At TNA’s Pay Per View event, Slammiversary, the troubled wrestling promotion has announced their third inductee into their Hall of Fame. Team 3D, best known to the WWE fans as the Dudley Boys, will join Sting and Kurt Angle as members of the TNA Hall of Fame.
The Dudley Boys had their start in Extreme Championship Wrestling, where the then named Bubba Ray and Devon, would emerge as not only the stars of the gigantic Dudley Clan, but as the top tag team in the promotion earning their version of the World Tag Team Championship eight times. The duo would move on to the World Wrestling Federation and unlike previous ECW talent, would continue to be successful and over a near six year run would appear in Pay-Per-View main events and win versions of the World Tag Team title there ten times.
There contract was not renewed in 2005 and due to the WWE purchase of ECW intellectual property the duo were no longer allowed to go by the name of the “Dudley Boys” and were now Brother Ray and Brother Devon and collectively known as “Team 3D”. They would make TNA their American home (they would win the IWGP World Tag Team Championship in Japan) and win the Tag Team Titles there three times.
The duo would have singles runs in TNA, and Brother Ray would reinvent himself as “Bully Ray” and would enjoy his most successful singles run to date, capturing the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. It would not be out of the question to envision Bully Ray regaining that belt in the near future.
This brings us to just what does this accolade mean anyway? We here at Notinhalloffame.com have been critical of the TNA Hall of Fame for two reasons:
The first is that the three inductees (although you can argue Devon is no longer competing) were active performers at the time of their selection, indicating that the struggling promotion does not have the history to necessitate a Hall of Fame. The second is that the person who should be in their Hall of Fame the most, Jeff Jarrett, has not been inducted and now that he is in the process of creating his own wrestling promotion (Global Force Wrestling) the odds of him getting into this Hall seems remote. Considering the way he departed the WWE in 1999, he has equal odds of entering that promotion’s Hall of Fame are weak too.
With respect to Team 3D, the health of TNA is not that good and we have to wonder whether this wrestling organization will be around for a few more years to even make this accolade mean anything. Still, we congratulate Mark Lamonica (Bully Ray/Bubba Ray) and Devon Hughes for receiving this honor.
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