In an exclusive interview with Games Hub, WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam compared the popularity of WWE, AEW and TNA. The ECW legend also feared that ‘retirement tours’ could lose their meaning if more superstars are given one like John Cena was in 2025.
RVD was also an avid video game player growing up, and he told us all about what he enjoyed playing and how cool it is seeing himself in the WWE 2K series.
Here are the key headlines from the interview:
- We can’t give everybody a retirement tour, nobody is bigger than Cena🥇
- They wouldn’t have allowed Logan Paul in the 2000s, he’s an amateur!🤥
- More people speak about AEW, but TNA are doing better than ever before📈
- Women’s wrestling is becoming more popular than men’s, times have changed!🔥
- I felt like a superhero at One Night Stand ‘06, I got ECW back on top😎
- I hated Taz and wanted to PUNCH him, but now we’re very good friends!🤝
- JCW is the most underrated promotion in the world, 2026 is going to be BIG💪
Games Hub: Did you play many video games growing up? And do you ever play the WWE series with family or friends?
RVD: So I did play video games, but it was a long time ago, so there weren’t any WWE 2K games back then. I was playing Atari 2600 and then around that time, it seemed like every year there was a newer and better system released. First it was on Television and Panasonic I think was the first one actually. And it had little controls and you could play things like Pong. I remember playing that one. And then 2600 was the one where I collected all the games. I loved that one. And then pretty soon then my friends had ColecoVision and then a while later, then they came up with the Sega and the PlayStations. I kind of grew out of it by then. So I’ve not been a gamer during most of my adult life, I didn’t play a lot. But as a kid, I did like the wrestling games at the arcade, one called Mania Challenge. And that was one of the games that I played where me and my buddy both got so good, we could stick a quarter in and we could play for 45 minutes to an hour. Then people are lined up and they’re trying to kick us off the game because we were taking too long at the bowling alley. But video games were a big part of my childhood though. When I do see myself on the games though, I’m always super impressed. The graphics have come a long way and a lot of times I don’t see it unless if I’m at an event or something, someone will show me. It’s crazy that they have my moves on there. Sometimes I see clips of my 360 dropkick and I’m like ‘woah’!
Games Hub: Going back to One Night Stand 2006, was that the most loud and raucous crowd you wrestled in front of? Obviously they were hostile towards John Cena, but very much supportive of you…
RVD: Definitely the most responsive and interactive crowd out of my whole career. They were so loud in the building and with the shape of the room, it doesn’t allow the sound to escape like it does through a huge skydome. So you could hear it and stay connected with it. Everybody’s energy was shared with one big pool of hardcore energy, and that’s the best way to describe that. Just a big pool of hardcore energy that completely filled the room up. I was riding on their energy, it was like surfing on a wave. It was so awesome. I was so excited about that. Like not only did I get ECW back? Which is also my favourite, my best showcasing, but it was on WWE’s centre stage, so everyone gets to see us. And then I felt like I was completely unbeatable. I felt like a superhero that night and like I said it was the mindset I was in. I was a superhero that night. I felt amazing and I was out to amaze.
Games Hub: TNA in 2025, how different is it from when you wrestled there back in the day, or do you still see similarities?
RVD: If it’s a lot different then I haven’t noticed as far as the style, as far as the direction of the office, as far as them doubling down on pushing certain talent that may not be as commercially accepted or wanted, in my opinion. The way that they’ve always stuck to their guns, and I’ve wrestled for them twice. One time was during COVID, in 2020 for a year or two, whatever. That was no long-term contract, those were all single matches. They just kept working every week. And then before that in 2010 to 2012. And what I noticed in that gap was something that was consistent, was that they always seemed to draw about the same amount of people and they didn’t seem bothered by it. In the UK, they drew big houses like WWE filled up the arenas, and in the United States it always seemed like there were 900 to 1100 people at every single show. And I noticed that consistency because like when I was there way back in 2010 when Vince Russo, Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff were there, there were rumours every single week that the company was going to shut down and they just laughed it off and blew it off their shoulders. So I’ve always felt like however they’re making their money, it’s not in the traditional way and they don’t need to grow as much as we want them to grow. That’s the impression I’ve always got. But the one thing that is different for sure, now that they’re working with WWE, they can’t help but grow. I mean, that’s just growth in itself. Like that adds respect to the company. It indicates everything that they’ve been doing. It makes them legit. And that’s something WWE never did before. But now that they’re acknowledging other companies, that brings everybody up to not to the same level, but it brings everyone up to a level of credibility and respect in my opinion, so I expect TNA are doing better than they ever did before, but I haven’t seen it lately, so I can’t really comment on that.
