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The sun had just begun to throw color on the clouds of a preciously breezy Central Florida evening as I approached an open overhead door in the back corner of a humble storage warehouse complex just a hop and skip north of the Greater Orlando Area’s WWE Performance Center. Tuesday night training was already in session as a circle of D-Von Dudley Academy students alternated between Hindu squats and high knee burnouts on the asphalt. Along with newer enrollees the group boasted several who had just performed over the weekend at DDA Ascension – the school’s third-ever independent pro wrestling show – including Caeli Fuego, Selene Heavens, El Hijo del Tigre, and The Jester of Madness. They were all under the supervision of a figure whose imposing stature loomed even from his seated position.
Based on D-Von’s own prior description of his longtime strength and conditioning coach I immediately recognized “Apache” Dann Carr – the man who built American Gladiators out of the strength contests he organized between his fellow ironworkers and other craftsmen. Before D-Von himself rolled up in a shining white SUV, Carr effortlessly swapped between regaling me with memories and barking commands at the trainees. He mentioned how DDA alumnus Kamille has adopted his “Dudley Dozen” workout battery for her own school, then instructed a new student to walk it off upon detecting with practically psychic precision that they were blowing up. “I don’t wanna hear ‘yesterday was leg day’,” he growled. He proudly showed off a photo of Jessika Carr, who’d selected her WWE surname in his honor, and beamed when pointing out that she still holds a DDA record of doing 205 situps while holding a 75-pound weight. “Everyone do a lap– no, two laps,” he sternly ordered the split second a more experienced student’s focus dipped below his satisfaction.
Reverence for the coach was evident in the willing expressions of the exhausted collective, who surely recognize that names like Serpentico, Sam Shaw, and Robbie T have been molded under the same tutelage. Carr explained that since he’s not there to hold the students’ hands when they get WWE tryouts, he works them based on what those tryouts entail. “I want to train them like they’re training for the Olympics, and D-Von said that’s exactly what he wants.” On the Busted Open podcast Bubba Ray Dudley once called Carr “one of the greatest warriors I know,” and added, “[He] said, ‘We don’t just train you to be the strongest, we train you to be strongest the longest.’ And in pro wrestling, you need to be strongest the longest – especially mentally.” Notably a portrait of KiLynn King hangs on DDA’s wall of fame, autographed along with the phrase, “Strongest the longest.” Carr would later tangentially share that when the original Team 3D Academy incarnation of the school first opened, he saw Bubba take his worst bump by falling 16 feet off a ladder onto bare concrete while hanging the sign.
In two visits to DDA in as many weeks, I’ve quickly learned D-Von has a way of instantly making you feel like an old friend. My intention with each meeting was to approach first with an upstanding demeanor and a firm handshake, and each time D-Von outdid me even more readily with his natural, welcoming smile. He briefly talked business with young talents Cecilia Brooks and SoFlyTy as I observed the other students transitioning to the ring. For this phase of the day’s training, “The Lion of Zion” Samson watched over DDA’s custom squared circle infamously surrounded by gigantic WWE posters of Kurt Angle, Batista, Booker T, John Cena, Kane, Bobby Lashley, Triple H, and more. When D-Von invited me to his office, forward and backward rolling drills could be heard getting underway, and the well-used mat resounded with practice bump after practice bump throughout our conversation.
PWTorch: My goodness, Dann makes an impression right away.
D-Von: What Hulk Hogan is to wrestling, he is to arm wrestling. He is a god. Scott Norton loves him. He was also responsible for the [Fighting Eagles] boxing team that went undefeated. He got his degree in exercise science. The thing I like about Dann is he’ll start a routine and it’ll last about three or four weeks, and if he sees that your body’s getting used to it he changes it up and he shocks the body.
PWT: I’ve heard you describe him as your Mickey.
D-Von: My Mickey from “Rocky III”.
PWT: I thought you were embellishing, and then I meet him and, no – he’s Mickey. He’s tough as nails but you can see that the students respect him.
