November 6, 1998 — Queens, New York. Five days after losing the ECW Tag Team Titles in a stunning upset, Buh Buh Ray and D-Von Dudley took them back in a National Guard armory — and passed the team every ECW fan worshipped.
The Setup
Nobody was supposed to take the Dudley Boyz seriously. They arrived in ECW in 1996 as part of the sprawling, goofy Dudley family — a dancing, tie-dyed comedy act with a small army of half-brothers and a manager in Joel Gertner who talked like a game-show host. But somewhere along the way, Buh Buh Ray and D-Von stopped being a joke and became the most dangerous tag team in the building: the 3D — the Dudley Death Drop — put more teams down than almost any finisher in the business, and the Dudleys collected tag gold the way other teams collected bruises.
By the fall of 1998, they had already won the ECW Tag Team Titles four times, most recently taking them from Sabu and Rob Van Dam on October 24 in Cleveland. Four reigns tied them with the Public Enemy — Johnny Grunge and Rocco Rock, the table-breaking, crowd-surfing pioneers who were the standard every ECW tag team was measured against. The record was right there. All the Dudleys had to do was hold on to the belts.
They held them for one week.
The Upset
November 1, 1998. November to Remember, New Orleans. The challengers were Balls Mahoney and Masato Tanaka — a chair-swinging maniac and a Japanese brawler who had barely teamed before, thrown together against the most dominant duo in the company. It should have been a formality.
It took everything. Sabu and Rob Van Dam ran in and put the Dudleys through tables. Tanaka kicked out of the 3D — almost nobody kicked out of the 3D. And after fifteen minutes of chaos, a double pin gave the titles to Mahoney and Tanaka. The ECW Arena crowd lost its mind. The Dudleys had been humbled, and the belts belonged to a team nobody saw coming.
The Payoff
Five days later, the Dudleys got their rematch — not on pay-per-view, not in a big arena, but at a Hardcore TV taping in Queens, New York, in the Lost Battalion Hall, a National Guard armory with the kind of bingo-hall grit that was ECW’s natural habitat.
There were no games this time. Buh Buh hit the 3D on Tanaka, pinned him, and order was restored — with a milestone attached. The win made Buh Buh Ray and D-Von Dudley five-time ECW Tag Team Champions, breaking the Public Enemy’s record of four. The team that had once been the joke act now stood alone at the top of ECW’s tag team record book.
Why It Still Matters
The Dudleys weren’t done. That fifth reign lasted until December 13, when they dropped the belts to RVD and Sabu in Tokyo — and they would go on to win the titles eight times in total before leaving for the WWF in the summer of 1999. Eight reigns is still the ECW record, because ECW closed its doors in 2001 with the Dudleys on top of the book.
But the November 6 win is the one that changed the conversation. Before it, the Dudleys were a great ECW tag team. After it, they were the measuring stick — and the debate it started still hasn’t been settled. Public Enemy, the Eliminators, the Gangstas, the Pitbulls… or the Dudleys? Ask any ECW fan who the greatest tag team in the company’s history was, and you’ll start an argument that hasn’t cooled off in twenty-eight years.
From a dancing goofball act to the most decorated team in ECW history — in a National Guard armory, in five days, with a 3D and a record broken. That’s ECW.
Sources: WWE.com ECW Tag Team Championship title history; List of ECW World Tag Team Champions (Wikipedia); The Dudley Boyz (Wikipedia); Internet Wrestling Database match listings.
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