On the latest episode of 1 Of A Kind, Rob Van Dam opened up about Paul Heyman’s struggle with delegation in ECW, what he didn’t like about Heyman, and more. Here are some key highlights (thanks to 411mania.com):
Rob Van Dam on the narrative that Paul Heyman had a hard time delegating in ECW:
“I’m trying to think of an area where I didn’t see him delegating, you know? I mean, he’s got Tommy [Dreamer] handling the shirts and merchandise, and the Dudleys were helping promote. They might have been helping booked some of the damn buildings, I really don’t know to what extent they and Taz put in. Ron and Charlie, our camera guys, they did so much in production. You know, that is something, like Paul would go and overlook the whole editing process every week and spend time in Ron Buffone’s basement where the editing studio was. He needed to be — that’s not that’s how I was on Headstrong. I was over my partner Joe Clark’s shoulder. Every little thing was important to me, you know, like, ‘Hey, we got to take that one beat out. There’s like a beat before it jumps frame and it’s distracting. It takes away from the energy.’ He’s like, ‘Man, we don’t have, we got a bigger fish to Fry.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, come on, man, we gotta, we gotta make this as good as we can.’ And that bothers the f**k out of me. I believe, if you’re in charge and it’s your baby, you got to — usually, unless you got someone, you can trust that you train that can help, you know, take some of the load.
“Besides that though? Besides the fact that he edited it and overlooked us doing promos, I don’t know where else he didn’t delegate. I don’t think I have all the information that D-Von doesm because I feel like a lot of guys were chipping in. It’s not like Paul was setting the ring up and the chairs up and stuff like that. He had to do the editing, the promos he could have delegated to someone else. It’s not like Vince was there every time you did a promo in WWE wasn’t directed by him, you know. So there is some delegating, but we weren’t that big of a company. And would delegating the responsibility of going around a microphone and getting the boys to do promos, would that has saved the company? No. So I’m not sure, I don’t know if I can agree with that or disagree. I really don’t know that I can see what D-Von’s talking about.”
Rob Van Dam on the biggest thing he didn’t like about Paul Heyman:
“With Paul, easily, everyone I think, would give you the same answer. And that’s when he’s talking to you, he’s probably lying. You don’t know how much to put into what he’s saying to you. So that’s bothersome. [laughs] That can kind of get in the way of a good relationship.”