D-Von: I had to pull him back a little bit because of everything that happened in NXT with Bill DeMott. I understand Bill’s way of doing business because that’s the way we broke in, but times have changed, and a lot of us were not ready for that. So when you open up a school and you’ve got somebody from the old school, they want to still do things the old school way. But this generation is a lot more sensitive than my generation or the generations before that. And now with social media just rampant, any complaint or anything like that gets put on there and it’s done. Again, I understand Bill’s way of doing things because we came from the same school – Johnny Rodz – and that’s the way we were brought into the business. Taz, same thing, when he did the dojo in Long Island for ECW with Perry Saturn. Now that was old school. It was to the point where people were quitting, they were throwing up, they couldn’t take the training. Only the strong survived in ECW. So with that, me and Bubba, when we opened up the school in 2007, we wanted that same feeling. We didn’t care about the new school way of doing things and all that; we wanted the old school tradition. And when things started happening on social media with people, we were just like, we gotta pull back, because one wrong anything will destroy everything. We gotta go with today. If times have changed, then we have to change, and that’s just the way it goes.
As if predicting my curiosity, D-Von addressed his tag team partner’s departure from Florida as he continued to overview the school’s history and the reasoning for its tenets.
D-Von: Bubba was with us up until 2013 because when his parents passed away he felt alone here in Florida. He wanted to go back with his family. He had nothing here. So he decided to go back up north, and he opened up a school in Connecticut so we would have the two locations. And then we decided, you know what, you just run that place and I run this place. And that’s when we had to change the name to D-Von Dudley Academy – DDA, which was the perfect fit. And we’ve been going ever since then. We’ve been producing students left and right that have gone to Japan, NXT… and because of Dann’s training, when they go for the tryouts in NXT, they can’t blow ‘em up! I’ve had Matt Bloom say that to me, “They’re in perfect shape!”
Gearing students specifically for success in WWE’s rigorous tryouts isn’t a cheat code, though. D-Von went on to detail tryout challenges, and how they have changed his approach to the independent wrestling scene.
D-Von: Now, sometimes these kids get up there, it’s their NXT tryout, and they get nervous. So it’s kind of like they forget everything now that their nerves kick in. So I have to teach them how not to be that nervous, and that you have to perform. The minute they tell you to do something you’ve got to be able to do it, and there are no second chances. So I basically now program them to realize that you’ve got to be ready, and this is one of the reasons why we wanted to do these shows now… …if you do get a tryout in NXT, they want guys that are TV-ready. They don’t want the mistakes that are being made on the independents. So now I’ve shut myself away from going to independent shows, because I couldn’t take it. A lot of the shows just weren’t good. It wasn’t run right. I have been a producer for WWE for seven and a half years, so I was there for the old Vince regime… and I always said if you can get through Vince you can get through anything. That’s why, this last show, I ran it just like I would if I was doing a WWE live event.
ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…
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Contextualizing his approach to DDA’s own shows, D-Von dived into his experiences running WWE live events under Vince McMahon.
D-Von: I had to be responsible at the live events for all talent that was there. I had to be the first one there and the last one to leave, and then of course write the report for Vince to let him know what happened and almost give him a play-by-play. I never knew I could type that fast! I never got reprimanded for any spelling mistakes or anything like that but I’m sure there was! But when you get there, 4:30 in the afternoon, and you don’t leave until 11:30-12:00 at night, you’re tired. Now you gotta drive 3-4 hours to the next town, and then on top of that if it’s Sunday going into Monday… …now you have to read [Monday Night Raw] and give feedback on that show. By the time I get to the hotel I don’t want to read! Reading puts me to sleep! If it ain’t about me I don’t want to read it! It was many a night where I would get to that hotel room at 4:00-5:00 in the morning after driving and doing what I had to do, and then had to be at the production meeting by… if you were on the West Coast, 10:00AM, or 1:00PM on the East Coast. So, it was hard, and at the time I’m saying to myself, damnit, why do we have to do all this, this is insane! But yet now, running my show, I get it. I tell people – don’t take it personal. If I’m getting upset or yelling, don’t take it personal. I want the best production we can possibly have, and I think we did with this past show. We wanted to make sure everything was on point. Before the show started we went over every nook and cranny, just like WWE does.
