Rob Van Dam looks back on WWE ECW.
The WWE Hall of Famer was a recent guest on The Ten Count with Steve Fall to discuss a wide variety of subjects. In one highlight, he shared his thoughts on WWE’s reboot of ECW and emphasized that he has mixed thoughts about it now.
“At the time, especially when I was in that competitive state of mind of being in the dressing room and feeling like the writers are just, you know, f**king with me and all this stuff when you’re right in there for me a totally different state of mind than I have now with this happy time in my life. At the time, I really looked at it defensively from ECW. I thought he was making a mockery of ECW. I thought he might have even brought ECW back just to destroy it because he didn’t like the fans chanting EC-dub. He took credit for it, said he trained them to chant EC-dub during the shows by putting out the ECW DVD.
“Then I was like, Wow, man, this dude’s crazy. Maybe he brought it back to just completely wipe — and they did completely wipe out the extreme theme to it and made it, ‘My refs have to have credibility, Rob.’ So it was just like any other show, except they put way less into it. Way less budget, way less advertising. The house shows at that time were just the old ECW crappy arenas from the mid-90s. They were redoing those, and we would sometimes film after SmackDown on the SmackDown night, and there was some kind of weird way that we were getting paid off a split of their gate, which really wasn’t fair, but I guess ECW wasn’t –yeah, it’s really weird. I mean, in the end, supposedly, all the numbers iron out. Whatever.”
RVD then shifted to the positive side of it, admitting he loved the durag look on Vince McMahon and enjoyed being able to get in the ring with him, Shane McMahon, and Umaga at one point in ECW.
“But at the same time, one I thought Vince looked really cool in the durag. I did. I loved it,” RVD said. “I thought that was cool because he’s all buff in the black sweater shirt with the sleeves look; I don’t know what you call that, but sweat suit shirt? I loved working with him; I had a match. There was a three against-one; I don’t know if you remember that or not. It’s probably where I picture came from.
“So that was pretty cool. I mean, something like that. When I think back makes me think maybe I was considered in a much higher position than I felt at the time. That wouldn’t normally be something they would do with a mid-carder or whatever. Sometimes I think of it like that. Well, that’s really cool. I got to work with Vince and Shane-O and Umaga in that moment, so there’s that as well.”
READ MORE: Rob Van Dam On Potential WWE Return: If They Wanted Me There, I Would Be There
What do you make of Rob Van Dam’s comments? Do you have positive or negative feelings regarding durag Vince McMahon? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
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