Rob Van Dam Reveals How He Got Vince McMahon To Approve His "420" Move

Wrestling Inc.'s Nick Hausman recently sat down and chatted with former WWE and ECW Champion Rob Van Dam on our The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast. During the chat RVD brought up some interesting conversations he has had throughout his career. One such conversation was explaining the "420 leg drop" to Paul Heyman so that he could properly explain the term "420" to Vince McMahon, who did not understand what "420" meant.

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"One night before the match, Paul came up to me and he said, 'Vince wants to know what the 420 leg drop means,'" RVD said as Hausman and RVD laughed about the idea of McMahon inquiring what 420 means. "I said, 'why?' He said, 'he needs to know if the commentators can't say if it's a drug use. He wants to know is it a drug use?' And I said, 'no, it's the name of our move.' He goes, 'I know, but he wants to know what it means.' I said, 'it's 420. I pick Rey Mysterio up. Then I jump up while I'm holding him up and all of our legs come down on the guy, so it's four legs and twenty is our combined shoe size. I wear twelve. He's eight,' and he's like, 'OK, I can work with that.'"

The move was only used once on SmackDown, and RVD said he never heard back from either Heyman, Mysterio or McMahon as to why the move was never used again. He did note that he suffered a torn ACL during that time that cut his tag team with Mysterio short.

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"I never heard anything back on it, so I don't know," RVD admitted. "I think what happened was I ended up tearing my ACL, actually, around that time because I know Rey Mysterio and I were tagging when that happened, when it finally tore all the way through. So I was out for 2005 because I had to have knee surgery. So that's pretty rememberable."

RVD also discussed his endeavors in researching CBG. Not to be confused with CBD, RVD explained what CBG is and the potential benefits it can provide. He pointed out that while marijuana is legal in some states in the U.S. for either medical or recreational use, it is still illegal on a federal level not only making research on marijuana very difficult but also getting FDA approval on medical marijuana products difficult.

"Well CBG is one of the many components that we find in the cannabis plant. I've been an advocate for over 20 years," RVD noted. "There's over a hundred, we call him cannabinoids that make up the marijuana plant. Since it's illegal to study the plant, we've only known about THC. Marijuana gets you high. That's all we've known, and the last few years because it's becoming quasi-legal, we're starting to look at the plant. Then we got CBD and oh snap, it mimics the THC, but without some of the effects that some people might not want like your attention span precipitating. Turns out it's not just THC and CBD. There's CBG, there's CBN and there's a handful more that we know, but we have so far to go.

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"We're going to find out that the plant can cure like everything and I've always known that, and I've always known it can replace like 80% of our resources. That's the only reason that it was ever prohibited in the first place. You can make fuel out of it. You can replace 80% of pharmaceuticals. You can make anything, plastics, wood [and] steel. So we're learning about the plant, and CBG, it will become THC or CBD much like a stem cell becomes any other cell if you know that about stem cells. It can become blood, hair [or] whatever. So CBG is a precursor, and I was reading that CBG could regenerate dead brain tissue. So I was like, wait a minute, what? I have a lot of friends with concussion issues that inspired me to start RVD CBD. I was like I might be able to get to the bottom of this before NFL.

"They probably have a bunch of red tape to cut through, and I'm always trying stuff myself. I've had hundreds of concussions. So I'm always trying. I've had stem cells. I've done oxygen therapy, red light therapy, whatever. I believe in the plant. We have so many answers still to come. So we're looking at it, and I opened up the company with the goal which will always be there to have a neurological protecting and reviving medicine for back for lack of a better word. And currently, I have a few products out. That's not one of them. The products I have are amazing, but that's that's always going to be like the goal, until I get it, and when I do get it, I'm always going to be making a better once I have it. Every time, I learned to improve just like all my products."

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RVD also discussed Celebrity Slots, a new phone app game that is customized for RVD fans. He talked about the fun aspects of the game as well as the prizes fans can win.

"So the game itself is a very custom made, personalized slot machine game that's on a phone app, and it's it's customized for Rob Van Dam fans," RVD said. "All the symbols that you have on, instead of hearts and diamonds and stuff, you're going to see RVD boots and yin, yangs. You might see a symbol of RVD and Katie [Forbes] and Jennifer there somewhere for the fans that really follow.

"Katie and I both did a bunch of sound effects to play. While you're playing you'll hear us, 'yay, cheering. Whoa, you're the whole f-ing show.' It's going to be, hopefully, very very pointed towards the RVD fan. It came out a couple days ago, and the fans that have been playing it so far have already said that they really love it on the feedback. So I guess it's really fun, and it's free to download.

"It's free to play, but you actually win stuff. Some of them, like we're doing now, we're going to have Zoom meetings or Instagram lives talking to fans or hashtags, stuff like that. Also tangible stuff, autographed items. The big prize that we have right now is a $500 gift card that you can spend however you want, and it's free to play, so it's pretty cool."

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Rob Van Dam is featured in the new app Celebrity Slots, which is now available to download for free in the Apple and Google Play stores. Van Dam's full interview aired as part of a recent episode of our podcast, The Wrestling Inc. Daily. Subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as it's released Monday – Friday afternoon by clicking here.

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