Insight with Chris Van Vliet
Raven's Most Hardcore ECW Moments, Early Onset Parkinson's, WrestleMania, TNA, WWE Run
08 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What are Raven's most memorable ECW moments?
Chris VanVleet!
It was so fun watching you interact with Dallas and Buff Bagwell here just a minute ago. It's like a reunion, I guess. Yeah, you know, it's like I don't talk to the boys much when I'm at home. Like, I'm not a phone person. I don't talk to pretty much anybody on the phone. But whenever I see anybody, it's like you just saw them yesterday. You know, that's kind of friendships we have.
You build such a bond with certain people. You know, like me and Paige got quite a, you know, such a history together. And same with me and Buff. And... Yeah, it's great. Every time I see him, you know, it's like I just saw him yesterday and I'm going to see him tomorrow. And, you know, you have the same vibe, you know what I mean? It's like the brotherhood of wrestling. Yeah, it really is.
I mean, we go through so much physically between the matches, the psychological games the bosses play. Yeah. The flights, you know, crammed in and everything. You know, like a typical day is you're up at 6 a.m. to catch a 7 or 8 a.m.
Chapter 2: How has early onset Parkinson's affected Raven's life?
flight, you know, and then you got to catch a flight. And after the flight, you got to go to the gym. And then you got to drive to the arena, which sometimes can be three hours. Sometimes it's, you know, five minutes, you know, but sometimes it's three hours. And then you got to get ready to wrestle. And then you got to, you know, change all your clothes again. take a shower.
So, you know, two showers a day, you know, one after the match, one before from after working out, you know, it's a, it's a 12, 14 hour day. And then of course you want to go out and get some afterwards. You want to, uh, unwind after the match. So you, after the match, you wait till the show's over.
And then you, you know, if you're riding with somebody who's on the last, you got to wait till the end of the card. And, uh, Then you go out and then you drink till 1, 2, 3 in the morning and end up again at 6 a.m. What's so interesting about your chosen profession is fans only see the 10-minute match, 15-minute match on TV.
They don't see the other, the rest of the week and everything else that goes into it. Yeah, and it's a 6, 7, 6, well, now I think it's down to four days a week. I don't know how many days a week WWE does. AEW, I think, does one night a week, but... But I don't know. I don't follow it anymore. At all? No, not at all. You don't watch any wrestling?
Chapter 3: What inspired Raven's iconic wrestling character?
No. I stopped watching. I got so disenchanted when they did the Alliance angle back in 2002, maybe. You haven't been watching since then? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, I stopped watching. I saw some pay-per-views where I was a guest at a party. They pay you to come in and sit around and watch the pay-per-view with everybody. I've done some of those. So I've seen some stuff.
But not a lot, you know, I mean, I really, I just, a couple of reasons. One, I got so disenchanted and then I just never started watching again because I've already seen, done everything, you know, that there is. And I'm a completist, so I'd have to watch everything.
And, you know, there's no time to read books or to watch other TV shows, you know, or to, you know, with my sleep disorder, you know, I need to take a nap every day. And, you know, I need nine, ten hours sleep. And so... You know, so that cuts into my day. And then, you know, watching wrestling would just take up way too much time.
I'm already addicted enough to the UFC and MMA, you know, to get addicted to back to wrestling again would be too much. But you were wrestling long after the invasion angle. Yeah, yeah. No, I still watched it. I still, I mean, I still did it. You know, I still watched it at the arenas when I was at a show. I'd still watch my buddies wrestle and, you know, or...
or people that would ask me to watch their match. You know, the younger guys would ask me to watch their match on indie shows. But yeah, I didn't come out of the ring until COVID, I guess. What's the sleep disorder that you have? They don't have a name for it, but I know another person that has the same thing.
The basic gist is you wake up so many times in the night that when you wake up in the morning, you're still exhausted. And so I wake up, you know, I wear a CPAP. I have to wear a special CPAP that makes me breathe the air. I mean, this is all, you know, I'm sure from years of drug abuse and chair shots to the head and stuff like that and abusing my body, I'm sure this is the price I'm paying.
But, you know, so I wake, so I go to bed. I can fall asleep, no problem. But when I wake, but then I start waking up after about two hours, I'll wake up and I'll wake up like every 20 minutes for the next, six, eight hours, you know? And then, so when I wake up for good, I'm exhausted. So I'm waking up like 15, 20 times a night. How would you say your overall health is now? It's good.
