Bruce Prichard On Paul Heyman Likely Stirring Up Drama Between Taz and Rob Van Dam in ECW

– On the latest edition of Something to Wrestle With Bruce Prichard looked back at an incident with Taz and Rob Van Dam, where Taz apparently hurt RVD in a tag team match after clipping him with a knee strike in the original ECW days in 1998. The rumor is that Paul Heyman stirred up the conflict between the two as well, as Heyman allegedly liked to keep things stirred up with the boys.

Part of the story says that at one point, RVD went up to Taz and asked him to “Pick a hand,” and then RVD slapped Taz. Prichard discussed the perception of Heyman stirring up his ECW boys on the show and what he knew about the incident. Below are some highlights.

Prichard on the perception of Paul Heyman stirring up his guys being true: “Yeah, I think so. I think Paul bred that within his locker room. He had to. You know when Paul was running it, he was presented it as opposition to the world. Right or wrong, that inspired a lot of guys. And Paul would do whatever he could do to inspire his talent and get them fired up.”

Prichard on what knew about the RVD/Taz backstage fight: “Oh gosh, I never heard about it until many years later when Rob was in the WWE. Definitely didn’t hear about it then, so I don’t know that it was such of a big thing then. It probably grew into legend as more and more people heard of the story, and it probably grew in, ‘Oh and I heard that Taz pulled a knife, and I heard that Sabu had a bazooka!’ I mean, you know, I don’t know. This s*** just grows and gets blown out of proportion sometimes. You know, so much so, again, being in the business, I never heard the story until Rob Van Dam was working with us and many years after he’d been working with us.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something to Wrestle with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.