Obviously you want the guy to put over the guy from your company. Now RVD having an issue with that? Understandable. Obviously he wants to keep his company in a good position as well. It’s a naturally conflicting interest to come up in a working agreement like that which existed at this time. RVD is going to look out for himself and ECW obviously and the WWF is going to do the same. A lot of the ill will from WWF is also going to be partially because the WWF likely saw him even being on their show as something he and ECW should be thankful for to begin with considering he’s getting exposure on a national TV show during a time where ECW was on syndication. The WWF doesn’t really gain by having an RVD on the show who’s on a syndicate show that has a small fan base while ECW has one of their talent getting exposure to an audience that is multiples of the size of the audience they’d be seen by otherwise. You also consider that WWF is paying ECW to keep them in business, which RVD probablt didn’t know about. So for me I think both sides stances on this make a lot of sense. RVD doesn’t want to just get diminished in their show and have his company look lesser than but WWF feels like it’s a spit in the face from someone who should be thankful for the exposure and the fact that his company is in business because the WWF is keeping them in business. You also have to add in RVDs attitude was likely influenced by the fact that despite the WWF keeping ECW in business Heyman was still pumping out the “us against them” mantra to his roster even though the supposed enemy here is the reason they’re even in business. If he had a boss who was professional and actually explained the situation to him about how this was a benefit for the company to get the exposure they wouldn’t otherwise have and how the WWF was supporting them to stay alive youd maybe see a different reaction from RVD. But when your boss is pumping you full of the us against them mindset it isn’t surprising that you’d have that mindset here. This scenario is one of those rare times where I think both sides were mostly right to feel the way they did all things considered. Luckily it didn’t prevent Rob from getting a run in the WWF later on.
@@Allen7 @Allen #7 Tommy Dreamer said on of his houseofhardcore streams that he was selling t-shirts and Paul was telling him to give all the made money to some mob guy standing around the corner without asking questions . Something tells me he had gamblingdebts , he had the personality for it for sure.
I guess but I think he always gives that more credence than it's worth. The fact they even still existed to be ripped off of PPV revenues was a miracle. Dude survived by stuffing his talents and getting propped by WWF money.
If you reference their bankruptcy filing they claimed that In Demand owed them $800K. Quite a lower amount than Paul claims of around $3M. They also listed that ECW owed in demand $100K. Paul is a master story teller and his narrative about how it only they had their PPV money they’d have lasted is a fun one to listen to but it isn’t the truth based on the actual numbers. ECW was never viable on a national level - they just didn’t bring in enough revenues ($5:8M at their peak) or have the cash on hand that’s required to operate on that scale. The cost to keep talents and front the costs for TV and your PPVs is just too much to maintain at those revenues amounts.
From what I understand from watching old RVD shoot interviews he hated working for the WWE at least he talked about not wanting to do overseas shows and the schedule was like 300 days a year. But wasn't Van Dam making half a million dollars a year at the time? Complaining about a 500,000 dollars contract isn't very smart 🙄.