Games Hub: What’s your take on Chris Jericho’s view that TNA is the second biggest product in professional wrestling right now? Many people would probably say AEW is..
RVD: Wow. I mean, what standards are we going to go by? I think that in the bubble that I live in, it seems like the fans talk about AEW a lot more than TNA. I think that TNA has been around so long that if you don’t follow every step of their growth, they may seem stagnant just in the back of your mind, subconsciously just by thinking that they’ve always been there at this level. They’re probably just always gonna stay at that level. And that’s just something we can count on. But over here we got WWE and AEW arguing over who’s better. And it seems like it’s more like that, but if TNA surpasses AEW in measurable standards, whether it’s TV viewership or money or crowds, whatever, then I could definitely see that happening. It could be happening right now, and I don’t know. So it’s definitely an interesting perspective.
But for me, I think when it comes to people talking and unfortunately a lot of my information does come from seeing on the internet, and I know that the internet mark community is a lot more vocal than the other 98% of the fans that would never bother to actually write an email filled with hate and send it to someone over something that has nothing to do with them and so the vocal minority sounds like the majority a lot of the time, so that could be a swerving factor. But to answer that, I would probably think it would be WWE and then AEW and then TNA, in my opinion.
Games Hub: You’ve wrestled all over the world, including in Japan. What would you say is currently the most underrated wrestling company right now on a global scale?
RVD: That’s a tough question, but maybe JCW. The clowns seem right now to be getting all the news, all the media. They’ve got Vince Russo writing their shows now and before Vince came along, I’ve been talking to some people and some of those are my friends who founded it, Violent J (Joe Bruce) from ICP. And he’s been asking if there’s anything I could do to help their company. And I noticed last year when I had Joe on my podcast, he was a Christmas guest last year and I noticed back then that their schedule is full. These guys are on tour like all the time. Like who’s doing that? Who’s got that much of a schedule where they’ve got 15 shows in December? What the hell? So they seem like they’ve been consistently keeping their schedule up like that. And then now they have writing that fans are talking about and these characters that they’ve developed there, that are going to be new to fans if the fans haven’t been watching because the characters are really original and different. So I’m gonna say right now, that’s probably the most underrated because people don’t know that they’re about to blow up. Just recently, all the comments that I’ve read are so positive. The fans are so excited about what they’re doing and you want to talk about a promoter who’s a hard worker that’s done everything himself, right from the bottom? That’s Violent J!
Games Hub: Back to Jericho for a second, there’s rumours that he might return to WWE. Do you think he might get a retirement tour similar to the one John Cena just had?
RVD: It could be. But I feel like what they did with Cena retiring was really special. I don’t remember anybody’s retirement being built up and pushed to mean that much. But then again, it seems all I’m reading is that Brock Lesnar is going to be the next guy to get a retirement tour. Then as soon as I read that, it feels like it waters down the importance of that being what it was. So I don’t know though. Maybe retirement tours will be a popular thing. Maybe we’ll all do it. But I can’t imagine he’ll get one. And not to take anything away from Jericho’s career, he has done more for the business than anyone and has all of the accomplishments to go with it, but Cena was like an era, he was the number one guy the whole time I was in WWE. They had him come in during 2001 and I think he had just come up from Ohio Valley, if I’m not mistaken, somewhere around that time. And then he’s just always been like the guy to beat. He’s been the top guy. He has been the guy that’s wrestled all the other top guys, keeping things marching forward, so automatically when other wrestlers are talked about doing retirement tours, I have to start comparing the importance, the weight of this guy retiring versus the Cena retirement tour which was the biggest thing of 2025, right?
