10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Rob Van Dam

4. His WWE Debut Was In 1997 On Raw Against Jeff Hardy

When RVD was really starting to gain momentum in WWE upon his 2001 arrival, they quickly matched him up with Jeff Hardy in a battle between two of the best high flyers in the world. A lot of people may think that their Hardcore match at Invasion 2001 was their first time meeting, but that wasn't the case at all. The WWE roster was pretty thin in the mid 1990s as they were rebuilding, so they had Jerry Lawler doing his angle with ECW where he called them "Extremely Crappy Wrestling" among other things. He brought in RVD as a heel and on the May 12, 1997 edition of Raw he ended up facing an unknown youngster (at the time) named Jeff Hardy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlOrxoowkTU It was the night where Lawler nicknamed RVD "Mr. Monday Night" prior to the match. RVD hit a Five Star Frog Splash, then he picked Hardy up, slammed him and hit the split legged moonsault for the win. Obviously he changed that around and made the Frog Splash his finisher. By the way, Hardy was only 19 years old at the time of this match. He was wrestling in WWE as a jobber a few years before going back to 1994. That's a testament to how great he was even when he was a teenager.