10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 1997
7. Rob Van Dam's Road Dogg Problem
Rob Van Dam gained the (awesome) 'Mr Monday Night' nickname from his brief flirtations with WWE in reality and storyline in 1997, but the ECW went on to stay with the group until its 2001 closure after marking his cards with the Vince McMahon.
Alongside Sabu, things went south for Van Dam (sound familiar?) in a hurry, but mostly because he was bold enough to fight for his gimmick rather than sell it out on a Saturday show.
As per Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer report from the week in question;
"Both Sabu and Rob Van Dam were apparently causing major problems backstage at Raw. Sabu complained about having to do a double-count out finish with Funk. Van Dam was supposed to have a match with Jesse James on the Shotgun Saturday Night taping, where Lawler would interfere and cost him the match. Van Dam complained that him losing to James would be like Bret Hart coming to ECW and losing to one of their jobbers. As you can imagine, this pissed off a lot of WWF officials to no end and it nearly caused them to pull the plug on the whole WWF/ECW angle, but Paul Heyman managed to smooth things over with all the right people. Needless to say though, there's a lot of heat on RVD right now in the WWF locker room."
Van Dam wasn't wrong, but as far as the WWE higher-ups were concerned, he'd lost the argument, and a potential job.