WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam recently appeared on René Duprée’s ‘Cafe De René’ podcast to discuss all things pro-wrestling, which included the former world champion reflecting on his time with IMPACT, and the segment he participated in that got the promotion temporarily banned from Twitch. Highlights from the interview are below.
On the segment he did in IMPACT with Katie Forbes that got the company temporarily banned from Twitch:
This was a skit that we did on IMPACT’s show with me and Katie [Forbes] and her girlfriend Jennifer [Barlow] and well, first off, just the fact that they started adding Jennifer into the promos made me realize like, ‘Wow. That’s how small the world is here’ is like we tweet a couple of times and then they pick up on our Twitter and that becomes the storyline. I’m like, you know, wow, because we posted some stuff and all of a sudden, it’s in the storylines. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m okay with that. Whatever.’ But they did this skit, we were celebrating something and the three of us were in bed. You know, it was like a… I had a robe on and Jennifer says, ‘Let me see that Rob Van d*ck’ and rips it open. What else did she say? It was ridiculous. They wrote it, you know what I mean? They edited it, they showed it and then got banned from Twitch TV which I guess was a pretty good part of their audience so they were banned and then had to get, you know, reinstated because no sexual content.
On his match at WrestleMania 19 being moved to the Sunday Night Heat preshow:
One year we wrestled and I don’t know who [was in] the match but we were told, ‘All right, guys, we’re short on time. Your match is gonna get thrown on Sunday Night Heat but don’t worry, you’re gonna get paid the same. It’ll be just as if you were on Mania’ and I was pissed. I was pissed because one, the pay did suck and I was pissed, I was offended from the wrestler perspective that they didn’t have room for the Tag Team Championship match — I was offended — on the card because they had to make room for the Miller Lite girls to wrestle and you know, as a performer, I was offended because that was my position at the time.
Says he got a message from Simon Inoki, Antoni Inoki’s son, about wrestling in Japan again:
Perhaps we’ll work again [RVD & René Duprée in Japan]. I got a message from Simon Inoki a couple months ago and we talked a little bit and then he said, ‘Okay, cool, except COVID.’ When some of the restrictions clear up, then you know, we’ll probably talk again but, we worked it out though so…
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)