Expounding on the quality he’s aiming for with his shows, D-Von discussed what he’s looking for when booking outside talent and why.
D-Von: In order for you to be on my show you have to show me that you can work – that you can wrestle. I’m not just gonna hire a guy that somebody says, okay, this guy is good and blah blah blah, and then you see him and he’s not good. I don’t want that because I’ve seen that so many times on indie shows, and I just said nope. I want to see you. Like, [All Combat Wrestling]. We made the agreement to get involved with them, but I said wait a minute, I haven’t seen these guys. I know their style was lucha, and I know we do it from WWE’s perspective in terms of wrestling. Same moves, but the psychology… or just certain things… you know when a guy taps a guy on the back and he goes running? As opposed to taking him and really whipping him off and doing it? So I spoke to the guy, Frankie [Ciatso], and I said listen – I need to see these guys as soon as possible… …and they all got in the ring here and worked out and showed me what they can do. When I saw that I said okay, thumbs up, they’re good. So anybody that comes, I need to see video on them and see what they can do. It’s no different than WWE scouting people. I want to run this the same exact way that they do. And the only way I’m gonna be able to do that is if I’m hands-on and making sure of everything I’ve learned over the years from Vince McMahon, Michael Hayes, Mike Rotundo, Adam Pearce, Jamie Noble… because they were there before me. Michael Hayes was just so instrumental in helping me. He was the one who showed me how to do things on the headset, and how to call matches to the truck. They all took me under their wing and showed me how to be a producer, and I was always grateful and thankful for it.
Having passed over a particular name, D-Von circled back.
D-Von: And a lot of guys don’t like him, and I get this, but even John Laurinaitis, you know? I can’t say anything bad about Johnny. I know a lot of people say bad things about him but he took me and really guided me as a producer. I don’t know why he liked me, but I was very grateful for it. So I don’t have any bad words to say about him at all, although other people do! And I understand the situation that happened between him and Vince, but that’s not my business, I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. But as far as helping me in the business, he was there.
PWT: At Ascension we saw you were on the headset. You’re running the show.
D-Von: I’m running the show.
PWT: I want to get more into the school and the shows, although I do want to take this opportunity, because as we sit here it’s a little more than one year after your retirement match at TNA Bound for Glory. About a year removed, how are you feeling? I’m not even asking, “hey are you coming back,” but… how is that match sitting with you?
D-Von: Great. People say, “Oh, you’ll be back. You’ll be back.” No I won’t! I’m done! One of the biggest things is my back. I had the back surgery, and, you know, Randy Orton had the same back surgery that I had. And I asked him, “How the hell are you still getting in the ring and doing that?” And he said, “D-Von, if you watch my matches, I don’t take any bumps, really! And when I do, it’s offensive bumps!” He goes, “I wrestle smarter. I wish I would have done that earlier.” I said, “A lot of us wish we would have done that earlier.” Because maybe my back wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I would have stopped doing the leg drop off the second and landing on my ass. I felt no pain then, but now, years later, the numbness started running down the leg and the discs are deteriorating. You know, the stuff that we do in the ring, it’s great, the fans love it, but at the same token the toll that it’s taking on the body is just… I can’t even describe it, it’s that bad. But yet, this is what we do. It’s like asking a football player to ease up on the field. He’s not going to; he’s gonna hit full contact. Same thing with wrestling, we’re gonna go full tilt. I realize that I had my fun in the sun. 35 years of wrestling has been great. I don’t have anything in the basement to bring out. Not to mention, there’s no way I can come back and do another match and top what I did at Bound for Glory.
Resolute in his contentment, D-Von went into how his retirement match came to be and why it meant so much.
