would like to think McMahon and co would give a pass to the grappler given his obvious physical and mental state.
Poor Bubba wasn’t even spared further pain at the hospital, either. Not even able to recall the passing of his mother the year prior due to his head injury, he was forced to go through the agony of ‘learning’ about her death all over again – about 50 times, in fact.
He went on: “I said to Tommy (Dreamer, when at the hospital): ‘Where’s my mum and dad?’ He looked at me like, real weird, and he goes ‘Well, your dad is back home in Long Island and your mum passed away last year.’
“I started crying like a baby because it was the first time I was hearing my mum had passed away, [but] five minutes later I looked at Tommy and said: ‘Where’s my mum and dad?’
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“They told me that 50 or 60 times… I had the same response every single time.”
Thankfully, the star managed to recover sufficiently to be back in a WWE ring within two weeks of his horrific concussion.
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His glittering in-ring career saw him feature in major promotions all around the world, not least in WWE where he was an eight-time tag team champion.
The Dudley Boyz were inducted into the company’s Hall of Fame in 2018.
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