10. He Was Convinced By Paul Heyman To Turn Down WCW's Offer To Become Glacier
If you watched WCW in the mid 1990s then you know who Glacier is. It was a terrible gimmick that WCW basically ripped off from the Mortal Kombat video game series. Did you know that RVD was the one that WCW originally contacted to be Glacier? It's true. He turned down the offer because ECW's boss Paul Heyman convinced him to. Heyman knew that he needed RVD in ECW because he was a guy they could build around and if he lost him to WCW it would really hurt what they were building in ECW. RVD
spoke about how Heyman convinced him to stay where he was in this 2013 interview.
Paul had a great idea. He said: 'What if we could use this momentum and capitalize on it and put the entire spotlight of the industry on you.' I said 'what are you talking about?' He said 'what if everyone is expecting you to go to WCW, and we announce that you are going to Monday Nights where you belong, and we pull a switch. What if I can get you on WWF TV?' And I was like, what the hell are you talking about. He is telling us, how Vince and him hate each other, how WWF wants us to die, cause we are in there backyard. I had no idea they had a working relationship the whole time we were running until I watched that DVD documentary, that was my first proof. He denied it all along the way. I said yeah, that sounds awesome.
RVD ended up staying in ECW until they closed their doors and he never went to WCW to become Glacier even though they still went ahead with the gimmick. It was probably one of the smartest moves of his career, thanks to the advice from Paul Heyman.