D-Von: Bubba likes to always refer to things as the rock group KISS – you want to hit the greatest hits and go home, and that’s it! You know, when KISS took off the paint, they weren’t KISS anymore to a lot of fans. Even the new songs, they were good, but they weren’t “Rock and Roll All Nite”, “Dr. Love”, and all that. The minute KISS put the paint back on, they became KISS again. So when Bubba asked me, he said, “You think you can do one more match?” I said, “Depends on who it is.” He goes, “The Hardys.” I said, “Absolutely.” He goes, “A TLC match?” I go, “F*** no!” I said nope, I hate ladders and I don’t like climbing. But he goes, no, it would be a tables match – something that we did back in 2000 at Madison Square Garden, we had the first tables match. So it was only fitting to end it that way. Not to mention the emotional pulling of the strings. That’s what we wanted. And that’s what we got to have. Everybody standing and cheering for the whole match? And at the end, crying because they realized it was finally over? A lot of people’s childhood was gone after that! You know, that’s what we wanted. So to have that type of connection with them, you’re not gonna get that doing anything else. And I don’t want to be one of those guys that they say, damn you should have retired! We did enough to hit the greatest hits, and that was it! Go home!
PWT: You’re talking about working smarter, wishing you had worked smarter when you were younger… and of course, that last match – there was the history there, it was the moment, and the pedigree of just being the Dudleys together again, but what I saw in that match was an economy of motion. You weren’t doing anything stupid.
D-Von: Nothing crazy. Even the Whassup I went to the second instead of the top!
PWT: And that’s to my point; I didn’t even notice that until I watched the behind-the-scenes documentary and Tommy Dreamer pointed it out. So you still hit it without doing anything extra.
D-Von: No. And the thing about it was, Randy was a young boy when I was a veteran at the time in the business, so now you go 20-something years later and he’s telling me, you know, work smarter. Which is what everybody was telling me in the beginning, but when you’re young and you’re hungry you don’t realize that so you just try to go go go, to impress. And I realized in that match… …I have three little kids… …I want to be able to walk my two little daughters down the aisle if that day ever comes, and when my son gets old enough to go, “Daddy, can we go play baseball?” “Absolutely!” I don’t want to be like Hogan, and I say this respectfully – he kept going and going, and he even said it in a documentary – there should have been a time when he probably should have stopped, and he didn’t. I don’t want to have to walk with a cane for the rest of my life. I’m already feeling things in my knees and everything like that, but I don’t want to take it to that next level where it speeds up the process. Thank God for Dallas – DDP Yoga. One of the greatest things I had ever done. I owe Dallas so much. The respect I have for him… …he helped me so much to be able to do that last match. And to be able to still come in here and show the guys what I can do, because at one point I couldn’t move because the back surgery was so bad. Anybody that has back surgery, they will tell you – they wish they might not have even got back surgery because the pain is even more. But if you stretch and do the things that you’re supposed to do to break up that scar tissue, then you’ll be fine. You just gotta constantly do it. So I don’t go to the gym and put up all the weights. I’m sitting there in the gym, stretching like this, people looking at me like I’m crazy. I don’t care. Let the young guys go and lift all that weight. I don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t have nothing to prove, or no one to impress.
PWT: You said at your first show, Inception, and it plays in the opening package of your subsequent shows, “This ain’t WWE, this ain’t ECW, this ain’t TNA, and it sure as hell ain’t AEW.”
D-Von: No it isn’t!
PWT: Can you expand on what you mean by that?
