When Rob Van Dam made his debut appearance and then debut match on AEW Dynamite, it sent more than a few fans of WWE up in arms.

Sure, RVD has been wrestling all over the world since his run in Impact Wrestling came to an end, wrestling for Frontline Pro, BCW, OTT, NOAH, 1PW, and IWC, to name a few, and has found incredible success as a go-to guest at wrestling conventions around the world, but going to AEW, especially after appearing on WWE programming earlier this year, felt to some like a shot across the bow from a certified Hall of Famer.

Taking to Twitter after seeing these comments from a small but vocal segment of the WWE Universe, RVD let it be known that his Dynamite debut wasn't some major betrayal of Vince McMahon, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, and company, but instead an opportunity he undertook with their blessing.

“Some fans are saying I did WWE wrong by appearing on AEW,” Rob Van Dam tweeted. “I wonder if they would all eat sh*t if I revealed that I had permission to do it? Or would they just move on to puke out the next meaningless bullsh*t that comes out of their mouths? Yeah, I figured. I'll keep it to myself for now.”

Welp, there you go, folks; Van Dam isn't some “burn the boats” anti-WWE radical now but instead a 52-year-old living legend who can still very much go looking to get one more massive pop for his talents on live television. While AEW and WWE aren't super buddy-buddy, sometimes, they can co-exist in a genuinely cool way.

Rob Van Dam reflects on his “heat” with the Young Bucks before AEW.

While bringing Rob Van Dam into AEW for a match – and maybe more – with Jack Perry for his old pal Taz's FTW Championship felt like a pretty low-risk, high-reward situation for Tony Khan and company, as the ECW legend is pretty much universally beloved by fans across the professional wrestling world, there was a tiny bit of tension heading into the show because he and had some heat in the past with the Young Bucks, Nick and Matt Jackson.

Discussing how this drama all began, RVD noted that, ultimately, it wasn't as bad as some may have assumed.

“I said something about when they walked by me, I guess in WWE, how they didn't introduce themselves, which to old school rules, that was, I don't want to call it a commandment. I guess it is actually, you know, it's one of the biblical commandments of the dressing room, especially when you're new. You're supposed to introduce yourself a certain way, protocol, just like the f**king mafia. A made man cannot introduce himself to another made man. A made man has to be introduced by someone else in the middle, and we had our protocols, too,” RVD said via Wrestling News.

“Anyway, I just pointed that out, you know, they didn't shake my hand or whatever. But I also did throw in something that could be taken as an insult, which I didn't own up to at first because I was like, all I said was they didn't shake my hand. But I did say something about them looking like two high schoolers, so that was something that was provoking, you know, looking back at it. I don't think I even realized it when I said it, or maybe I did, but either way. They did the same thing a couple of nights later or something to Booker T, and Booker T posted something about, ‘I see with my friend Rob's talking about. You will shake my hand the next time you walk by me' or something like that. Then Goldust had the same experience, and then he said something about it. Then I saw while these two guys were in Japan, one of them is doing the RVD thing when they come out, and the other one is doing Booker. I thought that was great, but that’s the whole heat that I know of anyway. I thought that it was great that they were capitalizing on it.”

Once upon a time – and to some fans, even now – the Young Bucks had a very bad reputation among older fans for borrowing moves from older wrestlers, for making merch out of darn-near everything, and for having a cocky, darn-near irreverence for the business of professional wrestling, even if that ultimately wasn't how they actually felt. With no incidents reported between the duo from their shared time on Dynamite, it's clear whatever beef might have been there has been squashed.