Shawn Michaels and Rob Van Dam competed in a dream match as the main event of an episode of WWE Raw on November 25, 2002.
In only his third match since making a comeback at that year’s SummerSlam, Michaels successfully defended the World Heavyweight Championship against RVD thanks to outside interference by Triple H, which caused the DQ.
Speaking about the match on a recent edition of his Something to Wrestle With podcast, Bruce Prichard outlined why he believes they didn’t click.
“I think it was a styles clash. It was a clash of styles that I didn’t think would work. I really didn’t. Rob needs a certain kind of opponent. Shawn could work a broomstick. Rob definitely wasn’t a broomstick. Rob was heavy, he was thick. It was ugly. It got hit by an ugly stick. It was two guys who didn’t mesh. They were not meshing for several minutes…It didn’t gel”.
Asked whether it was true that Michaels and Triple H weren’t fans of Rob’s ring work, Prichard said:
“No. They actually were both big fans of Rob. They were two proponents of getting Rob into the mix. Hence the reason we even did the match. A lot of the lustre came off when Rob came off the top onto Hunter’s throat. It wasn’t clumsy, it was just an accident. I think a lot of people looked at that and thought Rob was dangerous. That was a reputation that Van Dam had. That he was dangerous. I didn’t think Rob was dangerous, I thought he was snug. I don’t think anything Rob ever did was dangerous to his opponents. In hurting Hunter it was ‘Oh God, he’s dangerous'”.
Quotes via
411 Mania