D-Von: In other words, we’re not WWE. We’re not trying to be like them. We’re definitely not ECW. That was a different breed, a different brand. That was something that will never be duplicated. Often imitated, but never duplicated. Those were grown-ass men that put their body on the line for [the brand]. No one will be able to be ECW, I don’t care how much crazy s*** they do out there. There was a reason and a rhyme for everything that we did. Now, the old school generation didn’t understand that back then, but seeing everything they see now, now they kinda get ECW. And it took Vince a while to get ECW before he started bringing us in, and started doing stuff with them when we were still ECW and we were getting hot. TNA…TNA was like a development of the new generation coming up. And although I like to say we are that, we’re not that just yet. As far as AEW goes, AEW is a different style. I like to compare [WWE and AEW to] WWE and WCW – “Where the big boys play.” Vince did a lot of the character, where when you looked at the WCW – or NWA at the time – the had realism. People actually loved the fact that Dusty and Sting and all of those guys did what they did and made professional wrestling fun for them, who didn’t want to go to WWE and deal with characters and stuff like that. And I feel like AEW is that version of WCW where… they’re doing all the flips and the flies, they’re doing everything like that. So we’re not them. We’re gonna be us. We’re not gonna be anybody else, we don’t want you to think that we’re trying to be anybody else. We just want to put on a good product for the indie circuit and maybe take this, like ECW did, to the next level. I mean, I love all the brands. I don’t watch it as much as I can, but I hope AEW makes it. I hope they go sky high. Because the WWE does not need to have the monopoly. No company needs to have the monopoly. Because without competition you’re gonna fail. No matter how big you are. Because you start doing stupid things. The reason why WCW was kicking WWE’s ass back in the day was because WWE had to make a change from the cartoon era to the more adult type of things. And they did that, and that was great. We’re not doing adult themes for DDA, but we’re doing storylines that maybe you can relate to, and enjoy, and be invested in.
PWT: That was one of the things I personally liked about Ascension. Seeing Kiki Roberts vs. Jay Luxx, Cecilia Brooks vs. Caeili Fuego, and Mazaka vs. Joey Blaze… those were the three where I was like, I’m into these storylines. It matters who wins these matches.
D-Von: Yeah! And with [Mazaka vs. Joey Blaze], you know, with the Voodoo and everything, I thought Mazaka did a fantastic job.
PWT: The crowd loved him!
D-Von: They loved him. He’s crazy!
PWT: They weren’t supposed to, but he’s so charismatic that it’s like, how do you not like this guy?
D-Von. Yes! So… I didn’t want it to be hokey. I didn’t want it to be 1992 when WWE was trying to find their position in wrestling after the Hogan and Andre era left. They were trying crazy things and it just didn’t work until the Attitude Era came along – Austin, Triple H, and even– well, I’m not gonna say Shawn was part of the cartoon era, but Shawn basically helped the Attitude Era, no doubt, to get to where it is. So it was one of those things where… I want us to be that. That’s why I said we’re not WWE. We’re not trying to be them. I’m not trying to be ECW. I just want to be different than everybody else. I just want to be able to take this to another level if I can, and be able to really grow.
PWT: So after 20 years of the school, what was the impetus behind, hey, let’s start some shows?
D-Von: Well, I was hearing some of the students going out to other independent organizations… I would see the matches that they were doing… it wasn’t good.
PWT: Oh!
D-Von: It wasn’t good. It was horrible. And it was making my guys look bad, because of the talent they might have been in the ring with. I’m not gonna point some of these shows out, but it was really bad. And I said, okay. Me and Kiki [Roberts]… we talked, and he said, “You know, we should start doing shows.” And I’m like, “Ah, yeah, but I don’t know about the time to do it. I’m always on the road still, and this and that. I’ve got the family, I’ve got to run this place…” And he was like, “Well, just think about it.” So I went home and I thought about it… and I saw some more of my new students on these independent shows and I go, nope! That’s it! And I’m doing it! I’m gonna show them the real way of doing it.
PWT: At the Ascension Pre-Show Press Conference I asked you about providing current students opportunities on shows and balancing that against drawing with more established talent. What are you looking for in your students that could afford them spots on the shows?
