WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam recently spoke on his podcast, “1 Of A Kind With RVD,” about a variety of professional wrestling topics including the origns of ‘pick a hand’ with Taz, his thoughts on the controversial Tiger Driver ‘91 move by Will Ospreay to Kenny Omega, and gives his thoughts on Mike Awesome wrestling like a big man.
After watching the Tiger Driver ‘91 move delivered by Will Ospreay to Kenny Omega at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2:
“So, you know, either way – dangerous, but I’m not going to shame anybody for it because I don’t know. I’m not gonna act like I know what I don’t know. You know, I’m not gonna assume anything.
“I know that because I was so flexible and because I always wanted to put everything into all of my bumps and because my style is so action oriented. I used to always tell people like if they give me a back suplex to go ahead and like, throw me on my back of my neck and have my knees overshot and have my knees bounce off the mat while I’m landing on the back of my head.
“I did that to guys like Jericho. I did that to guys in all Japan and they would really take advantage of it, you know, so they would like really put a lot into it and like, wham. And, uh, even if it did hurt sometimes my ego would never let me expose that. So I would just be like, ‘Send it in brother.’
“Did anybody go to take a a stretcher ride afterwards? Then the risk is probably worth the reward. It looked pretty f*cking good. It’s got us talking. Good job.”
On the infamous pick a hand moment with Taz and how Taz de-escalated the situation.
“After he allegedly threw the cinder block into the wall and said, ‘I’m going to kill Van Dam!’ After he allegedly did that, I knew like next time I see him, I just don’t want to talk.
“I’m going to treat him like the fucking music guy. Yeah, that’s gonna be so insulting to him. That’s what I thought in my mind.”
“When we got there, I looked for him, just went straight to him and thought, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna treat him like the music guy,’ cause he’ll be so insulted since he obviously thinks he’s a God and thinks that I’m something under the carpet. That’s how I felt.
I called him by his name to totally disrespect him because you know, that was part of what we made fun of was we thought that he was crazy and believed in his gimmick too much, you know? And so I thought that’d be great to just go up and sa, you know, ‘Hey Peter, pick a hand.’
“He said, ‘What?’ Smack. And I smacked him. What he did was he stood up and he, he moved his fanny pack…he moved the fanny pack and he stood up and I said, ‘Okay, cool. That worked. We’re fighting.’ And so I threw a jab at him. Pop Real quick and just boom – hit him in the mouth. And I wanted to follow up with a power punch and just like knock him out of his boots, you know what I mean? But I was noticing that he’s just staring at me with his hands down. And I didn’t, I couldn’t just punch him like that.
“I was like, ‘Dude, come up, put your hands up, dude. We’re fighting.’
“And he’s like, ‘Rob, whoa. Where’s this coming from?’ I was like, ‘Come on, Peter. You know where this is coming from. We’re doing this. Put your hands up. We’re fighting.’ And he’s like, ‘I don’t understand like what’s going on.’ I said, ‘You know what’s going on, dude. I just smacked you in your mouth. This is happening. Come on, let’s do it.’
And it was obvious he didn’t want to fight. And I knew I caught him by surprise. I mean that was, you know, the agenda.
“So anyway, I was like, ‘Come on, man, let’s do this.’ And he goes, ‘Rob. We need to talk,’ and he just turned his back and he like walked out the door and I walked out following him and had a talk out there for a long time and then we ended up hugging it out, bro’ing it out.
“I’ve heard, a bunch of the guys, I don’t even know if they were all there, but I’ve heard them all tell different versions of the story, but that’s exactly what happened. Couldn’t get him to fight me out there. And he was like, I don’t wanna get too personal, but you know, before he had a family tragedy, before this time he had another one.
“It was, it was hurtful, what he told me he was going through and let’s just say afterwards, I didn’t want to fight him. I wanted to hug him. And after that, we’ve always gotten along and, and he’s a good dude, good business dude. And I got a lot of respect for him.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
