Spike Dudley: His Most HARDCORE Moments, What He Said NO To, ECW, Brutal Chair Shots, Life After Wrestling

On getting on ECW’s radar:

"It was Paul, because they wanted to do the Dudley [group]. It was Paul, it was Raven. Taz knew me from the House of Hardcore, and if anything, Taz just looked like, Okay, here's a guy that obviously is shorter than me, it makes me look good. Let's bring him in. I'm only kidding. But no Taz wasn’t the creative mind. It was always Paul, it was Raven, it was Dreamer. Bubba liked me, and at the time, thrown with the Dudley characters we were talking earlier, there was so many Dudleys, but at the time that I got there, it was down to Bubba, D-Von, Big Dick, and Sign Guy, Devon was the heel, Dick was a character, he wasn't a worker. So by tagging me and Bubba as the baby faces, Bubba was in the feud with D-Von. We worked that for a couple months, until Bubba and D-Von said, hey, the two of us, we can go places. So they turned on me. They joined their alliance, and then I became the babyface blown person."

On Spike being a major part in The Dudleys getting over:

"Well, they could beat the sh*t out of me, and I say that with love. They didn't take advantage. Having worked with them so much, especially Bubba. He knew how much I could take, and that was my gift, was I could take a hell of a beating, and he pushed it to the limit. He never injured me. Bubba never injured me, but he beat the sh*t out of me. D-Von was a little bit more gentle, but D-Von did some stuff too. In fact, got time for a story? This was hilarious. During that debut, Bubba was the face, D-Von was the heel. Dick was a face, and I forgot who else was involved. I think Axel was involved as a heel with D-Von. So I pop out of that bag and get knocked out of the ring and disappear. Now, to get to that balcony, it was like a schmoz through the crowd. D-Von was mixing it up with someone with Bubba on the floor, and he drops Bubba with something, and I just improv. I see D-Von and I jump on his back, and I start wailing him. He had just met me. He didn't know who I was, and he thought it was a fan. So he grabbed me by the neck, over his shoulder, and did like that Judo throw onto the concrete with everything, I was just like, oh. He looked down at me and was like, 'Oh sh*t Spike, I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you.' He thought he was getting jumped by a fan. So, yeah, that was the only time he really, really layed it in. But that was a shoot because he thought he was protecting himself from some idiot fan, had no clue that it was me."

On being thrown into the crowd by Bam Bam Bigelow:

"It's strange, yeah, I think it's a part of wrestling history, and I'm not trying to brag. But it always comes back, and this was a few years ago. I don't watch too much of it. Occasionally, I'll mark out and search and stuff like that, and I saw something, it was like, five, seven years ago. They were showing the new WWE guys. It was some vignette, and they were like, This is old ECW stuff. They showed this thing. They didn't even know who I was, of me getting thrown in the crowd. And these kids were just like, 'Oh my God. Did they throw him in the crowd? That's insane!' This is from these new guys that do all of these crazy high spots and all that sort of stuff, and they watch that and they're like, holy sh*t. And a lot of that you could only do with ECW, because you need the crowd to catch for one thing."

Did you know they were going to catch you? 

"There's no way of knowing. We were fairly confident. And one of the things that Bam Bam did, especially at the arena, the one that's played is from the Philadelphia ring, that was the best image was prior to him throwing me, he'd beat on me, and I'd be down selling. He'd look at the crowd, he's like, 'Do you want me to throw him to you?' And they'd all go, 'Yeah!' And then he'd go to the other side, yeah, yeah. So he fed the crowd. Hey, he's coming, not are you gonna catch him, but do you want it? And they're all like, yeah. And at the arena, they caught me like a baby. It was like crowd surfing, where everybody puts their arms up and cool, all right, this is great. Go for a ride. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I always go back to the biggest influences. Bam Bam one, he got me over, because the whole gimmick behind that and the storyline has been lost. All everybody sees is the throw. But the storyline behind that was, I just did a match with him. The first time I wrestled was on TV, ECW TV. I beat him with a nutshot, and I rolled him up. And he was like the big beast with the triple threat with Shane and Chris Candido and all of that. And he wasn't supposed to lose the little job or Spike Dudley. He put me over. And then the revenge was the throw. And after I beat him, I probably wrestled him like 20 or 30 times for the next three months, and I never beat him again. Obviously, didn't matter. The ECW crowd saw me pin him one time. Now I had the credibility to beat anybody at any time, and he put me on the map."