D-Von: One of the biggest things is understanding psychology. The movesets, how we go into the the transitions, things like that. I don’t want you to look like a deer caught in headlights when something goes wrong. I want you to be able to call an audible, change it up, and be able to do it to where the fans don’t realize it. Now, people who are veterans might see it, but the fans won’t. And even though you have a lot of smart marks out there that might go “whatever” and say what they say, I’m just like, okay, how do we do it to where they don’t know. That’s what I teach when I’m here. If I tell them to do something in the ring and they mess up, don’t stop – continue, make it better. Do the right thing. Try to cover it up as much as you possibly could because if you get out there in front of people you can’t stop and go, oh, I messed up! You can’t panic. That’s one of the things I like to tell them – don’t panic. Calm yourself down, grab a hold. Rethink everything and then go.
PWT: So do you view the shows in part as opportunities for students who are starting to get to that level, to sink or swim in front of a live crowd as part of the curriculum per se?
D-Von: Yes, yes! And, just like Vince, if you’re not getting it I gotta pull you off. You know, I gotta pull you off – you’re a representation of the school. The lightbulb has to come on at some point. If you’re up there and the lightbulb doesn’t come on… that contract? Null and void. And I have to give you that same feeling here, so when you get up there you understand it correctly.
PWT: Seeing how people talk about wrestling these days, how wrestlers seem to want to conduct their matches… a lot of it feels based around what has come to be the accepted “star rating” system. Doesn’t matter where on the card you are, doesn’t matter what kind of story you’re supposed to be telling… you gotta get those stars every time.
D-Von: What we’ve taught you – psychology, in-ring transitions and all of that – do it the way we showed you how to do it. Learn that. I want every single one of my students who have a match leading up to the main event to be able to go out there and say, “I’m gonna steal the show.” I’m not gonna put shackles on you and hold you back, and say you can’t do this and you can’t do that. If you’re in the match after and you can’t top that, then you don’t need to be there. That was the way we thought about things in ECW. If you were upset because they were still talking about the third match by the time the main event came on, then you shouldn’t be in the main event. That’s my philosophy – that’s my wisdom to them. Go out there and try to steal the show – try to do it. I’m not gonna get angry; I’m gonna be happy! Because like in the last show that we did, every match – the first one to the main event – was good, and they all went out and bust their behinds to try to make sure that they stole the show. Even the guy Monster who we had on there. He was a student of ours back at the old school.
PWT: The one who came in and confronted Samson?
D-Von: The big guy, yup. I was like, I don’t want you to touch. I want him to do his thing in the match, call out the locker room or what have you… here you come. Let him see your size, your girth, that you’re five times the thickness of him, and he’s gonna be in trouble since he called people out. So when they went face to face and Samson backed out, now you want to see it, and that’s what I was going for.
PWT: Who are some of your current students you feel we should keep an eye out for? I’m putting you at risk of leaving some people out!
D-Von: No, no! SoFlyTy – very, very good. Mazaka, the Voodoo guy. Joey Blaze, the guy he wrestled. Cecilia Brooks. Caeli Fuego. Those are the people to definitely look forward to. Right now we’re trying to get everybody else onto that level, which they will be in time. It’s just gonna take some time and a little bit more work, but they’re there. They’ve just gotta believe in themselves and know that they’re there. There’s a lot of doubt in a lot of them, and I can’t teach that – you have to get that in your heart and in your brain to know that you got it, you just gotta go out there and do it.
PWT: Seeing Selene Heavens work heel at Ascension, I saw just that little bit of confidence that I thought was missing before. She was so shy before but I thought, oh, she may be starting to find herself.
D-Von: She’s been here for four years, I think, and she’s just now coming out of it. I’m hoping for her in a year or two that we’ll be right where we need to be. It took some time with her, but she’s got it.
PWT: Looking at the DDA alumni, names that come up are women like Kamille, Jessika Carr, Sage Beckett, Leva Bates, KiLynn King, Lacey Lane… do you feel there’s anything to that – that there are a lot of women who find success after coming through DDA?
D-Von: Absolutely. Because they’re learning the right way of doing business. They’re learning the right way of psychology. You can go out there and get “this is awesome” from just doing the basic moves, but if you put the right story to it and the transitions are good, then they’ll go for it. You know, you can do all the flippy-flying in the world and you won’t get any reaction. You might get the “Oh!” But it’s forgotten.