Games Hub: Was there an unexpected friendship that you made throughout your career that you never expected to bond with?
RVD: I mean, one guy that comes to mind is, I think of Taz because I love Taz. What a good guy. And I couldn’t see that at all in like 97, 98, 96 even. Because what I saw back then was somebody that was in my way that didn’t seem to have any respect for me and someone that I needed to rearrange his priorities. That’s the way I saw it back then, this guy, I wanted to break his face more than anything, and now it hurts to think of hurting him. That bothers me thinking of punching him in the face. He’s such a good guy and I don’t really want to hurt anybody. When I’m younger that’s part of the thing, but I’ve always grown in a way that I’ve become more passive and I’ve learned violence isn’t always the way to answer questions. A lot of people don’t see that yet, I see it all the time. I try not to even get angry. I very rarely get angry, that probably doesn’t surprise you because I’m kind of known for it. But when you’re younger, prioritize and focus on bettering yourself in the same ways. You gotta pick all that up throughout life. So I think of that, me and Taz are great friends, a lot of people would be surprised if they saw us in 97, 98. But really on a larger scale the wrestling business has enabled me to become friends with so many people that my parents would not have approved of me hanging out with when I was a young kid.
Games Hub: I don’t know if you caught the Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua boxing match recently, Jake Paul came out in a kind of tribute to Hulk Hogan in red and yellow, which is quite nice. Do you think Hulk would’ve appreciated that gesture and do you think he would’ve been rooting for Jake Paul?
RVD: I think he would’ve appreciated it. How are you not gonna be flattered when someone’s putting you over and it’s one of the highest watched programs, coming out to your music and everything. I don’t see how to see it any other way, but I can’t say for sure who he would’ve voted for or if he was a fan of the Paul Brothers, I don’t know.
Games Hub: Logan Paul has been making waves in the championships, and he has taken the United States Championship now. I wondered what your thoughts were on that happening?
RVD: There’s always exceptions and there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s an exception. There’s no doubt that Logan is exceptionally good at what he is doing. I still don’t think that he does what we do, what we’ve been doing for 30 years, probably because I don’t think there’s really a way to fast track the experience and I’ve heard from wrestlers that are in the ring with him wrestling that it’s not like wrestling a veteran, it’s more like wrestling someone that’s just had a few matches, even if it doesn’t come across that way. So with that perspective in mind, I think he’s exceptional, he is way ahead of the game, he is definitely talented and without having the experience of paying the dues, getting beaten up for years by the veterans, learning the pecking order of the locker room mentality and learning to not be too comfortable until you’ve been there five years and all that stuff that he seemed to bypass. Just being an old school head, I don’t see the same product in the end, but then the whole product has changed anyway. So he probably fits in today’s product a lot more than he would’ve in say the 2000’s, he probably wouldn’t have been able to just come in, and do all that, there were probably still a lot of veterans around that wouldn’t allow it as well.
Games Hub: Is there anyone in particular that you think is underutilized in the WWE in 2025 or has been this year?
RVD: I mean that it seems like that’s always their job, they’re over obligated, they got so much TV time and they gotta figure out how to use everybody. Nobody really comes to mind. I feel like I prefer watching the ladies actually a lot more because they’ve really stepped it up. If you go back to like 2001, when I came into WWE, the girls weren’t the best workers and a lot of wrestling fans would say that when the girls are on, that was their break to run to the kitchen or whatever, watching it. I didn’t know that girls could even move like they were fighting because they seemed so unnatural before, but they were hot, they get really hot girls. That’s not the same thing as someone that’s a tomboy that fought with their brothers and grew up that way. So now they have so many girls that qualify that I don’t see how they’re gonna use all of them because they gotta beat each other. We had Saraya on here recently and she’s a prime example of someone who’s taken the game by storm when she was wrestling. And the NXT too, watching the girls that are coming up, I’m so impressed with them and they seem like they’ve closed the gap and lady wrestling might be just as popular as men wrestling someday.
