WWE Hall of Famer and ECW legend Rob Van Dam isn't exactly enjoying the recent activities that have gone down in AEW. Speaking on his 1 Of A Kind podcast this week, RVD spoke on the spot on last week's Dynamite where in a match between Jon Moxley and Cope, Cope used a board of nails as a weapon and slammed Moxley onto it generating widespread reaction both within the wrestling and entertainment industries. RVD stated that "it's not my kind of thing" and then went onto say that spots like that make him feel like he would rather be more associated with WWE than AEW:
"I didn’t like it, it’s really crazy dangerous. I don’t want to knock their freedom of expression. I think, you know, that’s probably cool to them, I guess. Or else they would turn it down when it was at the idea phase if it didn’t sound cool, right? So congratulations pulling off a crazy stunt, death-defying stunt, for better or worse."
"I thought, you know, it’s not my thing. Not my kind of thing. That’s not wrestling to me, but, obviously, it’s sacrificing a lot for the business. I mean, that could be said about it. But the more AEW has been doing stuff like that, the more personally I feel like I would rather be associated with WWE than AEW."
"A couple years ago it was like, man, they’re growing, they’re trying things, you know, to get up there. And then there’s a feel that like the inmates are running the prison, which there always has been, for better or worse. I mean, that was used as a good point at first, you know, like hey, the boys are running it, cool. But for me, [this was] an example of why that might not be a good idea. But it is a style of wrestling. I mean, I put that with the light bulb matches, the death matches where two people grab each other and jump off the back of a semi-truck and land on a pile of light bulbs. That’s not my kind of wrestling, and it’s something that I personally look at as being lower than the standard, substandard. Because it’s going to draw only a certain niche crowd that’s into that kind of stuff."
The former WWE and ECW champion had made recent appearances for AEW over the last couple of years but is inked to a WWE Legends contract. In a somewhat unique situation, the WWE deal though still allows him to make appearances or wrestle for AEW.
