10 Impact Wrestling decisions that they still regret

#6 D-Von Dudley as the first member of Aces and Eights

D-Von Dudley was not the mystery man Impact wanted for the main event angle.

The Aces and Eights storyline was reasonable enough stab at reigniting the heel super stable angle that Impact Wrestling has turned to a number of times over the year. The angle featured the intrigue of all of the group members being masked and launching stiff assaults on Impact Wrestling talent to introduce themselves to the audience.

There would come a time, however, when the group members needed to take the masks off, and that’s where the storyline began to fall flat. The first man revealed? None other than D-Von Dudley.

D-Von is a very skilled professional wrestler with a great tag team wrestling resume. Additionally, there was some merit to the reveal, in that his longtime partner Bully Ray had been getting a big face push against Aces and Eights. Even from a creative perspective, D-Von would end up making sense in this spot when the big swerve came in—that Bully Ray was actually leading the heel faction behind the scenes all along.

In the immediate moment, however, this was a completely flat reveal. The main event super stable’s first member turned out to be a tag wrestler who was past his prime and had never been meaningfully pushed as a singles star before. This tantamount to the New World Order’s infamous third man turning out to be Alex Wright, or if The Higher Power behind the Ministry of Darkness had been The Brooklyn Brawler. The surprise reveal immediately robbed the angle of some of its heat.