WWE Hall of Famer and ECW legend Rob Van Dam was inducted into the 2300 Arena Hardcore Hall of Fame this weekend. His longtime rival Jerry Lynn inducted Van Dam at the former ECW Arena. Van Dam’s acceptance speech can be read below, courtesy of Pwinsider:
On being inducted while fans chanted ‘You deserve it!’: “I take that to heart. I know that you really mean that. And I appreciate the f*** out of that. I get asked sometimes, by fans or in interviews, to compare and contrast working wrestling for WWE, and also TNA, and also Extreme Championship Wrestling.”
Fans chanting ‘We made you!’: “I’m not denying that. And I always answer it the same, because in WWE, I made the most money. They made me the biggest worldwide superstar. It was pretty awesome. TNA, Impact Wrestling, because of the schedule, that was the easiest f***ing job ever. And then, when it came to ECW, that’s where I had the most fun. I’m very proud to have ECW define me as a wrestler through my entire career. It was ’95, Sabu was wrestling here. And by the way, I want to thank Sabu for always encouraging me to be myself. To keep it extreme. And to not do anybody else’s s***. Sabu was trying to get me here in ECW and every few weeks in ’95 he would call me and he would say, ‘Did Paul call you yet?’ I was like, ‘No.’ ‘Motherf***er! He said he was going to call you. Hold on, I’ll call you back.’ And then several weeks would go by, and I didn’t give a f**k because I was working for All Japan. I was in a really good position where I could already, in that stage of my career, pick and choose where I spent my time. And he kept… ‘Did Paul call you yet? No, f**k.’ During that time, I started checking out ECW. I made it a point to look for it. Of course, it was like 2:00 AM I think on the Sunshine Network, but I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I had never seen anything like that. It was just incredible, the unapologetic violence and the superstars and the… just that whole adult aspect of it. Fire and… And of course, the main quality was the crowd. Holy crap. The ECW crowd set the standards and they were at least half of the show. So, I was a little intimidated. Actually I was very intimidated coming here in ’96. I was 25 years old, just by a couple of weeks. Oh, what? Well yes, it is my birthday, coincidentally.”
Fans singing Happy Birthday: “I am having the best birthday with my favorite people. So glad to be here. I’m so glad that it did work out for me to come to ECW. I spent the night before my first match writing down a list of new moves that I could come up with that I thought were hardcore enough. One of them was maybe I could throw a chair up and jump up and do a spinning back kick into someone’s face, which turned out to be pretty successful for me. Thank you. Yeah. Hey, all of it, man. I had so much fun thinking outside the box, being creative. Thank God Paul Heyman allowed me the freedom to grow and the right tutelage to make sure I didn’t grow in the wrong way. And as everybody knows, that… By the way, the worst chant to get back then, being 25 years old and intimidated and trying to get over, was, ‘You f**ked up, you f**ked up.’ It was the fear of that that actually pushed me. But God damn it, you pushed me all the way to the top. Thank you for that. And when we brought ECW back to WWE and I beat John Cena at One Night Stand, I truly felt like the buildup for that particular match was my entire f**king career up to that point. So, hardcore forever. Everybody that felt that hardcore spirit of ECW, whether you were one of us wrestlers or whether you were one of the fans back then that supported us, or whether you’re someone new that’s been turned on to that energy and found ECW and wish you can have been back there in the day, either way, all of us know it can never f***ng die because it’s so good. For those reasons, I’m very honored to get this hall of fame induction. I’m very grateful for my time in ECW. My entire career, but ECW the most. Grateful for you motherf***ers.”