10 Things We Learned From Bruce Prichard’s Rob Van Dam Podcast

10. His 1997 Run Left A Bad Taste In WWE's Mouth

According to Prichard, WWE were interested in making RVD's short stay (as part of an ECW invasion) in 1997 permanent. Matches against Bret/Owen Hart, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin and more would have been awesome, but it wasn't to be. Rob's hard-headed nature put paid to that.

Egged on by Paul Heyman, Van Dam refused to do a job for Road Dogg on Raw, and that didn't sit well with Vince McMahon.

RVD didn't think losing matches would help showcase ECW properly, because he believed that was the entire purpose of the invasion angle. McMahon saw things differently, and there was a backstage belief that Heyman had been stirring the pot with his crew. That caused problems for Van Dam later on.

When he was looking to leave ECW in 2000 and thrash out a deal with WWE, McMahon, Jim Ross, Prichard and others wanted to make it clear Rob couldn't be so dismissive of their ideas. He was either fully on board or not.