Bully Ray explains his pitch to put Dixie Carter through a table nearly a decade ago.
In early 2014, TNA President Dixie Carter found herself in a precarious position as MVP (Montel Vontavious Porter) sought to seize control of the company. This power struggle then culminated at Lockdown as Carter rallied a team together to face MVP’s team in an 8-man Lethal Lockdown match, where the winning team captain would then hold full control of TNA (now known as IMPACT Wrestling). Unfortunately for Carter, Bully Ray — the special guest referee of the contest — attacked her team captain, Bobby Roode, paving the way for Team MVP to win. After losing (storyline) control of TNA at the hands of Bully Ray, Dixie Carter was out for revenge.
The next month, Bully Ray battled Bobby Roode in a tables match at Sacrifice. As Bully appeared to be closing in on the win, a mystery person pushed him off of the top rope. This caused Bully to crash through tables beneath them, and award Bobby Roode the victory. That mystery figure was, of course, Dixie Carter. In the months following Sacrifice, Bully Ray was keen on returning the favor to Dixie Carter. And on August 7, 2014, he finally did.
Recently appearing on GAW TV, Bully Ray explained how the story came together, and how he later received the opportunity to put Dixie Carter through a table.
“My idea to put Dixie through a table actually came to me in Birmingham, England at the NEC arena in Birmingham. I remember talking to John Gaburick, who is the Head of Creative at the time. I said, ‘Listen, I got an idea. It’s a story that will play out for about six months. And I guarantee you by the time we get to the end of this story, the ratings will be up and we will pop a rating for this final moment. We’ll catch lightning in a bottle.'”
“And he’s like, ‘All right, what do you got?’ And I gave it to him and I told him the story of Bully and Dixie and everything that would happen after the Aces & Eights. And I said, ‘It culminates with me guaranteeing to put Dixie through a table at a certain time, at a certain place on a certain day.'”
“He looks at me. He goes, ‘You’re out of your f*cking mind.’ And I said, ‘okay,’ and I got up out of my seat and I was walking out of his office in the arena, and I turned around and I go, ‘You know it’ll work.’ Before I can get both feet out of the door, he goes, ‘Wait, wait, wait. Come back in.’ And he goes, ‘How do we do it?’ Then I knew I had him on the hook right there. So then I said, ‘This is how we do it. This is how we play it and this is how we make it happen.’ I had to remind him that my entire career was spent putting women through tables (referencing Mae Young, Stacy Keibler, Terri Runnels).”
Bully Ray continued, explaining how he got Carter to agree to the idea, and the ratings payoff it generated. “I told Gaburick about the idea. I said, ‘This is how we’ll go about it.’ And for six months, this entire story played out. I’m very proud to say that by the time we got to that final episode, we did a 1.4 rating. And when you think about it, a 1.4 rating for [TNA] was real strong. It was a really, really strong number. So that’s really the Dixie story.”
“She said she broke her back. When she went to the doctor, I guess they found like two little hairline fractures that she probably could have got like slipping in the bathtub also. She did, she did a great job. She took it perfectly. It’s probably one of the cleanest of all of the table bumps that I ever gave to a woman. It might be the cleanest one ever.”
“She really did it. She did a great job with it. As you saw, if you remember, the arena went crazy. The boys went crazy. And I told her, ‘You’re going to be, in the fans’ eyes, you will be a martyr for TNA. They’re going to appreciate you for what you did.’ I said, ‘You’re going to be so over on social media’. Eyes lit up. The case was closed.”
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