Rob Van Dam on convincing Vince McMahon to approve the "420 leg drop" in WWE
Former WWE Champion Rob Van Dam recalled a humorous story about explaining the name of the "420 leg drop" move to Paul Heyman.
Van Dam stated that he had to explain the name of the move to Heyman so that the former lead SmackDown writer could effectively explain the term "420" to WWE Chairman Vince McMahon.
According to RVD, this was because Vince McMahon did not know what the term "420" meant.
During an interview with The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast, Rob Van Dam recalled the funny conversation he had with Paul Heyman about the "420 leg drop" name for Heyman to explain to Vince McMahon:
"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.'"
Did Vince McMahon understand and approve the leg drop name?
The "420 leg drop" was only used once on SmackDown by Rob Van Dam and Rey Mysterio as a tag team. It could be speculated that Vince McMahon didn't approve of the move name. But this could've also happened due to RVD sustaining a torn ACL soon into his tag team partnership with Rey Mysterio during that period of time.
Continuing to recall this funny conversation between himself and Paul Heyman, Rob Van Dam admitted that he never received a reason from Paul Heyman, Rey Mysterio, or Vince McMahon as to why the move wasn't used again. Van Dam further stated that he didn't know if Vince McMahon had approved the name of the move.
However, Rob Van Dam did suggest that his ACL injury may have been the reason behind the move not being used again, as the injury cut his tag team partnership with Rey Mysterio on SmackDown short:
"I never heard anything back on it, so I don't know, 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."
What are your memories of Rey Mysterio and Rob Van Dam as a tag team on SmackDown in 2004 on WWE television?