Bully Ray recently spoke with ESPN.com ahead of tomorrow’s Ring Of Honor Final Battle event in New York City; you can read a few highlights below:
Bully Ray talks about what Final Battle will mean for him:
“I don’t think it could be any more fitting. The Hammerstein Ballroom, where I have so much history, it’s New York City where I have so much history. I think the name of the pay-per-view is probably the most fitting: Final Battle. I’ll be the first one to admit: I know I don’t belong anywhere near a ring right now. I didn’t even really want it to happen, but it has to happen. It has to happen for closure, closure for me and closure for wrestling fans.”
Bully puts over The Briscoes as a formidable team:
“I have always seen and still see a lot in the Briscoes. They are the team when it comes to Ring of Honor. They have an edginess to them that I believe nobody else in the company has. I believe that they are a team that would have fit back in the day in ECW.
The Briscoes wished they could have fought me and D-Von. They’re going to get as close as you possibly can get when they face me and Dreamer.”
Bully talks about being a friend and adversary to Tommy Dreamer over the years:
“It’s not really Tommy Dreamer being a part of my story. It’s Tommy Dreamer being a part of my life. Tommy knows at the end of the day, when it comes to the tag team the Dudley Boyz, it’s all about Bubba and D-Von. But whenever I’ve needed help in the past or Dreamer’s needed help in the past, we’ve always been by each other’s side. There’s even been times in the past where we beat the piss out of each other. In this very building, in the Hammerstein Ballroom in 2005 at ECW’s One Night Stand, I carved my best friend to shreds with a cheese grater and powerbombed him through a flaming table.
“When you’re friends, you’re friends to the end. You take the good, you take the bad, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence we’ve been by each other’s sides for so long, even outside the ring.”
Bully says his match at the appropriately named Final Battle will be remembered for years, and he is telling a story in the ring:
“The most important thing in professional wrestling is storytelling and character development. I know in 2017 moving into 2018, there are a lot of wrestlers out there and a lot of fans out there who are not necessarily as much into the story and the characters as they are the actual wrestlers and the wrestling moves. But when you look at the history of wrestling, the foundation is storytelling and character development. I pride myself in the art of my storytelling. Anything I do in wrestling has to have substance. It has to have meaning. There has to be a foundation to it. There has to be a reason. I never go out there and do something just for the sake of doing it because then it’s here today, gone tomorrow, and people will never talk about it again. We can talk about stuff I did from 20 years ago that is actually still relevant today. How many people can we say that about?”
“From top to bottom, whether it’s Cody vs. Dalton, or the Bucks, or Kazarian and Daniels vs. War Machine, or Ospreay vs. Taven, or the Jay Lethal match, it’s all great stuff. What makes my match different is my match has nothing to do with wrestling moves. My match has to do with violence — pure, straight-up violence. There will be blood. There will be moments that people will be talking about 20 years from now. I think it’s pretty apropos that Final Battle will be my final battle.”
