Rob Van Dam - One Of A Kind - WWE DVD Review - May 23, 2005

I did get around to watching the Rob Van Dam DVD and as promised here is a review of it. Get this DVD. That simple. If you like RVD, you will love this thing. The whole first disc is just ECW matches. The second disc is WWE stuff but there are some extras on it that feature a few ECW matches and an old WCW Saturday Night match of his from 93. There are a ton of features too of RVD that were on Confidential and shows like that. I didn't watch those as I have seen pretty much all of them before. They are cool for sure. There was a ton of ECW matches on this thing that I have never seen before. There are matches with Sabu from 1996 and a match with Sabu and RVD taking on the Eliminators that is just nasty. RVD does talk between some of these matches setting up a match or a storyline or talking about his moves or persona. He adds a lot of info to the DVD. His match with Lance Storm from Barely Legal is on it along with his match with Tommy Dreamer from November to Remember 1997. I had seen those 2 matches before on PPV and on tape since then. I hadn't seen the match from 1998 with Bam Bam Bigelow that is on the DVD. This was the night where he dove out on to Bam Bam into the crowd two times in a row. The second jump was a flip into the crowd that is seen on all the ECW promos over the years. It shows matches from his WCW days as Robby V. Some of you might remember back in the early 90's that on WCW Saturday Night they used to have a segment each week that would feature two youngsters trying to get a start and put them in the ring on TV and called it the Underdog Challenge. I had forgotten all about that until RVD was talking about it. Bill Watts really liked him. He was in charge at the time and brought Rob in. He went to Japan for a tour and came back and Ole Anderson was then in charge and Ole wasn't big on him. So, RVD ended up leaving as he saw that things were going downhill for him in WCW. There is a match with Robby V taking on Scotty Flamingo who later became Raven. That was cool to watch knowing that it was a tiny little match on WCW Saturday Night but years later would be a main event match. It is frustrating watching the stuff from 1998-2002 cause of WWE having to blur the WWF logo stuff so that tends to get annoying cause it just sticks out such as blurred turnbuckles, TV screens in the background. They also edit the commentary at times to accommodate it. It was fun to watch the Jeff Hardy/RVD match again from Invasion 2001. I did catch JR's comment where he acknowledged the RVD chants and said that "the ECW fans were there, that there weren't many of them but they are very loud". Yeah, cause just a few fans can make the WHOLE arena loud with RVD and ECW chants. This cracked me up then and still does now with how Jeff Hardy, who was one of the most popular guys at the time, was getting no reaction compared to Rob Van Dam in their matches. RVD was one of the most popular guys in the WWE right out of the gate. I know one thing you are wondering is what about RVD/Lynn? Yes, there are two RVD/Jerry Lynn matches. The first is from ECW Living Dangerously 1999 and the second is from the last ECW PPV Guilty As Charged in 2001. You can NEVER grow tired of watching these two guys wrestle. They are the classic match and always take it up a notch against each other. If you want to showcase either one of those guys, you always show one of their matches. RVD has a ton of great things to say about Lynn and how nothing he has done in WWE has even gotten in the same category as his matches with Lynn. I had a great time watching these two matches again and I am just still blown away years later while watching it. It was so fun to see the ECW atmosphere again with the hot crowd chanting anything and everything. One of my favorite fan moments from the ECW shows is on Guilty As Charged 2001 when this guy in the front row starts acting goofy and tries to grab RVD and Lynn as they are going by him. He's not harming or meaning to do harm of course. He was just being goofy and annoying. So, the crowd starts chanting "hit the bald guy". I crack up every time I see this!!! So to sum it up, get this DVD. Even if you are mad like me with how WWE has used him, there is more ECW on this than WWE so you'll be happy as I was. The only WWE matches on this are his match with Jeff from Invasion, Chris Jericho from King Of The Ring 2002, and Christian in the 2003 Raw Ladder Match.