PWT: Especially these days, because everybody’s doing it. Are they going to remember it tomorrow?
D-Von: Exactly.
PWT: So you can probably tell from the long hair I was an Edge and Christian guy, but what I always appreciated watching Dudleys matches was that you never dropped character. It goes back to that economy of motion. Everything meant more because you were still portraying your characters with every move. Does what I’m seeing there factor in to what you teach here?
D-Von: Bubba and I, with our matches, it was always storytelling. When we wanted to pull at your heartstrings even back then… …the moves were secondary. The moves you can do another time, but in terms of getting people’s attention and having them go, oh man, this is great… we want them to feel that way without doing the moves like that. And that’s what we did, and I think that’s why we were so successful. I tell them all the time, the moves that I taught you are the basic of the basic, because that’s what me and Bubba did. We did basic moves and we became legendary because of that – because it was the story that was being told in the match that made the match so compelling and made the fans want to invest in the Dudleys. It was all about storytelling. And lo and behold… the storylines that we have in DDA? I make sure we try to do the same exact thing that me and Bubba did. It’s something that was taught to us by Pat Patterson, by Vince, and definitely Paul Heyman. Again, you can have great matches – there’s been so many people in WWE that have good matches that were able to do all the spectacular stuff, but they were midcard or just under midcard. The Dudleys were guys that… they simply didn’t care about the moves. We could do them, but we didn’t care.
Thinking to perhaps the most influential matches he took part in, D-Von reflected on the ripple effects of his notorious TLC matches from the early 2000s.
D-Von: Everybody wants to use tables, ladders, and chairs, and you see it a lot on indie shows. My thing is… why? Why are you using it? The build-up to Edge and Christian being known for chairs, the Hardys being known for ladders, and the Dudleys for tables… there were stories behind that. So when we came out, it was great, you know? Even when we came out with the table at Bound for Glory, placed it right there, went to the ring, got our flowers from the people, and we waited for the Hardys. The Hardys start walking out… wait a second… they go back and get the ladder, and the people erupted because now they know they’re gonna see it. Because we built that story for so many years, now it’s programmed into their heads and now the investment is in the story.
PWT: I do want to ask about the coaches – I’m familiar with Kiki Roberts, I just met Jake St. Paul the other day, and the guy out there is Samson?
D-Von: Samson is a guy who, if Kiki or Jake or I can’t make it, he’s here. He’s willing to give his time… …and he doesn’t feel shaded or whatever. It’s like, everybody in WWE knows their role. At least, some do! You know, they think they might deserve something better but Vince ain’t gonna do it unless, you know… you know how Vince is! Not taking anything away from Samson – Samson is good at what he does – but Kiki and Jake are over him, and of course I am. But again, I don’t make him feel any smaller or any less involved than anybody else in terms of helping the training. If there’s something I see that needs to be fixed then I’ll fix it on him, but other than that he’s really good at what he does. He learned from me and Bubba, so basically what he’s gonna be showing them is what me and Bubba showed him. And he got drilled! Many a time!
PWT: And we already talked about Dann. Kiki and Jake, respectively, what do you feel they bring to the Academy?
D-Von: Well, Kiki and Jake both were students here, and when they got to a certain level that’s when I asked them to come aboard. Kiki has been all around. Kiki has very good psychology. And he goes in the ring and he does the things that I can’t do anymore. He helps out and he shows them. And same with Jake. So I teach on the other side. If I’ve gotta go in and show an armbar or something like that, I can do that… but as far as taking any more bumps I don’t do it. That’s where I tag out to Kiki and Jake and they come in and they do it!
PWT: Selfishly, since my beat has been NXT, and studying the Performance Center from the outside can be like a puzzle… I covered in June of 2022 that when you were recovering from your back surgery you went to coach at NXT. And I know that didn’t last too long, but all I could report on was, well, D-Von’s there now! And I didn’t know anything else. There are many more cooks in the kitchen there – what was your purview? What was your focus?
