RVD Describes How IMPACT Wrestling Used His Social Media Activity To Change His Character
Photo Credit: IMPACT Wrestling
Rob Van Dam is a living legend, as he has starred in ECW, WWE, and TNA/IMPACT Wrestling.
His second run with IMPACT ended in September 2020, but in many ways, it shaped his characterization, both on-screen and in real life. Whereas “The Whole Dam Show” had once been a fan-favorite star, his 2019 heel turn and subsequent pairing with his real-life girlfriend, Katie Forbes took RVD’s character in a whole new direction. He regularly appeared with a scantily clad Forbes and flaunted his lavish lifestyle.
In one controversial scene, Van Dam, Forbes and her girlfriend Jennifer Barlow celebrated the former champion’s success by kissing while they were covered in whip cream, and certain body parts had to be blurred out. This segment was seemingly responsible for Twitch temporarily banning IMPACT, as it violated the streaming platform’s guidelines in regards to sexual content. Needless to say, this version of RVD was drastically different to the one fans had grown used to seeing.
During a recent appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Rob Van Dam looked back on how the fans’ general perception of him changed over the years, and he linked this trend to the way IMPACT booked his character based on his social media activity. While he was already posting pictures and videos of these wild parties anyway, once IMPACT became aware of it, RVD described how he felt like the company took aspects of these posts and used them for its storyline presentation of him.
“I have definitely [been] showcasing since Katie Forbes, you know, for sure. And she’s a party girl, you know, she’s fun, and she’s awesome….We went on a Cardi B cruise, Katie loves Cardi B, which, if you’ve ever seen a Cardi B video and seen anything that Katie posts, then you shouldn’t be surprised. She loves shaking her ass and it makes her happy, so I’m happy that she’s happy.
“And we saw Cardi B in Miami when we went, before the cruise, and then the next night, she was on the cruise, and we were on the boat. So it was pretty cool and this really big producer dude…as a fan, he VIP’d me and told me to come down and hang out in his jacuzzi. And we were, and it was just loaded with all these girls shaking their asses and stuff, and we posted a video of that. That went viral, and that’s when I learned how much IMPACT followed our social media because then IMPACT started writing that kind of stuff into the script, stuff about that or stuff about our friend Jennifer, and specifically putting stuff on there that nobody would know unless they follow us on social media.”
The full episode is available here: