Road Dogg has revealed that he fought to have one particular WWE legend get a big Royal Rumble return.
In the 2012 Royal Rumble match, Road Dogg returned to a WWE ring for the first time in more than a decade. The Attitude Era star entered the match at number 23, lasting a little over five minutes before being eliminated by Wade Barrett.
The WWE tag team legend was roared on by the crowd for the entirety of his brief cameo as those in attendance got wrapped up in the nostalgia of seeing one of their favourites return one more time.
During a recent episode of his podcast, Oh… You Didn’t Know? Road Dogg reflected on his comeback. Despite the appearance being brief, the Hall of Famer revealed that he struggled badly with his fitness, getting ‘blown up’ extremely quickly.
Although he had been performing on the independent circuit, Road Dogg explained that being left only a month to prepare led him to struggle, in part because he was still smoking.
“So it was a spontaneous thing, and I had about a month to prepare. I had not quit smoking cigarettes yet, so that was a big problem for me in the match.
During that match, I got so blown up after hitting myself, I just got down in the corner in the turnbuckle and my brother Scott was a ref on the outside and he just came to me, he said, Just breathe, just breathe. And that sounds funny to the person, but like, at that point, when you’re so blown up, you literally need to stop thinking of everything else and just breathe. You know what I mean?
And so he was talking me through it all. And I thought, Oh, God, here it comes I got another part here. I got to feed back up for something. But the funniest part to me Look, I appreciate Miz And Cody Rhodes both came to me and said, Please let me be a part of the jabs and I was like Thank you. Let me do some let me get something man before I get beat up.
Right after that though. If you see if we ever watched it or you watch it again, you’ll see Jack Swagger, big raw bone shooter Jack Swagger, like he was after I did some stuff I looked and there he was. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just backed away from him. Because he was beating people up and I didn’t want to get beat up by Jack Swagger.”
Expanding further, Road Dogg said that it was the writers who pitched for him to come back, although he did play a role in the return to a fellow Hall of Famer. In 2015, Bubba Ray Dudley made his own WWE return at the Royal Rumble in Philadelphia, something the wrestler-turned-podcaster fought hard for.
“The writers. There’s always a nostalgic pop like I when I was doing the rumble I fought hard to have Bubba Dudley come in and Philadelphia I just thought man that’s a that’s one you don’t want to miss you know what I mean? Even if he didn’t do anything or win his music hitting in Philly means something so I don’t think that were the case but they had a guy in house that could get a nostalgia pop. It didn’t matter if he won or lost. Get the pop do your jabs get crap can’t and and you know the check is in the mail.”
Road Dogg remained with WWE until early 2022, working in a variety of different roles backstage. He was released on January 5th alongside the likes of William Regal.
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