WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam (RVD) recently took to an episode of his “1 Of A Kind” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including how he stays relevant in wrestling.
RVD said, “We all know so many wrestlers like that [Randy The Ram from The Wrestler]. And it’s because they got used to that lifestyle, and then it didn’t last real long for them. And then there’s a hard crash coming back to reality, because they were addicted to being out front of everybody. Same old story over and over and over and over to different degrees for the traditional pathway of a pro wrestler, you know? So for me, I always said that I think I would prefer to just price myself out of the business and maintain my value, maintain my health, maintain being able to still do everything I can, regardless of if I was on TV last week or not. And if I’m not on TV and if I’m not booked, then maybe it’s because they are wanting me to work for less than I do, in which case I just walk right out the business on my own terms, feeling healthy as f**k, and then having the rest of my life with me. So that’s always been my plan, as opposed to going down and down and down with the price… But that never happens. There’s always something that happens where it spikes my name value again. Even just being on SmackDown… But I stay ready so I can wrestle. And the fact is, if the money isn’t there for me, it’s there for someone else. And if that’s the way it is then cool, but I’m still not going to drive my value down under the ground like so many of my peers have.”
On not working for small promotions:
“Like people always go, ‘I know you’re real selective about who you’re asking for,’ stuff like that. 95% of it is if they meet my booking requirements, my fee, then boom! I’m there. And there are enough of those to keep me as busy as I want to be, a little busier than I want to be. I’ve been saying that for years. So you know, there’s enough of them to where some of the other ones — if they can’t bring me in, I don’t want to work for their little, tiny, small company in front of 300, 200 people anyway. Because why would I want to do that? The only reason I would want to do that is if you pay me the same as if you had 10,000 people.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