On his current relationship with wrestling:

"I don’t really have one. When it's time to get out, it was time to get out. My wife was pregnant and Okay, so this is what happened. This is how I officially got out of the business. My wife was a few months pregnant with our first daughter, that'd be 2010. I was working for 2CW in Syracuse, New York, which is a great promotion. It's no longer there, but at the time, it was an awesome promotion, just great, great guys, truly, aside from like ECW, this group is the group that's closest to my heart in terms of the boys and all of that. And they use me a lot at that company, but they booked me in a match against Sabu again, RIP. I drove up there, it's about a five-hour drive. Drove up and I did the show, and I got my arm sliced. It wasn't bleeding that bad. It was a slice, it was just from a gimmick. Honestly, going into it, I was like, it's gonna be my Sabu match. I was like, I'm gonna do my arm, so self-inflicted. So I saw it, and I just taped it up, and I got into my car and I drove home, and I got home at like, four or five in the morning. My wife, she's like, 'Are you okay? Everything all right?' I was like, 'Yeah, I'm fine.' I fell asleep, and I woke up at like nine the next morning, and I start to peel the tape off, and blood just starts gushing. I was like, 'Honey, I think we got to go to the emergency room.' But then that was the moment where I realized, Okay, I'm gonna be a father. I can't be doing this crazy stuff anymore, because physically, that's what I did, was take bumps. And no matter how indestructible we all think we are, you hit a wall where you cannot do that anymore. So I was 40-41, something like that at the time, and that was the eye opener that okay, I can't do this and be a responsible parent any longer. So I got my stitches and I called it quits. I had a couple of matches after but that was the signal that you're done with the business."

On The Undertaker chokeslam:

"Okay, so I'm new in the WWE. He's the Hardcore Champion, and they book Spike vs. Undertaker. We always went through the match a little bit because TV time, and this is what we're going to do. So he's like, 'Hey, okay, you know, beat me up. I'll give you this little spot here, and then I'll give you the last ride and choke slam.' I looked at him, I was like, 'Is that it?' I didn't mean it in the sense of 'You need to do more, because I'm not going to sell for you.' But I was like, 'That's all you're going to do with me?' He's like, 'What do you mean?' I was like, 'Dude, I'm Spike, I'm 140 pounds, you can do something with me that you can't do with everybody else because of my size.' And he said, 'Well, what do you have in mind?' And I didn't really have anything in mind, but I started to think for a second, and I was like, 'Well, dude, you choke slam me out of the ring?' He went, 'No!' I was like, 'I'm serious. I can take it. I understand it's going to the pad, which is over concrete, but we can do it.' He goes, 'You're an idiot. No, I'm not doing that.' I said, 'Taker trust me, I can do this.' He's like. 'Well, let's get the crash pad out and try it.' This is obviously before the show, and so we had these crash pads where you could play and test out stuff. So he tries, he's spacing it, and he's seeing how much he can control me and all of that. And he's still not sold. Bubba happens to walk down to the ring while we're doing this, and he looked at Bubba, and he's like, 'This kid wants me to choke slam out of the ring! Is he insane?' And Bubba looked at him. He goes, 'Taker, if Spike says he can take it, he can take it, it's okay.' He was like, Okay, and he conceded, like, I had to wear him down to do that, and we pulled it off. But taker saw it and, I mean, it was whatever, 20 years ago, and he didn't remember that. I had to convince him to do it. He was apologizing to me [years later], like, 'I'm so sorry. I was such an asshole for making you do that.' And I was like, 'I'm an asshole because I made you do it.' He remembered the spot, he didn't remember that I convinced him. He thought in his head he was looking back as like, Hey, I'm the Undertaker, and I'm going to do whatever I want, so I'm going to take liberties on little Spike. So he was apologizing for me, going, 'I can't believe I made you do that.' I'm sitting there, going, 'No, I made you do that.' So it was a relief off of him. He was like, Oh, thank God. I feel so much better now that I wasn't that much of a dick. But it was a cool spot. It was no big deal."

