Van Dam details the injuries he worked through during his most recent IMPACT run.
Last month, Rob Van Dam was in action at the CyberFight Festival show and he competed in a Pro Wrestling NOAH-promoted match. Van Dam will be returning to NOAH on July 16th for their show at Nippon Budokan.
He spoke about that CyberFight Festival match on the latest episode of ‘Rewind Recap Relive’. Van Dam said the experience was awesome and he was looking forward to the actual match when normally, he looks forward to the in-ring portion of the job being over.
He then transitioned into talking about working through injuries and touched on the multitude of injuries he was dealing with during his run with IMPACT in 2019-2020.
I wrestled for NOAH and it was awesome. I felt great, my body felt limber. I felt like working… It’s weird. It’s weird because it sounds cliché, when people in their 50s, you know, say, ‘I’m in the best shape of my life’ and it’s like, come on and I’m not saying that, but I definitely feel better than I felt in years. I know I’m long-winded here but I just wanted to say when I wrestled for IMPACT last time, for my whole run, I guess 2019 to 2021, however long I was there, I was hurt the whole time. My back was locked up. I pulled or tore this shoulder and this shoulder, my rib was cracked for a long time and fans don’t know when they’re watching — they just think, oh, he can’t move like he used to. They don’t — everything is perspective. But man, having all of that feel better makes all the difference in the world.
At the CyberFight Festival, RVD teamed up with Yoshinari Ogawa and HAYATA to defeat Kaito Kiyomiya, Daisuke Harada and YO-HEY. Van Dam said the match was set up for him to receive the hot tag, but he decided to start the match off.
I had a six-man tag match and I know they had it set up so that I could’ve taken it easy and build up to the big tag and I said, ‘I’ll start this motherf*cker’ and I started out. It’s really not often that I actually look forward to the match. That part at this stage is work, you know? I appreciate it, my job and all that but I’m always just like, ‘Man, I can’t wait to be done with this tonight.’ Quite the opposite this time. It was amazing. Having Katie [Forbes] on the trip with me was a lot of fun and just being in Japan and wrestling in front of the Japanese fans which is where, you know, part of where I came up in the business since ‘93. It was all just the best vibe and it was a great, great experience.
At NOAH ‘Destination’ on 7/16, Van Dam is competing in a Hardcore match as he’ll team with Masato Tanaka to take on NOSAWA Rongai and Super Crazy.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit ‘Rewind Recap Relive’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
