RVD might have just appeared for AEW, but he might have had a bit of beef with the Young Bucks from years before there was ever an All Elite Wrestling company in the first place. This story dates back to when Nick and Matt Jackson were enhancement talent for WWE, proving that you never know who you will meet later on in your career.
RVD has taken a moment to revisit a past encounter involving the Young Bucks, offering clarity on any potential heat between them. That encounter could have caused a bit of beef.
Before Matt and Nick Jackson assumed their roles as Executive Vice Presidents of AEW, they gained recognition as independent wrestling talents. Both had worked as extras/enhancement performers for WWE, and it was during this time that they initially crossed paths with Rob Van Dam.
In an episode of his 1 Of A Kind podcast, RVD shared his initial impressions of Matt and Nick Jackson, which were not entirely positive. While looking back on an incident where he confronted the Young Bucks for not shaking his hand, Van Dam remarked that he wasn’t the only person who the Bucks snubbed by ignoring this old-school WWE rule.
“I said something about when they walked by me, I guess in WWE, how they didn’t introduce themselves, which to old school rules, that was, I don’t want to call it a commandment.
“I guess it is actually, you know, it’s one of the biblical commandments of the dressing room, especially when you’re new. You’re supposed to introduce yourself a certain way, protocol, just like the f*cking mafia.
“A made man cannot introduce himself to another made man. A made man has to be introduced by someone else in the middle, and we had our protocols too.
“Anyway, I just pointed that out, you know, they didn’t shake my hand or whatever. But I also did throw in something that could be taken as an insult, which I didn’t own up to at first because I was like, all I said was they didn’t shake my hand.
“But I did say something about them looking like two high schoolers, so that was something that was provoking, you know, looking back at it. I don’t think I even realized it when I said it, or maybe I did, but either way.
“They did the same thing a couple of nights later or something to Booker T and Booker T posted something about, ‘I see with my friend Rob’s talking about. You will shake my hand the next time you walk by me’ or something like that.
“Then Goldust had the same experience, and then he said something about it. Then I saw while these two guys were in Japan, one of them is doing the RVD thing when they come out and the other one is doing Booker.
“I thought that was great, but that’s the whole heat that I know of anyway. I thought that it was great that they were capitalizing on it.”
Rob Van Dam recently made his AEW in-ring debut on the August 9th episode of Dynamite, where he unsuccessfully challenged Jack Perry for the FTW Championship.
Only time will tell if RVD makes more appearances for AEW. If anything, he certainly had quite a contest against Jack Perry on Dynamite. That match did not see RVD win the FTW Title, but AEW has other big events on the horizon that he could wrestle on.
What’s your take on RVD making a full-time return to the ring? Sound off in the comments to let us know what you’re thinking!