On his Beyond the Mat clip:

"This is what's great. Barry Bloustein [director], I saw him a few years ago. He came up. He had this idea to do the movie, and I think he had like Jake the Snake and Terry Funk. He already got that part of it down, but he wanted to tell the story of beginner wrestlers getting into the business. He was in LA and we were in Hayward, California, where our school was, and he came up and did some filming, and he saw me in the ring, and it was like, 'Oh yeah, I like Matt.' It was cool. So he started filming me, and he brought me down to his home for about a week, maybe three, four days, something like that. I don't remember. But he took me to Cauliflower Alley, like the Hall of Fame meeting, and there was a bunch of people there, then he took me out for a day with Ted DiBiase, and he filmed all of this stuff. Then they were getting ready to shoot the movie, I made it to ECW, and they couldn't use me because now I was a known wrestler. They wanted somebody who hadn't made it. So all of that footage was not used, but he did that one little clip, but he's got hours like that from Cauliflower Alley. I remember I was with Ted DiBiase, and Ted introduced me to Stan Hansen, and Lou Thesz was still there, there was all of these old timers. And when I was hanging out with Ted, Barry, showed him a couple of my matches, my indie matches, and he introduced me to Stan. I'll never forget this, because Ted it was like, 'Hey, here's Matt Hyson, and he's a worker.' And Stan looked at me, was like, 'Get the f*ck out of here!' And Ted was like, 'No, Stan, this kid can work', which was like the biggest compliment you could possibly imagine. And Stan was like, 'Okay, Ted vouches for you, that's cool.' But I met a lot of really cool people. People during those couple of days. And I'd love, like, I ran into Barry a few years ago in Florida, and I should have asked him, What happened to that footage? I'd love to have it, or at least see it. But it was pretty cool. So yeah, so I had a bigger role in Beyond the Mat. So what happened was they wound up focusing on O think Mike Modest, and Robert Townsend, who, I think they had some clips in there of them getting tryouts and stuff like that."

On 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."

On 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 possibly becoming ECW World Champion:

"I couldn’t give a sh*t about the titles. Titles were a pain in the ass, to be honest with you. I did not like having the titles in ECW because you had to carry, well, you always had to carry the belts around. Actually, the ones in ECW, me and Balls, when we were tag champs, that was significant to me and the WWE, I had a bunch of these titles, and it's all bullsh*t, you know what I mean."

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."

On taking the first-ever 3D:

"We practiced it at House of Hardcore, at the school, different variations of it forever, for weeks before we debuted it. Yeah, that first 3D is not the way 3D is supposed to go. And thank God for Bubba. He was at 400 pounds or something like that, because I landed on his chest. My head never hit, but it was a straight spike pile driver. Had he not been so big and my head hit, I would have broke my neck. But, yeah, that was ugly. That was not the way the 3D was supposed to be. I mean, honestly, because that was the big thing. When Bubba and D-Von decided they were going to do the tag team it was like, we need to have a finisher. And we would go to the gym coming up with variations of some sort of the diamond cutter, it was the thing. So yeah, I sat there and took, try this, try this, try this, try this, try this. For hours, me as the crash dummy, testing it. And yeah, the way it came off on that first one was not really the intention. That wasn't what they were looking for. But it did look devastating, I will say, but yeah, then they said, Okay, we can't do this with everybody, so we got to figure out a different way. And then they figured it out where D-Von picks the guy, but if they flatten out versus head straight into the ground."

