Billy Gunn Trends—Official News On Why He Wasn’t At DX Reunion Breaks—Gunn Addresses His Not Being There

Pro wrestling fans are well aware that recently, WWE celebrated the faction known as DX on a recent episode of Raw, and although a few of the legendary faction’s members were in attendance, a very pivotal member was missing, and yes for obvious reasons.

Billy Gunn wrestles for AEW of course, and is enjoying quite the run with the company, he managing The Acclaimed tag team champions of AEW. He also still wrestles—he recently going on-on-one with Swerve—and all this at the age of 58…and yes he’s still in absolute epic shape.

Sports Illustrated recently sat down with the man himself and asked him what he thinks of the continued success after all these years. Here’s some of what he had to say on that topic:

“I’m supposed to be at the end of my career, not over as I was 20 years ago…I’m very lucky. I’m loving this. Who knew this would become a phenomenon? This scissoring thing, that’s the wrestling business…

You can’t pick and choose what people are going to be into. The ‘Scissor Me Daddy Ass’ shirt, at first people didn’t want them to be made. Now we can’t stop selling them…

It was that night in Chicago at All Out that really stood out…Max and Anthony kept looking at me asking, ‘Is this real?’ And I kept saying, ‘Enjoy it, boys.’ When the crowd reacts like that, it doesn’t get any better.”

via Sports Illustrated

With his time in DX, Billy was able to reach a broader audience than he ever had up until that point. Like so many before him, before he and Road Dogg, the New Age Outlaws, were brought into DX, they each worked a series of gimmicks that really didn’t garner them a strong fan base, but when Shawn Michaels left because of his back injury in 1998, many in the company felt that just Triple H and Chyna couldn’t run DX all alone, so they brought in some new and old friends.

X-Pac, Sean Waltman, was brought in and as were the Outlaws…and really, something that WWE management was at first worried about, turned out to be something that was beloved at the time, and is still quite obviously beloved to this day.

Which brings us to the night in question…the anniversary celebration of DX…

Chyna of course passed away in 2016, and she was dearly missed on that night…Waltman addressing it adoringly. But also conspicuous by his absence, was Mr. Ass himself—excuse me, now Daddy Ass. This is what he had to say about his not being there:

“Of course I would have liked to have been there, but I understand that I work for another company…It was a collective decision. I’m not putting it on anyone. I’m not sour about it. We’re two separate companies, and it just didn’t work out…

We gel so well together…We’re not trying to fight each other. DX was so good because everybody knew their spot and none of us were trying to jockey for position. It’s the same here. We fit together in The Acclaimed…

We’re focused on doing the best thing collectively for the group. The goal is to make this the best this can be, and I’m here to help them be the best they can be. I want them to have the same success I had.”

Many have reported as to why Gunn missed the show, and it wasn’t at all about money, as it turned out. According to Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter: “Khan agreed to let him do the show, but on the air they would have to mention he’s from AEW, or that AEW allowed him to appear or some wording, but there had to be one mention that in some form he works for AEW.”

via Sports Illustrated (link above)

According to reports, Triple H was on board; all parties were, but the plans fell through when Khan’s aforementioned condition came up.

WWE rejected that proposal and we were left with a DX celebration that had many scratching their heads and missing the loveable legend. But have no fear; we can always see him in AEW, where he’s getting a heck of a lot of air time, as are the hot new tag team he’s mentoring.

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