Talk about it here.

D-Von Dudley debuts by hitting JT Smith over the head with a chair and does the same to Little Guido. Brief clip.

The full ten minutes of this is really great though I can see why it wasn't needed to make the set.

D-Von really sucked actually. I liked the Dudleys until he showed up, and then the fun was ruined. Shitty matches against Bubba, shitty gimmick which consisted of smashing people's head with a chair, we know how good that is. And really, D-Von is a guy who dropped dramatically down during my ECW watching. Jeez, this guys brought nothing. He did get better toward the end, and probably in WWF, but for the most part, he really sucked.

I'm not really a fan of D-Von but there were times in my ECW watching where he was shockingly good. Nowhere near as good as Bubba, let alone Spike, but he has a couple of good singles matches with Bubba - one of which is borderline great. Also he seemed to get more brawling out of New Jack than most people. Having said that Bubba/Spike is easily the best tag combination the Dudz ever had.

I haven't seen one D-Von vs Bubba match I would call watchable. And you know what I think about Spike. I'm not a Dudley fan at all, Bubba is by far the best of them all, excellent bumper, excellent promo, both funny and serious, pretty good offense. But I have a hard time finding a whole lot of *good* matches involving the Dudz (talking about ECW).

I'm still miffed at why anyone would think Spike was not good, but as usual we will have to agree to disagree. Here is what I had to say about the 12/20/96 FanCam with D-Von v. Bubba:

 

Jesus Bubba takes a scary bump on a belly to back. Bubba really was a freakishly good athlete at this point in his career hitting a hell of a drop kick early and just looking explosive in general. When this spills to the floor these guys really beat each other senseless including a nasty backhand from D-Von, same stiff slaps from Bubba, a bodyslam on the floor and a rail spot that almost tips the whole fucking thing down onto the front row. The chairshots in this were nasty as fuck too. This just got more and more intense and the spot with Bubba dropkicking the chair in D-Von's face as he lept off the ropes was sort of the pinnacle of that. They go on from there with slugfest spots, Bubba hitting a nasty powerbomb and then a Bubba cutter which D-Von appeared to kick out of even though it was the finish. Post match Bubba beats up Gertner. I'll say it flat out - this was a hell of a match. Just a bomb throwing sprint between two guys that looked like they were trying to kill each other with each blow.

 

Again I'm not fan of D-Von, and Bubba was the better worker in the match, but D-Von more than held his own.

I agree with Dylan. Also I think D-Von really freshened up the Dudley act and gave it some real direction. I think he had good presence and did good mic work.

My interest in the Dudleys dropped to zero with the arrival of D-Von, and really, the only thing they got me interested again is Bubba turning heel. D-Von had the same three catchphrases, which was good for what it was I guess, but Bubba and Gertner carried the Dudz on the mic too. Usually my favourite part of a Dudley Boys match was Gertner's intro. D-Von is probably the guy whose stock dropped the most (along with Lance Storm, but he went from "really good" to "decent at the very best" in my mind while D-Von went from "decent" to "useless").

I liked D-Von for his crazy overselling of New Jack moves and I thought he had good chemistry with Bubba. Plus he was a way better dudley than Chubby, DW and even Dudley Dudley.

I come in with a completely neutral viewpoint on D-Von. We'll see where it goes. I *do* think he immediately brings a threatening, dangerous element to the group that had previously been an undercard comedy routine.

D-Von debuts here. With the glut of ECW Dudley's stuff we get in subsequent yearbooks, it is nice to see the genesis of everything.