You know, I mean, I got the early onset Parkinson's, you know, which I still don't, I'm, you know, I'm of the mind to say that I don't have it, you know, but it's why I have the tremor and that's what they think it is. And, and there's no a hundred percent proof tests. So I didn't, the one, the test they, they give to prove it, is...
only proves it like 90% and there's a lot of false positives and negatives in it. And so there's no reason, because he said he wouldn't treat me any other, you know, he would treat me the same way, which is nothing as of now, because nothing's bad enough. Although my tremor is really bad right now. You're not on any sort of medication? No, no. So there's no reason.
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Chapter 4: What was the story behind the chair shot heard around the world?
Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm leaving myself open for a little bit longer, but I plan on... I've always thought that 80 seemed about right. You know, I mean... You know, I don't think, you know, I'm not saying I have any, I don't have any way of confirming that I'll live to that, you know, or to make myself live to that.
I'm just, I put it out there as an estimate, you know, and hopefully that'll work itself out. You ran pretty hard for many years. Yeah, really hard. What do you think has been the price you had to pay to be Raven? Price I had to pay? It's all this, you know. Somebody wrote in an email, in a text to me, or not a text, a Twitter message.
I don't really follow Twitter much, although I've been following it since the documentary came out because, you know, I want to see what the response is to it. Other than that, I think social media is mostly the worst thing that ever happened to society.
Okay.
It's horrible. All it does is make people miss out, feel like they're missing out on other things. It's the FOMO. I mean, I have FOMO really bad, so I understand. I can't imagine. I have the life I have, so I can't imagine a 12-year-old fat kid or a 9-year-old ugly girl, the FOMO they must feel. What did this person write on Twitter? Oh, they wrote Raven. Wait, let me make sure I get it right.
Never alone, always lonely. Huh. It's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, it's not cool. It's pretty insightful. Yeah. You know, it's a pretty insightful, you know, phrase. But never alone, always lonely. And that was always me, too. I always had to have a group of people around me. And even then, I was always, you know, deep down, I was always lonely anyway. I mean, it really struck to the core.
I mean, he really nailed it. I was really touched by the documentary. Thank you. And you showed everything, right? Yeah, of course. Like, was there anything you were afraid to show? No, no. I always wanted to write a book because I thought my story was interesting and it could help people. Still can. Yeah, I'm too lazy to write a book. You know how much work goes into a book? I've heard, yeah.
Because you've got to edit everything. Diamond Dallas Page could help you. He's written like three, four. I'm a perfectionist, though, and I'd be rereading it and rereading it and rereading it, editing, to the point where I wouldn't... I don't see how directors, when they make movies, how their view must be...
You must get so jaded when you're editing down and you're going through something and you're like, I got to tighten this up. Should I tighten it up? Should I not? And, you know, you look at it, your perspective must be so hard to keep because you're looking at it over and over and over again.
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Chapter 5: What does Raven think about his time in WWE?
And they... They never liked me anyway. So this just made them like me less. And... Yeah, so, and then Vince took me off TV as a manager because he said that the character didn't, there was a disconnect between me and the character, which I always knew. Shane McMahon should have been Johnny Polo, you know. I'm not, my vocal pattern isn't Greenwich, you know, Connecticut.
It's, you know, it's Philadelphia. You know, I see Wooder and Gears. It doesn't sound anything like a spoiled rich kid from Connecticut would sound. Also, it wasn't me. They put me in suits and stuff at the office, but then I'd go home and change into my Raven wear, which I'd been wearing all along. You and Shane McMahon were pretty tight. We were, and then when I came back, we weren't at all.
I don't know why. When you came back into WWE? Yeah, when I came back as Raven, he never had time to talk to me. So, I don't know. But you guys, you were thick as thieves for a while, right? Yeah, we were, yeah. Why did that stop? Well, when I moved, you know, I don't keep in touch, as I said before. But, you know, I just, I don't know. When I got back, he just didn't treat me the same.
So how did Raven come about? If you say you were always wearing that stuff, how did you create the character? I was talking to Paige, DDP, and he goes, I was complaining about the fact that, you know, that Nobody was hiring chicken shit heels, you know what I mean? That I couldn't get a job with somebody, you know, with another company.
I'd have to... We were trying to figure out what to do with my career because I didn't want to stay as a... They took me off managing, and so I wasn't on TV, and so I was behind the scenes as a producer, like we said. And so we were talking...
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Chapter 6: How did Raven's career evolve during his time in TNA?
