All Elite Wrestling (AEW) revealed the matches for the upcoming Tuesday, December 22 edition of AEW DARK and one of the matches has a second-generation appeal, as the Gunn Club‘s Austin & Colton Gunn are slated to face off against indie tag team TNT, featuring Terrence & Terrell Hughes. The former are the sons (and trios teammates) of WWE Hall of Famer Billy Gunn, while the Hughes brothers are the sons of another WWE Hall of Famer, D-Von Dudley. The clash will respark a 20-year old rivalry from when Billy Gunn (alongside “Road Dogg” Jesse James in the New Age Outlaws) battled D-Von and his “brother” Bubba Ray in the Dudley Boyz in the WWE and later in TNA/IMPACT Wrestling.
2nd Generation match 🤍#AEWDark pic.twitter.com/oQEkHNNH3D
— NOT ass boy (@theaustingunn) December 19, 2020
The New Age Outlaws and the Dudley Boyz have had a rather odd rivalry over the past 20 years – at times rivals, at times allies – but it all started on February 21, 2000, when the New Age Outlaws and Dudley Boyz teamed up together in an 8-man tag team match on Monday Night Raw, in a losing effort against the team of Edge & Christian and The Hardy Boyz (Matt & Jeff Hardy). The following night on SmackDown!, Billy would defeat Bubba Ray in singles action. The quick implosion of the alliance led to The Dudley Boyz facing off against WWE World Tag Team Champion New Age Outlaws at WWF No Way Out at the end of the month, with the Dudleyz defeating the Outlaws for their first WWF Tag Team titles since arriving in the WWF just months before in August of 1999. By the end of the year, the Dudleyz and Billy Gunn would reunite once again, facing off against Right To Censor‘s Bull Buchanan, Val Venis, and The Goodfather, again facing defeat on Raw.
Following the acquisition of both WCW and ECW in 2001, they would once again face each other, with the Dudley Boyz joining The Alliance (of WCW and ECW talents), while Billy Gunn remained loyal to WWE. Gunn would face off against the Dudleyz on several occasions, briefly teaming with The Big Show, during the Invasion, but after the angle concluded, Billy would find himself a new championship team alongside Chuck Palumbo. In February of 2002, Billy & Chuck would defeat another Dudley, Spike Dudley, and his partner Tazz for the WWF World Tag Team titles, and the Dudley Boyz would challenge the new champions on a couple of occasions in 2002 but failed to add more tag team gold to the Dudleyz trophy case. It wouldn’t be until 2004 that Billy Gunn would encounter the Dudley Boyz again in the ring, now teaming with Hardcore Holly. But in November of 2004, Billy was released from the WWE and in February of 2005, arrived in Total Nonstop Action (TNA). By November of 2005, Gunn reunited with his former New Age Outlaws partner Road Dogg (who was released by WWE in 2001 and had joined TNA in 2002) as The James Gang (with Gunn now renamed Kip James and Road Dogg as BG James).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ys_Ll4VMLs
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect – only a month prior, the Dudley Boyz arrived in TNA, having left WWE that past August following their final appearance at the WWE-produced ECW One Night Stand event. Now dubbed Team 3D, the two former WWE rivals would finally clash in tag team action at TNA Sacrifice in May of 2006. They feuded throughout 2006 and into 2007 (when the James Gang were rebranded as the Voodoo Kin Mafia), with their final match against each other in December of 2007. Gunn departed TNA in 2009, returning to WWE in 2012, while the Dudleyz remained in TNA until 2014. The Dudley Boyz would return to the WWE in 2015, just as Billy Gunn was once again on his way out. The Dudleyz return lasted only one year, and following their retirement as a tag team, Devon moved on to become a producer for WWE, while Bubba Ray would head to Ring of Honor as Bully Ray. In 2019, Billy Gunn signed with AEW, and it now seemed that Gunn’s 20-year rivalry against the Dudleyz was a thing of the past. Until now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZRjsrUgjU0
Trained by their father at the Dudley Boyz’ Team 3D Academy Wrestling School, the Hughes brothers debuted in 2015 and have spent the majority of the past five years working in the Florida indie scene with the likes of United States Wrestling Alliance (USWA), Pro Wrestling 2.0, Go Wrestle, and others, as well as in Georgia with Atlanta Wrestling Entertainment (AWE), where they became 2x USWA Tag Team Champions and AWE Tag Team champs. This past November, the duo would make their AEW debut on the November 10 episode of AEW DARK in a loss against Chaos Project‘s Luther & Serpentico. They would appear on the following week’s AEW DARK as well, losing to Jurassic Express‘ Luchasaurus & Jungle Boy.
Austin Gunn was the first of Billy’s kids to join their father in AEW, officially joining the company in January of 2020. Making his wrestling debut in 2017, Austin spent time with Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) and MCW Pro before joining Ring of Honor in 2019, before leaving to join AEW. Following a dark match on New Year’s Day, Austin made his AEW debut alongside his father Billy in tag team action against Peter Avalon & Shawn Spears on the January 14 episode of AEW DARK, picking up his first win as well. Dubbing themselves The Gunn Club, Billy and Austin would go on to pick up a string of victories together on AEW DARK and finally made their debut on AEW Dynamite this past November when they joined Cody Rhodes in victory over Colt Cabana and The Dark Order‘s John Silver and Ten (Preston Vance). The Gunn Club was also revealed to have joined Cody’s Nightmare Family faction just prior to the match. On November 17, the Gunn Club officially became a trio when they were joined by Colten Gunn, Austin’s older brother, making Billy Gunn one of the few men to compete in a ring alongside two of his sons.
And now, with both their fathers outside of the ring, the sons of Billy Gunn and D-Von Dudley are set to rekindle a family feud that began 20-years ago on Monday Night Raw, as the sons of a Gunn and brethren of Brother Devon get set to put it all on the table on the next episode of AEW DARK.
Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world You can catch AEW Dynamite on Wednesday nights at 8 PM ET on TNT and AEW DARK Tuesday nights at 7 PM ET on YouTube.
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