Ron Simmons Says The Initial Name Pitched For His Tag Team With Butch Reed Was ‘Ebony Express’

Ron Simmons recalls the original name pitched for his tag team with Butch Reed. 

In 1989 Ron Simmons, though early on in his career, was teamed with a more veteran Butch Reed. They soon became known as Doom, having a two-year run together. On a recent episode of Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw, the WWE Hall of Famer shared how they came together and how he and Butch pushed back against the initial name they were pitched. 

“Well, I’m not really sure Butch was on board with it to begin with,” Simmons began by saying. “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,” he continued on. “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.”

Thankful for the opportunity to work with Reed, Simmons says that even though they had their fair share of disagreements, he learned a lot from Butch and calls him very helpful. He added the following:

“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.”

While together, Doom were one-time tag team champions, defeating the Steiner Brothers at 1990’s Capital Combat: Return of RoboCop event. 

The full interview with Simmons can be seen below.

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