ECW’s Van Dam in trouble after drug arrest

Source: The Galveston Daily News

By Scott E. Williams
The Daily News

Published July 9, 2006
As criminal-justice reporter for The Galveston County Daily News, I’ve joked that if I had a dollar for every time I’ve typed the phrase “a traffic stop turned into a drug arrest,” I could retire in luxury.

At the very least, I’d have as much money as Rob Van Dam blew by becoming the subject of one of those phrases.

Van Dam, real name Robert Szatkowski, was arrested a week ago, when Ohio state troopers charged him with possession of marijuana and Vicodin, a prescription painkiller for which the wrestler had no prescription.

Van Dam was traveling from a show with Terry “Sabu” Brunk. The two men got into wrestling about 15 years ago, both trained by Ed Farhat, wrestling’s legendary Sheik and Sabu’s uncle.

Marijuana possession is a misdemeanor, but officials said the Vicodin could carry felony charges.

The law is not the beginning and end of Van Dam’s problems, however. Although he recently defected to the “relaunched” Extreme Championship Wrestling, his real employer was still World Wrestling Entertainment. The “new” ECW is really just another brand of WWE, for whom Van Dam has worked since 2001.

WWE is also a company that launched a new drug policy more than six months ago, following the November death of popular star Eddie Guerrero. Guerrero’s autopsy report listed drug use as a factor in his death at 38.

Under the policy, unauthorized drug use (including steroids) can result in suspension, rehabilitation, or termination. A lengthy look at the still-overmuscled bodies in WWE at least suggests that the policy is primarily a public-relations move. If that’s the case, the arrest of the company’s top man on drug charges is its worst nightmare.

If you watched the “Raw” and “ECW” shows this week, you noticed that Van Dam not only lost the WWE title he won last month, but also the ECW title that was to mark him as the flagship star of the fledgling program.

Van Dam, one of the real ECW’s most popular stars when it folded five years ago, had toiled in the middle of WWE’s pack since joining the company in July 2001. The “new” ECW was his chance to jump to the next level, and he was making the most of it.

Now, he’s on suspension for 30 days. Sabu, charged only with misdemeanor narcotic paraphernalia possession, was fined $1,000. Suspending him would have meant that the WWE-owned ECW brand would be without all three of its top stars — the company sent Kurt Angle on a 30-day hiatus the week before (draw your own conclusions).

Hence the utterance Tuesday of the words no true ECW fan ever wanted to hear: “The winner, and new ECW champion, The Big Show!”

Van Dam’s a smart guy with diversified business interests (he owns, among other things, a successful comic-book shop in Los Angeles), and he very likely does not need wrestling to earn a living. He definitely doesn’t need WWE. Van Dam is one of a handful of guys who could make a good living working occasional independent shows and monthly shows for TNA, the closest thing WWE has to a competitor.

Still, it has to be a bummer for a man whose charisma and unparalleled athleticism were only starting to be fully utilized, when he inadvertently put the brakes on his own career.

And while Van Dam’s own actions caused his plight, it’s hard to have sympathy for WWE officials. Here they were, six months into a drug policy public pressure basically forced on them, and they put their championship on a guy who was a feature interview in the March 1999 issue of “High Times” magazine, a pro-marijuana publication.

You mean to say RVD, the guy whose slogan is “RVD 4:20 says I just smoked your ass,” the guy WWE announcers often make drug jokes about (“Nobody gets as high as RVD!”) on live television, got busted? Who could have seen that coming? Not the business geniuses controlling the most powerful wrestling company on Earth; that’s apparent.

Next week, I promise we’ll answer the reader question about why “Smackdown!” has been airing so sporadically here in the Houston-Galveston area!

Scott E. Williams is a Daily News reporter and longtime wrestling fan. As author of “Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of ECW,” on sale now, he is no stranger to RVD, Sabu, or ECW. His e-mail address is scott.williams(at)galvnews.com.