Rob Van Dam Details The Difficulties Of WWE Politics
Rob Van Dam is a WWE Hall of Famer, but it wasn’t always easy dealing with what was going on backstage during his run in the company.
In the mid-1990s, Rob Van Dam‘s wrestling career took off when he worked for Extreme Championship Wrestling. Due to his high-flying style as well as his ability to throw kicks from any angle, RVD stood out from the pack and became arguably the biggest star in ECW history. There’s no question that he was one of the most popular wrestlers in ECW as well.
After ECW died in 2001, Rob Van Dam signed with WWE where he would spend the rest of the decade with WWE until his 2010 departure.
During his WWE career, RVD won the WWE Title from John Cena in 2006, he was a six-time Tag Team Champion, he won Money in the Bank, and was always popular with WWE fans the entire time. RVD last competed in a WWE match in 2014.
Fans got to see Rob Van Dam recently during the WWE Draft. He was cheered heavily during his appearances, which was great to see because when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2021, there were no fans in attendance for his speech.
While speaking to Inside The Ropes during an interview tour in 2022, Rob Van Dam talked about broken promises behind the scenes in WWE.
“It didn’t take long. It was right away and it drove me nuts. I never did feel comfortable there like I did in ECW the whole time I was there. For one, they, I think this is probably something that nobody is excluded from. There’s always exceptions, but probably, they make a lot of promises, they don’t keep, that’s enough to drive anybody [crazy]. I think that happens to everybody. Because there’s so many agents, they meet three times a day trying to figure out what to do.”
“This guy is pulling for his guys, this guy’s pulling for his guys, you know. And so that was going on, you know, Paul [Heyman] was trying to say, ‘Yeah, you know, we need someone in the main event, we should put RVD in there’, then somebody in the office is saying ‘no, no, you know, let’s let’s put somebody else. I think this guy is the better guy,’ I’m hearing all this that’s going on in all the meetings.”
As he continued, Rob Van Dam spoke about how there were even times when former WWE Head of Talent Relations and RVD’s former ECW boss Paul Heyman would battle each other trying to take credit for bringing Rob Van Dam to WWE.
“But besides that, what would drive me nuts, I told you how I got there, right? I told you the path I went. Who do you give credit to? JR [Jim Ross] or Paul [Heyman]? It shouldn’t matter, but it does. And these guys would argue about it. And they would be like, playing tug of war with me.”
“My first few days there, it was just crazy like JR would be like, you know, ‘hey, I got you that that extra money you were talking about, you know, I bet your buddy from Philadelphia don’t do that for you, does he?’ And then Paul would say something you know just as ridiculous.”
“Is he telling you that he’s trying to get you in that match? Don’t do it, you know. It was just like, you guys for real right now? Dude, I’m here to do kicks and flips and be RVD. And it was so political and it really depends on that, like they want credit not just for that, for bringing me in. But like every idea that happens, anything on TV that anyone can validate their existence by they’re all for it and they put everything into it. It’s a competition in that way and it’s f**king stressful.”