Rob Van Dam recently with the Sun’s Simon Rothstein and he had a few very interesting things to say:
On when he knew ECW was doomed:
“But almost right away they added “credibility” — as Vince put it — to the show, by adding rules. So then it became that Extreme Rules would be one match out of the night, like a lottery drawing. It watered down the rest of the card. I lost faith at a very precise moment, when I lost an argument with Vince over it.
Vince told me that nobody remembered the old ECW and he created this enthusiasm for this new ECW.
I said: “Wait a second, didn’t we bring it back because of the success of the DVD and One Night Stand. Didn’t that tell us there’s a lot of support still.”
He said: “Well Rob, there’s a lot of support because they’re watching WWE promote ECW. They weren’t around back then. People grow up, have kids, things change.”
On crowd reaction to ECW:
“That doesn’t make sense. Come on Vince, why do you think they chant ‘ECW’ when we’re doing something out there.”
He said: “Well, because I spent the last five years training them to chant ‘ECW’. We’ve got to have credibility Rob and that means we have to listen to the referees.”
