Ron Simmons Recalls Turning Down Race Related Gimmick In WCW

Ron Simmons was recently a guest on Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw, where he recalled teaming with Butch Reed in the tag-team Doom, and what the name was going to be previously.

"Well, I'm not really sure Butch was on board with it to begin with. I think that he still wanted to go on and do his singles thing a little more at that point. I can see where he would still have his reservations about doing that, right, because he's thinking 'You haven't been into this long and you might still be a little green.' So when they first came and proposed it to me, of course naturally you're on board with it because it's Butch Reed and he's had some level of success in this business and this is a great opportunity for me."

"Right out the gate, they wanted to make it a little bit too race. They wanted to name us Ebony Express. That was something that Butch and I vehemently said 'No. We don't want to go out there and start trying to play this race thing. If we're going to do this thing, we want to come out there, be true characters that are just good at what we do. So, that was one thing that had to get corrected to start out with because when it came along those lines you had to continue on those lines of playing the racist thing and which, in this business, hey, if you're going to break those barriers you got to start somewhere. We felt that wasn't good for both of us at that time. So I'm really glad we did that. So then secondly, we had to come up with what we were going to be named. The Road Warriors were already Legion of Doom, so we were going to be working with them so then they just decided they would just call us Doom."

Simmons said that despite their differences, he learned quite a lot from Butch Reed.

"At that point, that's how it came together from that point there and then naturally, get together with Butch, it was a big thrill for me. Like I said before, sometimes he and I didn't see eye to eye. We had our ups and downs, believe me, on the road because Butch was his own man and the best quality about him was you always knew where he stood. That's what I love the most about him. He was very helpful when it came to enhancing me when it came to tag team skills. So I learned a lot from Butch during that time we were together."