WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam (RVD) discussed various topics with Games Hub, including the rising WWE star Logan Paul and his recent push in the company.
RVD said, “There’s always exceptions and there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s an exception. There’s no doubt that Logan is exceptionally good at what he is doing. I still don’t think that he does what we do, what we’ve been doing for 30 years, probably because I don’t think there’s really a way to fast track the experience and I’ve heard from wrestlers that are in the ring with him wrestling that it’s not like wrestling a veteran, it’s more like wrestling someone that’s just had a few matches, even if it doesn’t come across that way. So with that perspective in mind, I think he’s exceptional, he is way ahead of the game, he is definitely talented and without having the experience of paying the dues, getting beaten up for years by the veterans, learning the pecking order of the locker room mentality and learning to not be too comfortable until you’ve been there five years and all that stuff that he seemed to bypass. Just being an old school head, I don’t see the same product in the end, but then the whole product has changed anyway. So he probably fits in today’s product a lot more than he would’ve in say the 2000’s, he probably wouldn’t have been able to just come in, and do all that, there were probably still a lot of veterans around that wouldn’t allow it as well.”
On whether he believes anyone in WWE is underutilized:
“I mean that it seems like that’s always their job, they’re over obligated, they got so much TV time and they gotta figure out how to use everybody. Nobody really comes to mind. I feel like I prefer watching the ladies actually a lot more because they’ve really stepped it up. If you go back to like 2001, when I came into WWE, the girls weren’t the best workers and a lot of wrestling fans would say that when the girls are on, that was their break to run to the kitchen or whatever, watching it. I didn’t know that girls could even move like they were fighting because they seemed so unnatural before, but they were hot, they get really hot girls. That’s not the same thing as someone that’s a tomboy that fought with their brothers and grew up that way. So now they have so many girls that qualify that I don’t see how they’re gonna use all of them because they gotta beat each other. We had Saraya on here recently and she’s a prime example of someone who’s taken the game by storm when she was wrestling. And the NXT too, watching the girls that are coming up, I’m so impressed with them and they seem like they’ve closed the gap and lady wrestling might be just as popular as men wrestling someday. David McClain had the idea with WOW forever ago, but he just took actresses and then tried to make them into wrestlers and then the quality of the matches from a wrestler’s point of view was always shitty when they didn’t have the actual wrestlers, but then now I feel like the style of today’s product is more of a hybrid.”
On Chris Jericho saying TNA looked like the second biggest wrestling company in the world:
“Wow. I mean, what standards are we going to go by? I think that in the bubble that I live in, it seems like the fans talk about AEW a lot more than TNA. I think that TNA has been around so long that if you don’t follow every step of their growth, they may seem stagnant just in the back of your mind, subconsciously, just by thinking that they’ve always been there at this level. They’re probably just always gonna stay at that level. And that’s just something we can count on. But over here, we got WWE and AEW arguing over who’s better. And it seems like it’s more like that, but if TNA surpasses AEW in measurable standards, whether it’s TV viewership or money or crowds, whatever, then I could definitely see that happening. It could be happening right now, and I don’t know. So it’s definitely an interesting perspective. But for me, I think when it comes to people talking and unfortunately a lot of my information does come from seeing on the internet, and I know that the internet mark community is a lot more vocal than the other 98% of the fans that would never bother to actually write an email filled with hate and send it to someone over something that has nothing to do with them and so the vocal minority sounds like the majority a lot of the time, so that could be a swerving factor. But to answer that, I would probably think it would be WWE and then AEW and then TNA, in my opinion.”
On whether he thinks Jericho will get a retirement tour in WWE similar to John Cena:
“It could be. But I feel like what they did with Cena retiring was really special. I don’t remember anybody’s retirement being built up and pushed to mean that much. But then again, it seems all I’m reading is that Brock Lesnar is going to be the next guy to get a retirement tour. Then, as soon as I read that, it feels like it waters down the importance of that being what it was. So I don’t know though. Maybe retirement tours will be a popular thing. Maybe we’ll all do it. But I can’t imagine he’ll get one. And not to take anything away from Jericho’s career, he has done more for the business than anyone and has all of the accomplishments to go with it, but Cena was like an era, he was the number one guy the whole time I was in WWE. They had him come in during 2001 and I think he had just come up from Ohio Valley, if I’m not mistaken, somewhere around that time. And then he’s just always been like the guy to beat. He’s been the top guy. He has been the guy that’s wrestled all the other top guys, keeping things marching forward, so automatically when other wrestlers are talked about doing retirement tours, I have to start comparing the importance, the weight of this guy retiring versus the Cena retirement tour, which was the biggest thing of 2025, right?”
On the wild cowd at ECW One Night Stand 2006:
“Definitely the most responsive and interactive crowd out of my whole career. They were so loud in the building and with the shape of the room, it doesn’t allow the sound to escape like it does through a huge skydome. So you could hear it and stay connected with it. Everybody’s energy was shared with one big pool of hardcore energy, and that’s the best way to describe that. Just a big pool of hardcore energy that completely filled the room up. I was riding on their energy, it was like surfing on a wave. It was so awesome. I was so excited about that. Like not only did I get ECW back? Which is also my favourite, my best showcasing, but it was on WWE’s centre stage, so everyone gets to see us. And then I felt like I was completely unbeatable. I felt like a superhero that night and like I said it was the mindset I was in. I was a superhero that night. I felt amazing and I was out to amaze.”
On his view on the most underrated wrestling promotion in the world right now:
“That’s a tough question, but maybe JCW. The clowns seem right now to be getting all the news, all the media. They’ve got Vince Russo writing their shows now and before Vince came along, I’ve been talking to some people and some of those are my friends who founded it, Violent J (Joe Bruce) from ICP. And he’s been asking if there’s anything I could do to help their company. And I noticed last year when I had Joe on my podcast, he was a Christmas guest last year and I noticed back then that their schedule is full. These guys are on tour like all the time. Like who’s doing that? Who’s got that much of a schedule where they’ve got 15 shows in December? What the hell? So they seem like they’ve been consistently keeping their schedule up like that. And then now they have writing that fans are talking about and these characters that they’ve developed there, that are going to be new to fans if the fans haven’t been watching because the characters are really original and different. So I’m gonna say right now, that’s probably the most underrated because people don’t know that they’re about to blow up. Just recently, all the comments that I’ve read are so positive. The fans are so excited about what they’re doing and you want to talk about a promoter who’s a hard worker that’s done everything himself, right from the bottom? That’s Violent J!”
On his unexpected friendship with Taz:
“I mean, one guy that comes to mind is, I think of Taz because I love Taz. What a good guy. And I couldn’t see that at all in like 97, 98, 96 even. Because what I saw back then was somebody that was in my way that didn’t seem to have any respect for me and someone that I needed to rearrange his priorities. That’s the way I saw it back then, this guy, I wanted to break his face more than anything, and now it hurts to think of hurting him. That bothers me thinking of punching him in the face. He’s such a good guy and I don’t really want to hurt anybody. When I’m younger that’s part of the thing, but I’ve always grown in a way that I’ve become more passive and I’ve learned violence isn’t always the way to answer questions. A lot of people don’t see that yet, I see it all the time. I try not to even get angry. I very rarely get angry, that probably doesn’t surprise you because I’m kind of known for it. But when you’re younger, prioritize and focus on bettering yourself in the same ways. You gotta pick all that up throughout life. So I think of that, me and Taz are great friends, a lot of people would be surprised if they saw us in 97, 98. But really on a larger scale the wrestling business has enabled me to become friends with so many people that my parents would not have approved of me hanging out with when I was a young kid.”