And he said, you know, I saw that movie Point Break with the red hot chili peppers and you, you know, you're tattooed, got long hair. This is when people had mullets and I was already growing my mullet out because mullets were out of style. But the wrestling business, they still had mullets because they live in a bubble. They do. Wrestlers live in a bubble, totally.
And, I mean, you know, like Shawn Michaels had a mullet for 20 years after they were out of style. That's true. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying anything negative about it. I'm saying, you know, factually. Mullets are back now. Sort of, but not really. Anyway, so what was I? So point break. Oh, yeah, so point break.
So he said, so, you know, so I wore Doc Martens, which I never ā which really are not very comfortable shoes, at least not the pair I had. And I wore ripped-up jeans and a T-shirt. And Paige said, you ought to do something like that because you've got to be a badass. You know, you've got to be a tough guy because ā Nobody's buying chicken shit heels. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm good at it.
He goes, yeah, but if nobody's buying it, it doesn't matter. And I'm like, you're right. And I was an ex-Marine, a U.S. Marine, so I can be a tough guy. And at home, I was considered a tough guy. Just in the wrestling business, with Steiners and Haku and, you know, I'm not, it's, it's hard to say you're a tough guy.
You know, you're going to be a tough guy, road warriors, you know, with all these guys that are legitimate bad-asses, you know, I may be a local bad-ass at home and, you know, in West Palm beach, but, you know, it's nothing compared to these guys. You know what I mean? You know, I bounced for years, you know, and stuff like that. And, um,
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Chapter 7: What are the challenges of being a professional wrestler?
Yeah, so I figured, all right, I'll be a tough guy then. That's fine. And then I started to think, how do I... And so Paige had pointed me in the right direction. And without Paige doing that, I never would have came up with it. So he deserves all the credit in the world for that. But then he also helped me refine my promos. So Paige deserves a lot of credit.
But basically, I came up with Raven... on my, basically myself, you know, Paulie had some input. Everybody had, you know, people always have a little bit of input here and there, but Paige put me in the right direction, which I'm forever grateful for. And he also got me my job with ECW too. How'd you come up with the name Raven?
Chapter 8: What are Raven's reflections on his documentary 'Nevermore: The Raven Effect'?
I was watching The Crow for inspiration, and the character's name was Eric Draven. I go, Draven, Raven, quote the Raven evermore. All right, I got a name and a catchphrase, boom. Now I need an outfit. And then I put the outfit together in like two minutes because it wasn't hard to figure out, you know.
And then I came up with the idea of the concert T-shirt because I'm a big believer in ring jackets. You got to wear or have a bunch of ring jackets because to be a star, you got to look like a star. But Raven's character wouldn't care about looking like a star. I had to get an anti-star look that still was a star character that made me look like a star. And so...
So I figured with the concert shirts, I'd have a different shirt every day, every match, so I could have a variety without having to change my jacket. And plus, I had no chest. As a bodybuilder, I always wanted to be a bodybuilder, but I never had the genetics for it. And so I wore...
So I had a thick waist, no abs, flat chest, but I had big arms and shoulders, you know, at the time, you know, until injuries took their toll. But that's a long story. But, yeah, so I figured I'd wear a concert T-shirt, sleeves cut off, I could show off the arms. You want to accentuate your strengths and hide your weaknesses. And I hid my weaknesses.
And another weird thing about that is I had really good legs, like really good thighs, but I had such a thick waist that it took away from it. But my thighs were really good. But for the look, I needed to cover them because if I would have wore short shorts, I'd look like, you know, like Stevie Richards. Right.
Yeah.
So sometimes you have to pick one or the other, you know what I mean? So, you know, but it's such a, it's, it's such a unique thing trying to figure out the, trying to get the most out of everything you can with the least amount of effort. You know, no one cut a promo like you in the night. Thank you. Thank you. Where did that come from? Um,
Just inside, I just, I would, I would, what I would do is I would, I would see stuff. I'd find a line like, like the Goo Goo Dolls had a line, scars are souvenirs you never lose. The past is never far. And so I said, scars are- What a song name. That song's so good. Yeah. It's unbelievable. And, and what a line, scars are souvenirs you never lose. Yeah. Yeah.
And so I took that and I made a promo around it. So I would take lines. And the best part is if you're pilfering lines from songs, if somebody recognizes it, instead of saying, hey, you're plagiarizing, they go, I know that song. That's from that song that I like. And if they don't recognize it, then you're just credited for it. So... We're excited either way. So you were drawing inspiration.
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