On his confrontation and match with Steve Austin:

"So I was doing the thing with Molly, and here's what's kind of funny about that. I always resent myself for not taking the reins with that. So it was a couple of weeks build up of Stone Cold was the heel, and he was getting the petition going so everybody would sign for him, but the babyfaces wouldn't sign it, and all of that. Then he insults Molly, and it winds up that we have a match. But the promo, the in-ring promo, this is one of my resentments of myself in the business, was not standing up to the office. You practice everything, and Vince came down and was like, 'Tell me what you're going to say and do it right now in the ring the way you're going to do it.' And it's grab the mic and you recite the words, but that's not what I would have liked to have said. So the promos and all of that were very much me playing a script which didn't feel real or sincere. But the match, the one match that I had with him, the one-on-one match that I had with him, was an awesome experience. You'd show up at Raw at like, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, and they'd have the board up so you knew what match you had. And it says, SCSA vs. SD, and I didn't know what the f*ck that meant. So I look at it, all right, yes, I don't have a match tonight because I don't see Spike. And like, an hour later, someone comes up to me. He's like, 'Hey Spike, what are you gonna do with Austin tonight?' I was like, 'What are you talking about?' [They said] 'You got the main event with Austin.' What? Oh SD, that's me? Oh, okay, cool. Steve and I really got along. I had a lot of time with him on the road, where he was just cool as sh*t, but at the TV time, he's like the big star and whatever. 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, I don't see him. 4 o'clock, he walks by me. 'Hey, Spike, I'll get with you later.' Okay, cool. They start filming the pre-show. We're getting close to the 9 o'clock Raw time, and it's like, 8:30 or something. I see him, and he's like, just listen to me, and I'll hit you with a stunner. Okay. That was it. And that's the way the business should be. Just call it, because he knew what the f*ck he was. I mean, he's brilliant in the ring, on the mic, to me he's the epitome, he's my favorite everything. Okay, now I'm nervous, obviously. Match starts, all I know is stunner. At the end. I come down. I do my intro. He comes down with his thing. The match starts. He starts kicking the sh*t out of me. I know how to sell. Okay, I work. He's beating me up. He throws me outside. And when you get outside, he's like, 'I'm gonna throw you. Reverse me. Take over.' So it's a squash match. There's no anything. He throws me outside. He tries to shoot me into like the announce table, and I reverse him, and he takes this giant bump, and I jump on and start pounding him, And the crowd goes ape sh*t, and it's all my cheesy punches, a few of them in the head, and I throw him back in and he kicks me, stuns me, end of story. But that pop when he let me reverse him and beat on him. that's the art of the business, there was nothing called, it was just follow his lead. Now you fire up on me, and when I fired up, the crowd went ape sh*t. I don't think they ever thought I was gonna win, but they went ape sh*t because he had heat, then it was over. That's one of the matches in WWE, if not the one that I'm most proud of, because there was nothing called, and we were the main event of their TV show, where everything was called, everything was scripted, but he didn't work that way. And he just said, 'Follow my lead.' And that was it. And it was just like that pop. I mean, there's a pop, if you want to talk about an audience pop that I remember was when I reversed it and the place went ape sh*t. That's one that I have watched, Paul is doing commentary, and there's some line in there where he's like, 'Spike Dudley can tell his grandkids that he got a two count on Stone Cold Steve Austin', and I love that line." 

What do you wish you had said to him in that promo?

"I don't know about the verbiage, but I followed the script they wrote for me. I wish it had just been more kind of natural from the heart. I don't even remember, I think it was just like, hey, he was talking about the petition, and I just wish I had just called it from the heart versus following their script, because I think that's one thing that Vince, he gives you scripts and all that, and says, Do this, do this. But if you change the script and it works, he's not going to complain. So I just wish I had the balls to just do it my way versus their way."

On a possible Hall of Fame induction:

"I have no idea, and don't really care. That's not for me to decide. I mean, my body of work, probably not."

Was there talk of putting you in when the Dudley Boyz went in?

"I have no idea, I’m not around."

What is Spike Dudley grateful for?

"My wife, my kids and my health."

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