Bully Ray gives the rundown on how the 3D was invented.
The iconic tag team finisher that he and D-Von Dudley used for many years was something the two knew were going to be their finisher during their time together. In an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Ray mentioned that he came up with a singles version of the move watching a match between Dean Malenko and Rey Mysterio, which later morphed into the Bubba Cutter. Once he and D-Von were put together, they then worked on a tag version of the move, eventually becoming the 3D.
"I came up with the 3D watching Dean Malenko vs. Rey Mysterio, I think on Nitro. I saw Dean shoot Rey and do a pop-up pancake facebump. I thought to myself, 'Oh wow. Wouldn't be cool to shoot a guy so high in the air that you can spin underneath and hit a Diamond Cutter. That morphed into the Bubba Cutter, which I used. When me and D-Von got together, I thought we need a tag team variant of the Diamond Cutter because it's never been done before," Ray said.
But when it came to actually working on the move itself, the process was anything but smooth. Perhaps the one who paid the most in the initial testing of the move was Spike Dudley, who Ray said took "a hundred of the ugliest 3Ds ever."
"We went to the ECW dojo in Long Island, we took Spike with us and that tough bastard, that tough, little son of a bitch, took about a hundred of the ugliest 3Ds ever. If you look at the first 3D we hit on him, it was brutal. It took a lot of time to perfect it, but we knew from the beginning that was going to be it. I don't think we ever worked on another tag team finish," Ray said.
The full interview with Chris Van Vliet can be seen in the video at the top of the page. If you use any of the quotes above, please credit Fightful for the transcription.
