Former WWE official Bruce Prichard recently dedicated an episode of his podcast, Something To Wrestle, to overlooking the WWE career of former WWE Champion Rob Van Dam. Prichard first discussed that RVD made his WWE TV debut back in 1987 as a fan:
“Rob told me, when I first met him. He said, “You know I was one of those people that came out of the audience and did one of Ted Dibiase’s ‘Will you do this for money’ deal,” Prichard explained.
“He actually did the ‘Kiss My Feet’ thing with Ted Dibiase where he got paid to kiss his feet. We actually went back and found the footage and it was Rob Szatkowski, so I thought that was really cool. He was a mega fan.”
Prichard also revealed that after seeing Van Dam get his start in WCW he seriously considered bringing him in to WWE:
“The first time I saw Rob Van Dam was actually with Dory Funk Jr, long before he was in ECW. Right about the time he was going to WCW. Rob Van Dam does the ‘Van Dam Deadlift’ where he takes two chairs and does the splits and then he lifts a barbell in between,” Prichard said.
“Extremely difficult to do and extremely impressive when someone does it. He had a unique look and had a different style, so watching Rob from day one thought that he was special and thought someone that can come to WWE and have a big niche following.”
RVD got his start with WWE in 2001 as a member of the Invasion storyline. Prichard said that he became a fan of RVD’s during this storyline when he saw his interactions with WWE Hall Of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin – as he believes the ECW legend has great chemistry with the Texan:
“The Alliance stuff with Steve Austin and Rob Van Dam, to me, that was where I fell in love with RVD because I really didn’t know him that well, except superficially, but when we were doing stuff with Steve Austin and Steve was doing stuff with his watch and doing the ‘What?’ chant and looking at his watch, we’re shooting and I am telling Rob to act natural, react and just go with it because I wasn’t a big fan of scripts, so I would let the guys freestyle at times, and if it would work we would go with it,” Prichard said.
“So, Steve is putting his watch in his ear and RVD takes the watch and puts the watch up to his ear asking what it is he was listening to. It was real, and it was something that everybody wanted to do but they’re looking for a script, but I told Rob to just freestyle with it and it was good.
“Steve and Rob had a chemistry in the backstage vignettes where we thought that there may be something there. It was just good chemistry.”
You can listen to Bruce Prichard’s comments on Something To Wrestle by clicking this link here.
H/T Wrestling Inc. for the transcriptions
