Last Saturday, Battleground Championship Wrestling held a pay-per-view called “Tribute To The Extreme” at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, PA. The WWE Hall of Famer D-Von Dudley was supposed to appear at the event but he was pulled from the show two days before.
PWInsider reported that D-Von was advertised to the show weeks prior and was set to be in Bully Ray’s corner during the match against Matt Cardona.
Two days before the show, BCW received a legal letter from World Wrestling Entertainment about using ECW intellectual property to promote “Tribute To The Extreme PPV”. WWE then removed D-Von from the show. The WWE Hall of Famer then attempted to reverse WWE’s decision but was unsuccessful.
“The promotion’s [BCW] side is that they received a legal letter from WWE this past Thursday upset about BCW promoting a “Tribute to the Extreme” at the show, playing off the ECW intellectual property, which is obviously now owned by WWE. D-Von was then pulled from the show, despite, according to the promotion, personally reaching out to WWE Chief Content Officer Paul Levesque to get the edict reversed, which was not successful.”
Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer provided more details about D-Von Dudley’s situation. Meltzer said that D-Von thought he can appear on the show because he wasn’t an active WWE superstar. Bruce Prichard decided to remove D-Von from the event and this controversy ended up on the Head of Creative. Triple H didn’t give his approval for D-Von to appear at the show.
“WWE did pull Devon Hughes (D-Von Dudley) from the event, both the live show and the convention. He was scheduled to be in the corner of Bubba Ray for his match with Matt Cardona. He went through John Cone in talent relations who reportedly approved of the booking, and he believed based on his contract, since he’s not a wrestler, that he was able to do things like that. Bruce Prichard nixed the booking, and it ended up on the desk of Paul Levesque. Hughes has said he was going to do it because he gave his word on it and Levesque didn’t give approval, and he was basically told if he did it, he’d be fired, so he didn’t do it.”
We will update you when we receive more details. Stay tuned with The Spotlight.