D-Von: Tag team.
PWT: Makes sense!
D-Von: Matt Bloom knew that, and I would have a lot of the tag team guys there with me. Like Chase U… or anybody that they put together as a tag, you know, I would work with them. I did a couple singles, too, but I was better with the tag. Everybody has a role there as a coach. For those who do singles, like Fit Finlay with the women – just like he was on the main roster. Robbie Brookside, same thing – better with singles, holds, things like that. So a lot of those guys have what they’re good at and Matt uses them in that sequence. So I enjoyed it tremendously. It was a lot easier than the main roster.
PWT: What was it like working with Matt? He’s clearly had a lot of success just based on his longevity.
D-Von: Yeah, well I worked with Matt when he was in T&A – Test and Albert – that big angle when we had Trish Stratus and the table and the build-up for that.
PWT: Unforgettable.
D-Von: Yeah! So I worked great with him then, and I worked great with him in NXT. I never had an issue with anybody in NXT. It was just a little better for me to be in NXT because of the back surgery, not having to travel and be on the planes and on the car rides. I mean, to me… …I think Vince and John Laurinaitis put me down there, and not just “Oh, okay kid, goodbye.” You know, they set it up to put me down there and it worked out. And I got caught up in that whole mess that was going on, you know, with certain firings going on and things like that. I don’t know how I got caught up in it but I did, and, you know, I was released. I have no ill feelings toward them whatsoever. I wouldn’t even mind going back and working with them, but I’ve got my life now. I’m doing this, I’m doing the shows, I’ve got my detailing business in West Palm, my YouTube channel which is extremely successful, so I’m okay. But if ever they need me… I told Matt, let me know, and I’ll come. But I don’t know if I want to be under the machine again. I don’t know if I want to be back to where I’m theirs, if that makes any sense. I’m having fun doing all the comic cons every week, the appearances and things like that, and I know that will stop if I go back… so I’m not ready for that yet. So until that buys out, then I go, hey Matt, um… can I come back? But until then I’m happy doing what I’m doing.
PWT: So the WWE ID program is still new enough that we’re still learning just how “under the machine” the ID-tagged promotions may be, but is there anything in the back of your mind saying, hey, maybe DDA could be a WWE ID school?
D-Von: Yeah, I think the more that we do these shows and they see how I’m running it, I think we might have a chance of doing that. I don’t know too much about it – just like you I’m learning as we go along. I hear things all the time, I just gotta go with it.
PWT: In running the three shows you’ve run so far, even with your wealth of experience is there anything you’ve learned?
D-Von: Well, I think having hands on everything – that’s the big one. You know, just like Vince had hands on everything. I didn’t understand it back then, but I understand it now. I also feel that I just want to be different than any other independent wrestling show that’s out there. I want to be able to go, okay, they’re not just an indie – they’re something special. That’s what I want. That’s my end goal for everything. As far as becoming part of [WWE ID]… …I still want to have control over what I do. Of course if the opportunity ever came we could sit down to talk, they would tell me what they want out of me and I could tell them what I would like. It’s negotiating. That’s what I would do.
PWT: They probably have a checklist!
D-Von: Yep!
PWT: Well, you’ve got the shows, you’ve got the school – I want to let you get some plugs in at the end here.
D-Von: I mean, other than please subscribe to the YouTube channel and all of that? Take a look – we’ve got videos that are coming every week. And we’re trying to change it up; we want to do more than just wrestling. I’ve got a show coming up about horror movies, and what’s the best horror movie. And, if you want to learn the right way of doing things in the business, come to my school. If you have problems anywhere else, come here. Our success rate speaks for itself. 20 years – I think we’re the longest-running school in Florida. Other than Afa – I’ll definitely come second to Afa, no issues about that! And Dory Funk. But I still want to be different, and that’s the thing.
