Rob Van Dam you just were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
How did that feel?
>> Well, I guess that makes it official [LAUGH].
It just happened, felt awesome.
it's an honor to have the whole body of work of
all my efforts up till this point rewarded.
That's what it feels like, it's like the WWE Universe saying, hey,
we appreciate you for everything that you've done, all of your contributions,
so much that you belong up there with the legends, dude.
How's that gonna feel?
Pretty good.
>> Can you take us back to where and
when you were when you found out that this was going to happen for you?
>> I was at home, I got a phone call from John Laurinaitis.
Very happy to hear that he is back in the position that he's in.
Longtime friend Johnny and I wrestled in Japan together many,
many times starting back in 93.
So I've known him since then.
So it was cool to get a phone call from a friend.
He said that he wanted to be the one to call me to tell me or to ask me actually.
He said hey Vince, Vince told me to give you a call and
see if you'd be interested in being in the Hall of Fame 2021.
Yeah, totally interested, man, keep talking, let's do this.
>> When you were back in the Bingo halls, back in the ECW arena,
forget about the Hall of Fame.
Did you think that you would be in WWE?
>> Well, there was a point when I was any ECW at the Bingo hall,
where everybody knew that I was a seeked out commodity.
I had an offer to go to ECW.
And we were writing WWE is backyard, I did the invasion angle in WWE and
that's when Vince told me himself that he wanted me here.
Which was a surprise to me during the invasion angle.
That's not what I was there for, but I was misled and
anyway, I think everybody knew at a certain point.
That's what the rest of us did back then was they jumped ship for
what they considered a better opportunity, more money, more exposure.
For me, the better opportunity was gonna be in being
able to showcase my talents, my preferred style.
I felt like if only ECW would grow to the point
of where it could reach sustainability and
we could stay in ECW and get more exposure, that would be King.
So that's what I wanted and that's why I stuck with it,
as it was on its rise, we had a couple of 100 people in the crowd.
And we got, eventually we got 7000 people in the crowd,
we got our own magazine, our own action figure, hey,
we're doing pay per views like all of that where they were all steps building.
And so we had a lot of optimism, a lot of hope.
Sometimes you got to look for it, but it's always there.
A little bit before that, I can't say that I knew,
but when I grew up in the Midwest, that's all that we got on TV was WWE.
We weren't exposed to any other wrestling organisation.
They had different styles or different characters or anything.
So when I want it to be a wrestler, it was definitely,
my goal was actually to make it to the WWE.
>> You talked a little bit in your speech about how much the fan support has been
there for you since the beginning.
Take us back to one night stand.
When everybody just showed up and we're backing you and
what was the feeling like when you walked out of the curtain?
>> Yeah, this was a very special, once in a lifetime night.
The Hammerstein Ballroom was filled with people,
100% of these people were behind me.
They all wanted me to win that match.
They all followed my path, supported my choices.
They were like minded in the sense that ECW or
extreme style of wrestling was the preference.
They wanted that to be King, they wanted ECW to be WWE.
And that's what happened on that night and those people were so awesome.
They were all so for everything that I stood for.
And so against everything that the John Cena stood for
at that time because he was the traditionalist representing the WWE and
this was the countercultural hardcore fans.
They had to voice their opinion and they were so good.
That's what I wanna want, it was really was a victory for everybody.
Cuz it wasn't just me, everybody that was in that frame of mind,
everybody that had that passion, they were all celebrating, they were all so happy.
So it's like, we're all one.
That's how it felt.
>> Great, thank you so much, congratulations.
>> Cool, cool, thanks dude.
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