Rob Van Dam shares his thoughts on AEW and why he prefers to be associated with WWE

Rob Van Dam recently shared his thoughts on AEW and why he prefers to be associated with WWE over the rival promotion. He expressed that AEW’s style doesn’t align with his perspective on wrestling. “I thought, you know, it’s not my thing. Not my kind of thing,” he said. “That’s not wrestling to me, but, obviously, it’s sacrificing a lot for the business. I mean, that could be said about it. But the more AEW has been doing stuff like that, the more personally I feel like I would rather be associated with WWE than AEW.”

RVD acknowledged AEW’s efforts to grow over the years but noted a shift in the company’s direction that doesn’t appeal to him. “A couple years ago, it was like, man, they’re growing, they’re trying things, you know, to get up there. And then there’s a feel that like the inmates are running the prison, which there always has been, for better or worse.” He explained that while early on, AEW’s wrestler-driven environment was seen as a positive, he now believes it has led to questionable creative choices. “I mean, that was used as a good point at first—you know, like hey, the boys are running it, cool. But for me, [this was] an example of why that might not be a good idea.”

He compared AEW’s approach to extreme deathmatch wrestling, which he views as “lower than the standard—substandard.” He elaborated, “It is a style of wrestling. I mean, I put that with the light bulb matches, the death matches where two people grab each other and jump off the back of a semi-truck and land on a pile of light bulbs. That’s not my kind of wrestling, and it’s something that I personally look at as being lower than the standard.”

RVD also specifically commented on a controversial moment between Jon Moxley and Adam Copeland (Cope), describing it as excessively dangerous. “I didn’t like it, it’s really crazy dangerous.” However, he acknowledged the performers’ creative freedom. “I don’t want to knock their freedom of expression. I think, you know, that’s probably cool to them, I guess. Or else they would turn it down when it was at the idea phase if it didn’t sound cool, right? So congratulations [on] pulling off a crazy stunt, death-defying stunt—for better or worse.”

Source: 1 Of A Kind With RVD