Rob Van Dam Interview on being in TNA and Paul Heyman to TNA

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Rob Van Dam spoke out in an interview with AOL Fanhouse:

“Well, the timing was just right. I’m very pleased with the deal – it’s just awesome. Everyone down there is too. It’s really a good vibe at Universal Studios where like 80, 85% of the travel is to and from which is a great thing for someone like RVD. I don’t miss out there going on the road and driving hundreds of miles and having to fly everyday. It was the right time. I always said that when it came down to doing business and crunching numbers which wasn’t done for a long time although they had tried to get my interest for a long time before it came down to that. But when it came down to that and the time was right for everybody – boom, that’s where my path went.”

“Paul (Heyman) and I do stay in touch, we’re friends. Of course, I would be thrilled to have him there and I think that he really, I know that he really has a way of staying on the pulse of people and staying really connected in what they want. He’s a little bit ahead of them. He knows what the people want next week, what they’re going to be listening to next, what kind of music is going to be coming around. That’s something that is really important and he would make it cool. His name does come up a lot by fans or some of the other wrestlers or by people that curious, wondering if he is going to come in. To the best of my knowledge, no. I don’t know if he is. That would be nice but I have no reason that he is. I was saying before about letting babyfaces shine – this is definitely worth adding since you brought Paul Heyman up – when I was with the original ECW and I was the television champion I had like a two year run. It’s hard to argue the success of the company back then which, of course, Vince (McMahon) will knock it. I’m sure a lot of the promoters will knock it but the rate that ECW was growing at the time from 400 fans to 600 to 800 to 7,000 fans for our pay-per-views. It was growing and the formula we used was RVD is different, he’s an exhibition. So let him go out there and do his stuff. They would bring in opponents from Japan, Mexico or wherever and I was always going to have the most outstanding match on the card. Everybody else was not held back. I was like go ahead and try and do your best but I’m going to have the best match out there. That was the formula that we used. Obviously, one thing that RVD has is I’m one of a kind. I’m an original – I stand out. But promoters don’t know that. They try to put me in a formula for everyone else. In the 20 years of my career, there’s only been one promoter that understood to just let me go out there and do my thing and that was Paul. In fact, he taught it to me.”

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.