WWE Hall Of Famer RVD Contrasts Working For Vince McMahon With Paul Heyman

While plenty of wrestlers got to work for both Paul Heyman and Vince McMahon during the days ECW and WWE were two of the three biggest promotions in the United States, only a select few were top stars for both. Rob Van Dam was one of the few, first exploding onto the scene with ECW in the late 90s/early 2000s, before joining WWE upon ECW's folding in 2001, and going on to become the WWE Champion just a few days later.

As such, RVD is probably the right person to contrast McMahon from Heyman, which he recently did on "1 Of A Kind." As one would expect, RVD insinuated that things were a lot looser with Heyman at the controls than McMahon. That said, when asked who the better negotiator/businessman was, RVD was very much on the McMahon side of things.

"I would say Vince, based on the success and some of the deals that he's got under his belt with major television stations, with sponsors, with huge multi-million dollar stars, with huge venues," RVD said. "Like, he's had to make way more deals, you know, negotiating way more business. And so, I would say him, based on experience, because...that's like a teacher that teaches a classroom of kids and comparing that teacher to, like a private, one-on-one tutor, and seeing which one...is better suited to be in front of crowds or whatever. It's easy. That's how I see it."

RVD's answer was a smidge different when it came to the question of creativity, however. But even then, RVD didn't go the expected route of criticizing McMahon's often maligned creative vision as opposed to Heyman's acclaimed run leading ECW. Rather, he cited Heyman largely working on his own as the big edge, whereas McMahon delegated certain creative responsibilities.

"Paul's extremely creative," RVD said. "That's one of his gifts I think. And maybe this is where D-Von was saying he didn't delegate as much, because...Vince did. He would have a room full of writers, people pitching different ideas and stuff. Vince still has to be the top creative guy, and he makes all of the decisions. But...maybe just cause Paul had to come up with everything on his own that wasn't pitched by the boys, and was a passion project idea or something, and I think it took a lot of creativity for him to...depending on how much of Todd Gordon's book you believe and how much credit you want to give him or how much you want to give to Todd, I think that his ability to be able to combine social factors of current society with wrestling was an amazing winning formula."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "1 Of A Kind" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription