D-Von Dudley recently made claims that Jim Ross was racist toward him back in the day. After JR rejected the claims, D-Von went on to explain what happened in detail on his podcast:
“It was at the WWE restaurant, the grand opening of it. We were mingling with some of the guests that were there. WWE really rolled out the red carpet for this event. It was huge. I remember being upstairs and Bubba (Ray Dudley) was like, ‘Let’s go downstairs and see what’s going on down there.’ So we went downstairs, and as we’re downstairs, we’re looking around, and it was like another private room downstairs in the basement of the restaurant. There was so many people upstairs we were just like, ‘Alright, let’s just chill down here for a second.’ Which is what we did.
Here comes JR. JR comes down and we’re like, ‘JR, how you doing? Hey JR!’ ‘Boys, how you guys doing?’ ‘Good, JR.’ Me and Bubba are like, ‘Good, good, good.’ He was like, ‘Hey, you know what, boys? You guys are fitting in really good here. You boys are doing really good. I like you boys, I like you boys a lot. D-Von, I’m not too sure. The verdict’s still out on him. I’m not too sure how I particularly feel about this.’
And I’m thinking to myself, what does he mean by that? JR says, ‘You know, again, the verdict’s not out yet but I’m still a little hesitant with D-Von.’ And Bubba knew what he was getting at, so Bubba butts in and goes, ‘You know something, JR? D-Von’s a hard worker, he never gives this company any problems. We go in and do our business and that’s it. D-Von’s a good guy. He takes care of his family, he does everything he’s supposed to do as an individual.’ And JR continued to go, ‘Well, I get that. That’s all good, but there’s just something about him. I’m not sure.’
I’m not saying anything, I’m keeping quiet, and that’s when it finally comes out, ‘He’s black. I don’t know. That’s my hiccup. I don’t know how I could feel about it.’ I started balling up my fist, and Bubba saw that, so Bubba grabbed me and he goes, ‘You know what, JR? Black, white, purple, brown – it doesn’t matter. He’s a great individual. He’s a good human being.’ ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, I’m not saying that he’s not. But I just don’t know because he’s black, and I just don’t know about that.’
And at that point I was like, ‘Man.’ I had to think about it, if I hit him we’re going to lose our jobs. If I say something, I could lose my job, because at that time I didn’t think that I would be able to fight that. I’m a little fish in a big pond. Remind you, though, when he said it, he was very drunk. He was extremely drunk, slurring his words and all that. But they say when you’re drunk, the truth comes out.
The other incident, like I said, was in Indianapolis where myself, (Tommy) Dreamer, Bubba, (Paul) Heyman and Spike (Dudley) were sitting at a table. We had gotten there a little early, it had to be about 1:30, maybe 2 o’clock, and I think JR had just came into catering, he just got out of the meeting. He comes over, he says hello to everybody but me.
Paul Heyman pretty much called him out. He says, ‘What? Why don’t you want to say hello to D-Von? What’s wrong with D-Von? What, because he’s black?’ And JR went, ‘You’re damn right because he’s black. You’re damn right.’ Now, I don’t know if he got mad at Paul for calling him out and ignoring me and saying hello, which he didn’t have to, that’s fine, but I don’t know if he got mad at that and that’s why he said what he said, because his ego got in the way or what have you. But that’s what was said.”
On his Grilling JR podcast, Conrad Thompson asked Jim Ross if he’s willing to bury the hatchet with D-Von Dudley. Good Ol’ JR replied:
“No problem. I’m happy to do it. I’m just not going to put it on tape and make a TV show out of it. How many times have I got to address it to satisfy everybody? I’m not a racist. I’ve never been a racist. Ask some of the African American athletes that I’ve been around and worked with in my 50-year career, they’ll say the same thing.
Like I said before when you and I first talked about this, I don’t remember the first cross word I had with D-Von. The boisterous one was Bubba, but not in a bad way, he just had no problem expressing himself and Bubba had a lot of ideas. He was a throwback, a main event guy that wanted to be involved in booking his angle, and I love that.
I’d have no problem reconnecting with D-Von. I never got mad at him, I was bewildered about how this could happen because, like I said, I don’t remember any negative exchanges with him and what I allegedly said would damn sure be negative.
I am interested in reconnecting with D-Von, because I like D-Von. When I hired the Dudleys, nobody in my world thought they would become as big as they did because a lot of the decision-makers and the big shots didn’t watch ECW. I did.”
