On a recent edition of his “1 Of A Kind” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam discussed his brief tenure in WCW in 1992 and speculated on how he might have fared under Ole Anderson’s leadership had Bill Watts remained in control.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his short WCW run: “I wasn’t happy in WCW. But what really sucked was when I came back from Japan, Bill Watts is no longer the booker. Now the man in charge is Ole Anderson, and Ole Anderson didn’t like Robbie V as much as Bill Watts. So I went from having wins over guys like that to basically either getting squashed on TV, or I was giving tryouts and dark matches for guys that were coming up from different parts of the world and stuff.
“So I was like, ‘You know what, I don’t want to stay here anymore.’ And I told Mike Graham that, who was the agent. And he said, ‘Well, let me see what I can do.’ The next week, he offered me an extra 50 bucks if I stayed. And the thing is, the whole time I had this feeling I wasn’t going to want to stay. So, I never signed the contract. I kept losing the contract, much like forgetting to bring the ECW Television Championship belt back to the shows. Same thing, you know, ‘Oh, I’ll have it next week. Sorry.’ Same kind of thing. I never did turn it in. So I was able to walk out and just quit WCW and I still have the contract.”
On how he thinks he would’ve done under Bill Watts had he stayed: “I don’t know. Like I said, because I was such a green, inexperienced young kid at the time. Like, I’m just turning 22 while I’m there, just at the same time in December of 92 when they’re hiring me. And I can’t tell you exactly what he thought of me. I do know he wasn’t into high flyers, and he banned the use of the top rope while I was there. But he let me do my split-legged moonsault because he said I was just bouncing off of it. He said ‘That’s different than climbing up and jumping off of it.’ So I was like, ‘Okay. Just like always, I’m an exception to the rules.’”
