Rob Van Dam still has gas left in the tank.
RVD began his in-ring career training alongside The Sheik in 1989. The following year, he made his official professional wrestling debut. Fast forward to 2025, Van Dam has over 1,800 matches on his resume, with notable runs in ECW, AJPW, TNA/Impact, and WWE. The former ECW World Champion has also made sporadic appearances in All Elite Wrestling. Despite his last match taking place last year, RVD also made an appearance on WWE’s NXT 2300 show earlier this year.
Wrestling fans last saw Rob Van Dam lace up his boots for a 4/20 four-way elimination match on an April 2024 episode of AEW Rampage. Naturally, this has led many fans to wonder if the WWE Hall of Famer’s in-ring absence had equated to a quiet retirement. According to Van Dam, however, that is not the case.
RVD isn’t sure he’ll ever formally ‘retire’
“I don’t [think I am], and I don’t think I will [retire],” Van Dam told Insight With Chris Van Vliet. “That’s how I feel right now. I feel like even if I don’t take wrestling bookings anymore. I don’t think I’ll make a big deal out of retirement. Because when wrestlers retire and they end up coming back and wrestling anyway, [then say] ‘No, I want one more match.’ For me, that is completely eating up the credibility that I had in wrestling retirement matches. I doubt that I’ll ever feel like, ‘No, I’m going to be different. I never want to wrestle right now. I’m done.’ I just see me as just going with the flow. And someday, when you say, ‘Are you still wrestling?’ I might say, ‘It’s been six years,’ and then I might have a match.
“I’ve always said also I want to price myself out and not wear myself and my value down,” he continued. “A lot of my peers, they were worth so much in their prime. Then they are not worth as much, can’t get booked as much. So they come down and compromise and that has a cycle effect where they are worth less. But I’m not gonna do that. I’d rather have less people afford me until I don’t wrestle that way instead of wrestling myself into a grave and my last match was $5.”
RELATED: Rob Van Dam Isn’t Too Surprised About WWE Changing Its Stance On Marijuana
