RVD: Younger TNA Talents Not Asking For Advice

— Scott Fishman of The Miami Herald is featuring a lengthy interview with TNA star Rob Van Dam where he discusses a number of topics including younger talent in TNA not seeking out his advice despite being in the business for 20 years. “I’m open to it. Most of the guys, I don’t know if they don’t feel welcome to ask me or any of the other veterans or what. That is probably an issue that we have is the young guys should ask some of the older guys. They should be saying, ‘Hey, watch my match. Let me know what I can improve on.’ That never happens enough. Some of the young guys who are or were there, I don’t want to mention any names. There were two young guys who just left and looked like they were out of high school. The whole time they were there, they never introduced themselves or shook my hand. Things are way different than they used to be.”

— New York Times best-selling author Kevin Sullivan is featuring a number of extra excerpts that didn’t make his “The WWE Championship” book over at Kevinsullivanbooks.com. His latest features extra quotes with Sgt. Slaughter who talked about his run as WWE Champion being brought back and booked as a heel Iraqi sympathizer. “It wasn’t difficult for me to make the transition. I had left WWE to go work for Hasbro to be a GI Joe. When that contract was over, Vince McMahon called me and said “are you ready to go back to work?” Come to my home tomorrow; I have an idea for you. I was thinking that he was going to take the real American hero to all types of different avenues that have never been reached with Hasbro. I sat down with my family that night and told them it was going to be a big meeting and I’m sure when I get back, we will have all sorts of things to celebrate. When I got to his house, he had the complete opposite idea. He wanted to make me the worst bad guy of all time because he needed an opponent for Hogan for WrestleMania VII. So I listened to what he had to say. He said he wanted me to be an Iraqi sympathizer and side with Saddam and look at the Americans as weak. Here we are the most powerful country in the world and here’s a small country like Iraq pushing them around. It sounded good to me. The more he talked, the more I liked it. He told me to go home and talk to my family because it was going to be pretty rough. I talked to my family that night and they all thought I was crazy. They said it was impossible for Sgt. Slaughter to do that. I said that anything is possible in sports-entertainment. Plus Vince told me that the fans would always forgive you when you ask them to. So we went for it … I didn’t have any particular direction that I was going. Then all of a sudden the ultimate puke and Randy Savage were in a program and Randy was trying to get the title and Randy broke his arm or wrist or hand and so all of a sudden Vince came to me and said I hope you’re ready.”

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