Rob Van Damn recently appeared as a guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, “The Whole F’N Show” spoke about how his AEW appearance came together, Tony Khan getting the rights to his old ECW theme song, “Walk” by Pantera and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On how the AEW debut came about: “Well, they reached out to me so long ago, like towards the beginning of the year, it was kind of hypothetical checking my interest and availability, and the dates that they mentioned, even though it was way back then and ended up being the exact same dates, August 2 and August 9. And I couldnโt believe that how could you be that far planned ahead? It was like, January maybe, or, you know, maybe February. It was a long, long time ago that they first brought it up. So that was one of those things where every once in a while, Iโd be talking to a fan at a con. And theyโd say, you know, are weโre gonna see you show up on WWE. Itโs real, you know, and Iโd be like, maybe you might see me pop up on the other show, too. I donโt know. But I didnโt really expect much of it until it was like, boom, alright cool, weโre going through with it. So I would have thought, based on that, if I was going to return again and they hadnโt planned it yet that it would be a year from now, you know what I mean? But apparently, thatโs not always the case, as Matt Hardy and Jeff told me when I had this conversation saying that exact same thing. And he said, No, itโs not always like that, you know, sometimes, you know, boom, something changes, you know, the day before.”
On planting the seed to get โWalkโ by Pantera as his entrance music: “I did, but it was already planted. So I wasnโt the first one. I reached out to them and it was very shortly before my trip happened. You know, I donโt remember, it was just right before and I was just like, man, you know, thatโd be so awesome if we could get Walk, it would really add a lot. And the producer I was talking to said, yeah, Tony tried and he couldnโt get it and I was like, oh, okay, that was the day of the show. [Then] They told me, boom, we got Walk. And it was a few hours before Iโm at the arena. And I was like, wow are you serious dude? That changes everything about because otherwise theyโre gonna have to look at the monitor and you know, be like, okay, yeah, thatโs RVD. What song would they use? [They would make a song for you?] They would make it and then that wouldnโt get over nearly as much so, so super cool. And does that mean that theyโre gonna have it this week? I donโt know. I hope so.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below.