Backstage News On Rob Van Dam's AEW In-Ring Debut

All Elite Wrestling had been planning to bring Rob Van Dam in for some time. 

RVD made his AEW debut earlier this month, taking on Jack Perry for the FTW Championship in an FTW Rules Match on the August 9 edition of Dynamite. Van Dam's performance was widely praised as he connected with his greatest hits. He would ultimately be defeated by Perry, though, as the former Jungle Boy held onto the FTW Title. 

While it was already known that Van Dam's debut had been in the works for a while due to him having Pantera classic 'Walk' as his entrance music, RVD has since revealed to Denise Salcedo that AEW reached out to him back at the beginning of 2023 to schedule his in-ring debut for August 9. 

"They've had this planned for quite a while actually, it was towards the beginning of the year when I started getting phone calls seeing if I was interested and even available, which it's pretty remarkable that so many months later, the first dates that were mentioned were the exact same dates that it fell upon so that tells me a lot about how far ahead these guys think. Just like with anything, it's not real until it happens and that's how I took it," Van Dam stated.

"What was really cool about Jack Perry is that he really wanted this match. He was a real fan, maybe of the whole hardcore, extreme style or whatever so it was a really organic fit. If it was just like thrown together, which a lot of matches are, every match is a compromise of what two completely different people bring together, you make the stew, you both got your own ingredients. Sometimes it's good, when you're RVD, it's always good. With Jack being extra excited about this particular match, that just made it that much better."

Van Dam's future with All Elite Wrestling is up in the air but the WWE Hall of Famer revealed this week that he had spoken to Tony Khan about doing more with AEW. RVD also hinted that WWE gave him permission to wrestle for AEW. 

H/T to Fightful