WWE part-timer Rob Van Dam recently did an interview with Journey of a Frontman, and below are some interview highlights:
The birth of ECW One Night Stand:
“It was my idea actually to do the ECW pay-per-view. And that process involved me going back and forth to Vince every day for a while with different ideas. “Look, you’ve got all these wrestlers on your payroll, but they used to be in ECW. Let us do a reunion show, it’d be awesome! You’ve got Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Chris Benoit, Spike Dudley, I give him this big list. And he goes, “I didn’t realize that!” I said, “You don’t have to bring anybody in, just let us do what we wanna do one night, the way we wanna do it.” And he went for it, it happened obviously. “
Competing at NXT against Adrian Neville recently:
“It was a good experience to see WWE’s farming territory. There was a lot of talent there, lot of students. I was impressed with how many students they have and I was impressed with the production down there in Orlando for NXT. They have so many Divas, so many up and coming wrestlers, and they’re all at a level where they need to learn and get the experience. And they all have hopes of wrestling in WWE. And I also knew that most of the wrestlers in WWE have come through NXT. It’s a good thing, these guys are wrestling four years and it comes across like they’ve been wrestling for ten years. It must be a combination of things, one of them being that NXT must be a damn good training center. Also, a lot of the wrestlers are second generation wrestlers, they grew up in the business. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. I counted seventeen families off the top of my head and I used to work with their parents. That has a lot to do with what makes the caliber of a good wrestler. It’s come such a long way from my first run in WWE years ago.
The things that Adrian does are things that we haven’t seen before and things that I did back in the day, the same could be said about them. I’ve known Adrian Neville for several years, I actually wrestled him in Europe for some European promotions when I left WWE in 2007. There was a three-year period before I went to TNA. During the amount of time, I was wrestling overseas exclusively. And often, Adrian Neville was on those shows. I was always impressed with him. Now, he’s at a level he’s never been at before. He’s at the right place to secure himself a great future.”
How tag teams were developed:
“Quite often, especially back in that day, you show up to work, you put your boots on and stretch, and they tell you what you’re doing that night. A lot of times, it’ll be a couple hours before the show, I’ll either see the paper that has the agenda written down on it or an agent will come up to me and say, “Hey, it’s you and Kane tagging against Gene Snitsky and Scotty 2 Hotty tonight.” (laughs) That’s how that happens. You just say, “Okay.” And you go with it. In sometimes it lasts for a while. One time I’m tagging with Kevin Nash, and for all I know, it could be a one night only kind of thing that could never happen again or it can be a few weeks. We look at each other and say, “Hey, I guess we’re a tag team now. We’ve been working together every night for a while.””
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
