Rob Van Dam doesn't want to drive his value into the ground.
WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam, 53, has been wrestling since the 1990s, and he has had successful runs in ECW, WWE, and TNA. He has also wrestled several times for AEW. In recent years, RVD has remained somewhat active in the ring, but he last wrestled at the AEW Rampage taping on April 20th.
Speaking on his 1 of a Kind with RVD podcast, Rob Van Dam noted that he was feeling good, and he went on to explain his mindset about bookings.
“I’ve always said I’ll price myself in the business. That’s always been my…so my peers, or the traditional way that a wrestler’s career is, they say what goes up must come down. Then wrestlers go up, they have their peak. You only got so many bumps on the bump card, man. Then usually in their early 40s maybe, their body starts breaking down on them, and then their value goes down as well, they’re off TV. How many wrestlers tell me this, 90, 95% of them say, ‘Come on, Rob. You know how it is. You’re off TV, you’re out of mind. People forget you real quick.’ Not so much for RVD. But I know that most people, I get it, that’s it. You didn’t impact people’s lives so much they’re always going to remember you necessarily or that you’ll stand out to them. Anyway, for wrestlers, they have their peak years. Then, like I said, Sabu don’t want to do nothing else but wrestle, but if that’s the way that it is, then as their value drops, and they’re still getting what they can, then their price goes down, what they can get goes down, their value goes down. It’s like a cycle. They’ll work for less, so then they're gonna get paid less, and then they’re worth less, and then it’s like as they move less and work their way down, then sometimes you got a story like [Randy the Ram], whatever, we all know so many wrestlers like that. It’s because they got used to that lifestyle, and it didn’t last real for them, and there’s a hard crash coming back to reality because they were addicted to being out in front of everybody. Same old story over and over and over to different degrees for the traditional pathway of a pro wrestler," RVD said.
Rob Van Dam continued by saying that he would prefer to price himself out of the business and maintain his value and his health, as well as the ability to do what he wanted. He reiterated that he wanted to avoid the cycle of taking bookings and reducing his value.
"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 fuck, 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. ‘You’re getting a little older, you haven’t been on TV in a while,’ but that never happens. There’s always something that happens where it spikes my name value again. Even just being on SmackDown, boom. All of a sudden, people are like, ‘Yeah.’ 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 gonna drive my value down into the ground like so many of my peers have. People are always like, ‘Oh, you’re real selective about who you wrestle 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. So 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 a little tiny, small company in front of 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," RVD said.
During the podcast, Ron Van Dam said that he signed a WEWE Legends Deal in 2021. Check out his comments here.
Rob Van Dam and Katie Forbes recently launched OnlyWrestlers. More information is available here.
Click here to see what Rob Van Dam had to say about his appearance on WWE SmackDown in September.
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