David McClain had the idea with WOW forever ago, but he just took actresses and then tried to make them into wrestlers and then the quality of the matches from a wrestler’s point of view was always shitty when they didn’t have the actual wrestlers, but then now I feel like the style of today’s product is more of a hybrid.
Games Hub: 2025 marks the first year since 2001 that WWE hasn’t delivered a hell in a cell match. Do you think it’s a good thing to give it a rest? And also if my information is correct, you never competed in a hell in a cell match? Was there a reason for that and was that something you wanted to do, just never got the chance?
RVD: Never cared, still don’t, I happened to have not been in a hell in a cell match and I didn’t even know that they didn’t have one this year. I don’t track it like that, weird because it sounds like the name of a very popular pay-per-view that people would wanna see and they didn’t do that one. You said they didn’t do Hell In A Cell, but instead they did Wrestlepalooza. I don’t know what they’re thinking because that was an ECW Pay-per-view and they seem to have just used the name only without making it anything about ECW from what I understand and so that’s a little confusing because I thought when they did that, they needed another pay-per-view.
Games Hub: MVP was talking to us about the insane amounts of money wrestlers have been fined by WWE for weed-related infringements – since their recent policy change, would you say they owe you a cheque?
RVD: No, I definitely wouldn’t, everything happens and then you just move on. That’s like people still asking me “does Paul owe me money?” No, he doesn’t owe me money. There was some money that I wasn’t paid, there was a lot of money that I was paid, and it’s not something to hold on to as an ever going debt. But what I’ll say to that question is, now that it’s legal, shouldn’t we let everyone outta jail that’s ever been arrested for marijuana? But do you do that when the law changes or do you say, wait a minute, that was the law back then, five years ago. You were still breaking the law back then because the reason that the law changed is because it shouldn’t have been illegal and common sense and studies said that this way’s better, that’s why we are legalising it now. So yeah, you should look at arresting people for a law that shouldn’t have ever been there in the first place. You should look at that as if they were breaking, they weren’t. I mean, there’s so many different ways to look at it, like if a cop detains you and it’s not for a legal reason. It’s like, well, you still gotta follow and do what the cop says, or can you say, wait a minute it’s an unlawful reason, so I’m not obligated to follow his unlawful commands right now. You don’t know how they’re gonna look at it in the end. But as far as my fines go, it seems like it was fairly cheap at first, it was like 500 bucks or something and then it went to a thousand. It might have gone to 2000. My last two returns that I did in 2013, I quit smoking a month before I went back, and then I took the three months off, so I had four months that I went off. I was surprised at how much wasn’t different, because I smoked so much. I’m thinking, take that much time off, maybe I’ll be more productive, have more energy, but instead just a little more stress that was all. I missed it, but I was like, “yeah, I’m definitely gonna wanna smoke when I’m done with this run.” The next time I did a five month run and I decided I’d just pay the fines and just smoke the whole time and I did and it wasn’t any different for me really.
Games Hub: I’ve got a hypothetical question for you. How do you think a match between you and Andre the Giant would’ve played out?
RVD: I don’t see myself up there on his caliber because the guy is like the biggest legend maybe ever from the industry, my first thought is, oh gosh, I don’t if I’m worthy, but if we happen to both be on the same show at the same time, that was right for our careers, then I would’ve loved to have done that. I love wrestling the Big Show, I had a lot of really good matches with him and when we brought ECW back, he was the guy I was wrestling almost every night for and he is the guy I dropped a title to, after my big marijuana bust in Philadelphia. I like the fact that what I learned early in my career was that I gotta be consistent. If I want to be the best, regardless of who I’m wrestling, I want to have the best match on the show, if at all possible, whether I’m wrestling, Andre the giant, one man gang, Bam Bam Bigelow, or whether I’m wrestling little Guido or Spike Dudley or anything in between. So for me, it’s always been about taking the factors that are there, what’s on the table in front of you and Andre, big, big dude, so of course I’m gonna be throwing a lot of flying kicks and trying to do what I can to make some impact, which probably wouldn’t be very easy and in the end it would probably, I’m guessing from everything that I’ve heard, I’m guessing it would be exactly whatever Andre wants to do.
