By the year 2000, it was an easily arguable point that Rob Van Dam was ECW's "Whole F'n Show." His matches with Jerry Lynn were pay-per-view main event quality, and his marijuana-loving lifestyle allowed him to become iconic in pop culture's underground. If ECW needed a poster child for what its values were, Van Dam was ideal. Though not exactly a wrestler known for being a great grappler by a traditional definition of the concept, Van Dam could most assuredly leap from one turnbuckle horizontally across a ring and dropkick an object into a man's face. He could also jump absurdly high into the air and deliver a frog splash, use his legs as a springboard off the top rope to complete a moonsault, spin kick a chair into a man's face and do somersault planchas far into the crowd. The coolest cat in the kennel, Van Dam's persona of being just a little too baked-seeming to execute these maneuvers worked for ECW's fanbase. "RVD 4:20 says I just smoked your ass?" Kitschy. Pointing at yourself as the fans scream your initials? Corny as hell. Shrugging your shoulders in the face of fear? Bizarre. However, for RVD it worked, and moreso than any other wrestler, when Rob Van Dam joined the WWF during the "Invasion," it was him (alongside Booker T) who zoomed up the card to the main event based solely on the perception of being a wrestler from another promotion who absolutely could hang with WWF main event talent. The most beloved ECW wrestler of all time? From a standpoint of in-ring matches, unique charisma and instantaneous recognition from those not-so familiar with the promotion in its heyday as being a major league star? Certainly.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
