WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam was the latest guest on Insight With Chris Van Vilet, where the former world champion spoke about his recent work with AEW, how that collaboration came together, and how pumped he was when Tony Khan told him they had gotten the rights to his original ECW theme, ‘Walk’ by Pantera. Highlights from the interview are below.
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 couldn’t 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, I’d be talking to a fan at a con. And they’d say, you know, are we’re gonna see you show up on WWE. It’s real, you know, and I’d be like, maybe you might see me pop up on the other show, too. I don’t know. But I didn’t really expect much of it until it was like, boom, alright cool, we’re going through with it. So I would have thought, based on that, if I was going to return again and they hadn’t planned it yet that it would be a year from now, you know what I mean? But apparently, that’s 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, it’s not always like that, you know, sometimes, you know, boom, something changes, you know, the day before.
On planting the seed to get “Walk” by Pantera as his entrance music:
I did, but it was already planted. So I wasn’t the first one. I reached out to them and it was very shortly before my trip happened. You know, I don’t remember, it was just right before and I was just like, man, you know, that’d 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 couldn’t 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 I’m at the arena. And I was like, wow are you serious dude? That changes everything about because otherwise they’re gonna have to look at the monitor and you know, be like, okay, yeah, that’s RVD. What song would they use? [They would make a song for you?] They would make it and then that wouldn’t get over nearly as much so, so super cool. And does that mean that they’re gonna have it this week? I don’t know. I hope so.
RVD picked up his first win under the AEW banner this past Saturday on Collision. If you missed it, you can check out full results to the show here.