Rob Van Dam recently spoke with Wrestlezone’s Kevin Kellam about his new documentary ‘Headstrong’ which is available on iTunes and other digital retailers now.
RVD opens up about performing stand-up comedy and how it changed his outlook on things, as well as talking about how he puts off dealing with stress:
“As far as performing, it’s quite different for me. With wrestling, I did it so long that I stopped being motivated with it a long time ago, and it just became business. With stand-up, I have fun. After the first night, my brain is turned on and my creative juices are flowing, and I really enjoy that. I’m thinking of new idea for t-shirts the next day, new jokes, things that I need to do—I just have the creative juices flowing, and with wrestling that wasn’t a factor for a long time.
That was a lot of physical exertion, obviously, but one thing that is similar is on the first night of the tour, before I go out there I have a lot of pressure on myself saying ‘fuck, I hope I don’t forget anything, and I hope I do everything that I wanted to do.’
One thing I will say that I do, which would drive a lot of people nuts, is I wait until the very, very last possible second for everything, and put the pressure on myself. It’s always been that way since I was getting ready to catch the school bus when I was a little kid to leaving for every job to still catching every flight now. It’s just the way that I do it, that way I have more off time where I can be checked out mentally and maintaining my chill. That’s part of maintaining my spiritual vibration is [dealing with] the amount of stress off for the shortest amount of time as possible and—boom—just really dealing with it.
If you talk to any wrestler that I’ve wrestled…ever, at least in the last twenty years, they’ll probably tell you that I avoid them all day until the last possible moment. The guys that I’m wrestling are always nervous looking for me, and I’m out in the car medicating, like I’ve got plenty of time to hide—not in a corner, but I find my spot and stretch—that’s part of everything that I do, and it works for me. Luckily my girlfriend, Katie Forbes, is cool with it and we’re very similar, so we’re happy.”
RVD also talked about getting into his personal life in the documentary, saying it didn’t start out as that type of project, but ended up taking another form:
“We had original plans for the documentary to be one thing, and then it ended up being in a total different direction. That involved a lot of new factors that I hadn’t necessarily expected on throwing in, so being as overly honest as I am, and I hope that I’m always known for that, I bring this documentary into some very personal areas that shock people. People don’t expect me to go there, and it’s somewhat controversial to talk about some of the things that I do, but I’ve always been good at making the right decisions. I don’t need to use someone else’s values, I use my own.
I mention at the end of 2015 to the beginning of 2016 I went through a hell of a lot because I was separated—my wife had left, it was official that I was getting divorced, and that had been going on for the better part of eight years or so—now I’m super happy because now I know what life can be. I’m thinking I would have stayed complacent out of loyalty at the time, so I saw it as a failure. I didn’t want to be divorced. I was really, really, really down; my dog died, my Dad died, and I was really depressed and people didn’t expect that. A lot of these reviews that I’ve gotten from screening my movie so far is that [viewers] can relate to me a lot more and they wouldn’t expect that I had gone though stuff that real people go through, as well as some of the consequences from my wrestling career, the long-term toll and effects that that can have on somebody. It’s very personal and I’m very proud of it. Myself and Joe Clarke, we worked very hard on it and I drove him crazy because we went over and over and over it a million times, but each time made it a little better. The idea was good, and I’m super happy with where it is now.”
Check out the full interview with RVD below:
