Rob Van Dam Thinks Hurt Syndicate Could Change AEW’s In-Ring Style

On the latest episode of 1 Of A Kind, Rob Van Dam talked about Bobby Lashley, MVP, and Shelton Benjamin signing with AEW, scripted matches and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On Bobby Lashley, MVP, and Shelton Benjamin signing with AEW: “Shelton Benjamin’s one of the best athletes in the business, very gifted. And MVP, he’s a bad motherfu**er… They’re all part of Hurt Business. What I’m thinking is that if AEW is going to bring in wrestlers who are known for being good wrestlers, could that change the style in a good way? To where it’s less about breaking through tables and glass and less about diving every single match, and more about really good mat wrestling. Like, could that be something that could be a byproduct of bringing in guys like that?

“I mean all three of those guys will roll with you on the mat and will beat you, will pin you. All three of those guys are great, f**king great wrestlers and very skilled in it. And I don’t see any of those guys wanting to dive over the top rope to put a guy through a weird glass sliding door that happens to be on top of a wheelbarrow next to the ring.”

On scripted matches: “I would think that’s more the preferred way now. So maybe when they say scripted, maybe they mean in their head, I don’t know. But yeah, then there’s the opposite. I’ve been doing a lot of interviews lately, and this comes up sometimes. But when I wrestled The Undertaker on the loop several weeks, we had cage matches. And I wouldn’t have to even see him before the match, you know? I didn’t have to say one word to him. I had a pretty good idea of how it was going to end up, and there was no need to talk about anything else. We’d go out there and — you know, they probably weren’t the very top of all of my fans’ favorite matches ever of mine. But they definitely were decent matches where the crowd was into it. And you know, I just say that because they were live events, not even on TV, so I don’t even remember what we did. But you know, just experience. He’s been doing it forever, I’ve been doing it a long time too. And I didn’t have any need to even think about what I was going to do till I went out there.”

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.