What we as fans see on the television screen is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to professional wrestling. A lot of the drama and intrigue happens before the bell even rings. For instance, why the ECW Originals vs. New Breed match almost didn’t happen, and when it did happen, all the wrestlers almost didn’t make it to the ring.
On Tommy Dreamer’s House of Hardcore Podcast, Tommy walked us through the lead up to his Wrestlemania debut match at Wrestlemania 23.
Originally we had 20 minutes, then like 15 minutes, then 10 minutes. Everyday our match kept getting shorter and shorter times… We get to the hotel in Detroit. Now, I have a house in Muskegon, Michigan and we drive with my daughters. I remember we pull up to the hotel, I had to get something out of the car, Beullah’s in the passenger seat, my daughters in the back. I closed the door on my daughters finger, as I pull into the WWE hotel…
I’m told that our match has been pulled because they wanted to give more time to Melina vs. Ashley Massaro. If you want to talk about murder and rage, of course we wanted to kill Melina and Ashley, but it wasn’t their fault. We were like, “How do you give that match more time and take this away?” They said it was going to come down to 6 minutes of match with all separate entrances. We’d have a minute and a half match, it wouldn’t work out.
We also knew we did so well and out performed how we were, we were getting punished for doing our job well. Anyway, things started changing and we had the match.
Leading up to that match, I remember we had to come through the crowd, again, every second counts. I want to say we were right after Batista and Undertaker. They are trying to get us to the ring, we are coming through the crowd. It’s a football stadium and we got to come through the people at Wrestlemania. Also, the entrance is a long ass walk. Now, leading up to that, Van Dam, there is a kiosk at every corner, you could probably throw a stone from kiosk to kiosk with all the WWE shirts. Van Dam’s walking, I’m walking, Sandman is walking..
Van Dam is like “hey, where are my shirts? Excuse me, where are my shirts? There is no shirts here, no Sabu shirts. I’m from Michigan and Sabu is from Detroit.” I’m telling you, he is doing this, we hear the “ding ding ding” and he is arguing with a person to ask him where his shirts are. They are like “no do you want a DX shirt or Undertaker shirt?” and he was pissed and was like “I’m done.” So right then and there Rob was really pissed off.
Tommy Dreamer
How amazing is it that not every wrestler on the card didn’t have merch for sale at the arena? Rob Van Dam noticing seconds before his match and it maybe the breaking point for RVD at the company is such a story.
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(Please credit Bodyslam.net for the transcription.)
