Rob Van Dam Says ECW Was Always Going To Be A Niche Promotion

On the latest episode of 1 Of A Kind, Rob Van Dam talked about ECW, John Cena not changing his look for his heel turn and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On John Cena not changing his look for his heel turn: “I think it would be good, you know? If he doesn’t want to change his look, then that’s cool. I never have changed my look throughout my whole career. But I can also see where if all of a sudden he had like jet black hair or something, that would really drive the point home in a more obvious way. And also make it seem like he’s gone through some changes in his mind. Because I assume when people do like that, that they’re going through some changes in their head where they’re like, ‘I’m gonna make my hair purple,’ or whatever it is they do. So, yeah, I could, I could see goth John Cena as a heel.”

On a learning lesson he had in ECW: “When I was in ECW, I just wanted to get the exposure so that we would have enough people watch it so I wouldn’t have to leave ECW and go to one of the other companies. But now I realize it was always going to be a niche crowd that was going to — and I was part of that niche crowd. And all of us that were in ECW feel like that was the superior form of entertainment. But I know now that mainstream would disagree, and so we would never be able to — I shouldn’t say we wouldn’t be able to be taken seriously. But we definitely couldn’t get up to compete with one of the top big dogs that we’re doing at mainstream style. That never would have happened, if we were given everything lined up perfect for us to work out it still would have been just a certain niche part of the majority of people that were like-minded like us. They’ll be like, ‘Ooh, that was so cool!’ And most people you know need, need things simplified, explained out more cartoonish and — you know, just more mainstream. When you’re mainstream, you’re reaching a lot more people. So you gotta take kids into consideration. That’s a big part of it.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 1 Of A Kind an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.