D-Von Dudley was supposed to appear at the Battleground Championship Wrestling event on December 17 at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, PA, where he would be in the corner of Bully Ray (Bubba Ray Dudley) in his match that night against Matt Cardona.
He was also scheduled to appear at a convention after the ECW tribute show, but WWE pulled him from the appearance.
Dave Meltzer reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that he went through John Cone in talent relations, who approved of the booking but it was rejected by Bruce Prichard, who then placed it on Paul “Triple H” Levesque’s desk. Triple H essentially threatened to fire him if he made the booking. Meltzer wrote,
“WWE did pull Devon Hughes (D-Von Dudley) from the event, both the live show and the convention. He was scheduled to be in the corner of Bubba Ray for his match with Matt Cardona. He went through John Cone in talent relations who reportedly approved of the booking, and he believed based on his contract, since he’s not a wrestler, that he was able to do things like that. Bruce Prichard nixed the booking, and it ended up on the desk of Paul Levesque. Hughes has said he was going to do it because he gave his word on it and Levesque didn’t give approval, and he was basically told if he did it, he’d be fired, so he didn’t do it. There was no real reason past the claim that they didn’t want him in a physical risk, but I’m not sure how much physical risk there is in pulling out a table since he was not scheduled for any physicality himself.”
Additionally, there was a clip prepared of Terry Funk telling D-Von to “get the tables,” which would have played during the match.
According to the report, BCW released their later statement to repair their relationship with WWE, as they didn’t want the company to stop more legends from appearing for BCW events.
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