Rob Van Dam on Jon Moxley’s “spike” bump from AEW Dynamite: “That’s not wrestling to me”

As seen during the March 19th 2025 edition of AEW Dynamite, Jon Moxley defeated Cope (Adam Copeland) in a street fight (hardcore match) to retain his AEW world title. While speaking on his podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam discussed Moxley taking a bump onto Cope’s “spike” bat covered in nails…

“It’s not my thing, not my kind of thing. That’s not wrestling to me, but obviously that is sacrificing a lot for the business, I mean that could be said about it. But the more AEW has been doing stuff like that, the more personally I feel like I would rather be associated with WWE than AEW you know?”

“Like a couple years ago it was like, ‘Man they’re growing, they’re trying things to get up there,’ and then there’s a feel that like the inmates are running the prison, which there always has been, for better or worse. I mean that was used as a good point at first, like ‘Hey, the boys are running it, cool,’ but for me this serves as an example of why that might not be a good idea but it is a style of wrestling. I personally look at it as being lower than the standard, substandard because it’s going to draw only a certain niche crowd that’s into that kind of stuff. I didn’t like it. It’s really crazy dangerous. I don’t want to knock their freedom of expression. I think that’s probably cool to them or else they would turn it down when it was at the idea phase if it didn’t sound cool, right? So congratulations to pulling off a crazy stunt, death defying stunt for better or worse, you know?” (quotes courtesy of WrestlingHeadlines.com)