WWE HOFer Bully Ray Names Three Figures Who Taught Him The Most

Though he's always been known to be a hard-hitting brawler, Bully Ray made himself that way, but acknowledges that there were three men who helped mold him to become the main eventer that he became across the industry. During a recent session of "Busted Open Radio," Ray declared who those three wise men were.

"Whenever people ask me who I learned from in this business, I have three names: Paul Heyman, Vince McMahon, and Pat Patterson," Ray said.

Furthering his answer, the Hall of Famer recounted a memorable moment in his career with Patterson, and his vision of a tag team match that featured Ray (Bubba Ray Dudley), his longtime tag team partner D-Von Dudley, and their opponents at the time, Chris Jericho and Christian. In his story, Ray mentioned that they were trying to create what he called a "Mona Lisa" pitch to Patterson on a match they wanted to have. Patterson, who was the agent the night of their match, had another approach that left all four men completely astonished.

"He's sitting in the stands, in the arena, at about four o'clock, smoking in the arena, brother, 'cause Pat didn't care," the Hall of Famer began. "We go up to him and said, 'Okay, Pat, this is what we got.' We laid the whole thing out to him...He nods his head, he takes a drag of his cigarette, he blows out the smoke, and he goes, 'That's good. But what if you did it like this?' And within seconds, he saw an aspect of the match that we didn't see, talking about it for hours. And we just looked at each other like, 'Holy s***.' The guy is unbelievable."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Busted Open Radio" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.