Former ECW Original and WWE Superstar Rob Van Dam recently appeared as a guest on the latest edition of the Steve Austin Show podcast to talk about his career and more.
Regarding his days in Extreme Championship Wrestling and WWE, Van Dam claimed that the now defunct ECW promotion was more fun for him. Additionally, he spoke about wrestlers purposely making him look bad during matches in WWE.
“ECW was the most fun for me, artistically. And then, WWE, it was also very fun, but that was part of it. It was also very stressful, monotonous schedule, there was a lot of politics, adjusting to that, and I am not a politician, and I don’t play those games. So that was very frustrating for me as well.”
“Working with some of the boys and them trying to politic their way to make themselves look better during the match like I’m an idiot! Like I’m an Idiot! Do you know what I mean? It’s like, ‘well, why do I have to run into the guy and just bump into him? What I do, is I do special moves! Why can’t I go to do a kick and you duck it. Boom, I kick him and turn around. It’d be the same thing, but I’d look better.’ ‘Ummm, they don’t really like that kind of stuff here, they like…’ That is the kind of stuff I was dealing with, talking with the boys.”
As the interview continued, “Mr. Monday Night” spoke about his 2013 run with WWE, claiming he didn’t feel like he was treated like a former World Champion and mentioning how he should have spoken up about the way the company was booking him.
“The last run I did with WWE, it seems like they had me put everybody over but Nattie Neidhart and I waited until the end before I had that talk and explained my feelings on it. And I kind of felt, I should’ve probably, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t regret it. Definitely, a different approach to business would have been, talk earlier, and I would have had a different run there, had I’d done that. But at the same time, I was, ‘hmmm… lets give it another night and see what happens’ and also, it was like, ‘okay,’ I’m accepting, ‘this must be how the office sees me, must’ve brought me in here just to give all their guys a win or whatever – they must not look at me with the same status as my fans do or definitely as a former world champion with the respect that I get outside of the office or at least at that time.'”
“The Whole F’N Show” also told a story about ECW’s “Invasion” of WWE in 1997. According to the former ECW Original, he walked out on WWE in ’97 because he was strictly there for the betterment of ECW.
“I walked out on them in ’97 during that invasion angle because I was there for the betterment of ECW, and that’s what Sabu and I thought. And Vince thought that I was there for a different reason and Paul kept us in the dark about that. He told us the whole time, ‘if there’s anything you don’t like, just say the word – we’ll go, we’ll walk.’ And it came a point, we’re there to put ECW on the map on their TV. Well, he did mean it. He wanted us to get heat with WWE, so he could keep us. That’s the way Paul was. And I told him, ‘dude, they wanted me to put over Armstrong, Brian Armstrong. And what’s that going to do for ECW?'”
“So I got to a point where I’m like, ‘Paul, what should we do?’ Instead of give me advice, [Heyman replied] ‘do you want to go? If you want to go, just say the word.’ He put it all on me. And yeah, I can’t can’t come in and do the J-O-B. And they had been doing that, so it forced a meeting with Vince. Myself, Sabu, with Vince, and, I don’t know. Jerry Brisco was there, I think. Prichard and Paul were in the corner talking to each other, not even paying attention to the meeting. And that’s where I learned from Vince that he never would have put me on his TV if he didn’t think I was going to stay with WWE and he was going to put in me an aggressive babyface role. And I was like, ‘what?’ Like, I had no idea this was the plan and apparently, Paul, he did know, so that’s why that blew up. And then, I was there for ECW and it was like, ‘we’ve got to go,’ and, boom, we left.”
Check out the complete two-part interview with Rob Van Dam on the latest episodes of the Steve Austin Show podcast at PodcastOne.com.