When all the wrestling magazines and so called professionals said that Rob Van Dam would never return to WWE because at his time of life he wouldn’t wish to work a full time WWE schedule, your Wrestling God stuck to his guns and predicted that RVD, ‘Mr. Monday Night’ would step back onto WWE shores years after he sailed away to TNA.
The question that remains to be answered to the news which came out of Payback, is can RVD reclaim that old glory which he was sorely missing in TNA? Now older and a lot heavier than he was when he competed for TNA, RVD seemed to be lazy and lackadaisical when against TNA’s younger stars. It was a role which RVD should have excelled in, making stars who were trying to fit in the image of RVD. Indeed it’s something which others did for Van Dam when he came through the ranks of ECW and something he should have gave back when it was his time to do so.
When RVD left WWE, it seemed the next logical step that he would join TNA and the company at the time was in dire need for wrestlers who could actually wrestle. When RVD came to TNA they were drowning under the weight of Vince Russo’s illogical and awful storylines which TNA seemed to believe were good enough to run a wrestling promotion with. He still possessed everything that he had brought with him from WWE and there was no reason that packaged correctly, Rob Van Dam could have been one of the top stars of the company. That though failed to materialise. Why? Because both TNA and RVD didn’t have the will to use the former WWE and ECW Television Champion to his full potential.
Van Dam saw TNA as an easy option. Somewhere he could go and phone in his performances every night and week, even when they were recording for television. Van Dam was constantly slow and sluggish in his performances against wrestlers he could have done something special with. Over the years, RVD was lost in the TNA shuffle as Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff came into the company and treated the place like WCW. Booking all of their friends and acquaintances over the TNA talent who had been there a number of years. I don’t know why Rob Van Dam would have put in his best performance every night when people were getting booked over him, it’s the logical thing to do. Give it your all and if you still don’t get the push you’ve worked for then you have the right to ask questions of the managements. However, Rob Van Dam failed to do that and thus had no right to question why he wasn’t getting booked.
In WWE, Van Dam consistently gave main event performances to back up his upper mid-card pushes and he spearheaded the Intercontinental Championship division for many years. Van Dam was at the heart at the re-invention of the World Heavyweight Championship in 2002 when he was one of the very first to challenge Triple H for the new piece of gold and even competed in the very first Elimination Chamber match at the thoroughly wonderful Survivor Series 2002. Hell, RVD was even a highlight of the botched WCW / ECW invasion. A spot which earned his a job with WWE full time in November 2001. The sky seemed to be the limit for Van Dam when he pinned John Cena to capture the WWE Championship at ECW One Night Stand 2006 after winning the Money in the Bank Ladder Match, though Van Dam would be forced to lose the WWE and ECW Championships several weeks after winning the pieces of gold thanks to an arrest for marijuana possession. Van Dam even went out the right way, losing to Randy Orton and being carried out on a stretcher. So how did he top that in TNA?
The short answer to that my good friends, is that he didn’t. The closest Van Dam got to shining in TNA was reigniting his ECW feud with Jerry Lynn. With both men older and Van Dam noticeably heavier in the stomach department, the pair never managed to recapture the glory of their superb ECW outings and the writing was always on the wall for the man labelled as ‘One of a Kind’. For a man who could have touched the stars in TNA. Van Dam fell further than he ever had before. Where else does one go when they’ve hit rock bottom? Back to the place that helped make you a star. Where else could RVD have gone? Japan showed no interest in him thanks to his sluggish and often dull matches in TNA and the rest of the wrestling world couldn’t offer Van Dam the pay which he required to step into the ring.
So now he’s come home to roost and one has to imagine that this will be the last hurrah of RVD, however long he stays. Does Van Dam deserve another shot at stardom? Of course he does. He was beyond comparison in ECW and his WWE run was full of highlights. One bad run in one shoddily ran company doesn’t mean Van Dam is write-off, it just means that he either didn’t have the correct opponents or saw TNA as a step down and wasn’t willing to put in the effort for very little reward. I’m not saying its right, I’m just saying that could have been what happened. With his re-insertion into WWE both now the chance to smarten up their act.
There are many new wrestlers in WWE who Van Damn could have a convincing feud with and none more so than The Shield. Every one of the trio could benefit from Van Dam’s experience and knowledge in the ring. There’s an avenue for another feud with Randy Orton, Sheamus, Curtis Axel, Dolph Ziggler and many more. Rob Van Dam has it made for him in WWE and whilst he will be required to slim down back to the his 2001 build, there is no reason why Van Dam should fail. If he does so this time around then he will only have himself to blame.
For now though, one of WWE’s adopted sons is coming home and I for one will be more than happy to greet him when he does.
Onwards and upwards...
