He's honored in Japan. Before WWF and WCW (I think) he defeated Inoki's streak in NJPW , despite how it crowd was despised it at the time, it grew a massive respect.
Vader was an excellent wrestler because he was so talented and gifted he alone made the WCW a must watch promotion. Vader did not fail the WWE they failed Vader because they abuse and misuse talent.
Even as a huge Sting mark, Vader won me over for just how impressively he mauled my hero. It's pretty incredible that WWF was the one major company that never made the most of him. Shawn could have had a perfect nemesis to overcome if his ego and attitude didn't get the better of him.
@@mattjindrak Nah, I love the Rock but Vader was an absolute monster in the ring and anytime I see him walk down the aisle I get excited to see him tear a man to pieces.
I always have and will be a Fan of Big Van Vader. His matches against Antonio Inoki, Sting, and Mitsuharu Misawa are Legendary. To this day, I can't get over how the WWF wasted some of Vader's prime years because of backstage politics. RIP, Leon "Big Van Vader" White.
Vader in WCW is one of my earliest memories of watching wrestling as a child. He holds a very special place in my heart, and is very likely the reason I gravitated so much to my favorite wrestler, Sting (who is still my favorite wrestler to this very day, always has been).
I met Vader at a local indy show near where I live sometime in the 2000's after he had come home from Japan. My friend and I got to chat with him for quite some time. I can honestly say, that in real life, he was absolutely nothing like who he was in the ring. He was super nice and respectful. He was constantly checking with the younger fans, asking them if they were having fun. He was one of the friendliest and nicest wrestlers I ever met, and he didn't mind hanging out and chatting with fans. If you had met him outside the ring, without knowing his job, it probably would have been a stretch to envision him as the terrifying monster that he was in the ring. He was that much different than who he was in the ring.
His matches against Misawa and the 2 against Kenta Kobashi are some of the greatest matches of all time, fucking awe inspiring. Exhausting honestly to witness, you can feel both dudes just draining themselves in there, amazing stuff. Feels like an actual fight, a legit athletic contest. It is incredible he so quickly went on to deliver those performances after how lame his time in WWF ended. One of the biggest, "fuck, did we mismanage or not see the treasure we had on our hands?" type of situations in wrestlign history
Vader was just one example of talent not being used right or being taken seriously in the WWF/E. It didn't help that Vince didn't take talent seriously which was why a lot of them ended up in WCW or some other kind of bs
Yeah, that’s one thing about Vader that I think is greatly underrated about him as a wrestler. For being such a gigantic and imposing figure, he was eerily well-spoken when he wanted to be.
He wasn't a WWF creation so he had to be buried , that's the WWE's favorite game to play with outside guys. Oh you like this guy fuq him , let's make him a joke ....
@@themadviking5746He was on the way to being a champion until Shawn ruined things. The kliq were some of the most negative people for wrestling we have ever seen
@@themadviking5746Austin & HHH were WCW guys too. But they came in during their late 20's & early 30's. Vader was middle aged and out of shape when he got to WWF. He got lost in the youth movement that was going on at the time.
I think the writing was on the wall for Vader after that Michaels title shot, apart from some sporadic highlights like his match with Owen Hart, the stiff fest with Shamrock, the match against Kane, and a not bad match against an unusually motivated Sid (who carried himself well but was a lazy worker as soon as the bell rung.) But both Shawn and Bret hated working with him, the matches with Taker were mostly unmotivated slogs, not helped by the fact Taker was coming off a vicious feud with Mankind where that sort of violence hadn't been seen in WWF in a while, and then that feud with The Artist Formely Known As Goldust. Outside things like the Kuwait incident, I think he became unmotivated because of backstage politics, whereas Sid just kind of waded through it and stayed on the top guys good side, kept his character and got over naturally with the audience despite being 100th of the worker Vader was. It's almost a shame for Vader that Foley was an out and out heel at the time, because renewing their WCW feud could've been exactly what the Vader character needed. It was a blessing going back to Japan and dealing with the likes of Kawada, Misawa, Kobashi and Taue who had earned their stripes by getting beaten up by Hansen, grumpy Tsuruta, grumpy Tenryu, Gordy and Dr Death Steve Williams.
The 2 years Vader spent at All Japan is the best run he had in Japan in my opinion, the match when he beat Misawa & became the triple crown heavyweight champion was so awesome especially that post match promo, Vader in Japan is just 10 times cooler than Vader in the US
This was damn amazing. I was always a HUGE fan of Vader, even when he was jobbing in the fed, his Matches with Sting rent constant space in my memory. Very good video, kudos sir.
@Geoffrey Walsh His matches in NOAH and All Japan are all over the internet, even on RU-vid. If you've seen them by now tho then I hope you've enjoyed!
Ah that Vader promo. Brian Zane did a great vid about Vader's time in the WWF and i loved the part that while Vader is cutting that promo, Brian is doing the burying thing. The most accurate way to describe that promo. Honestly, if he's gonna cut a promo like that, the least you can do is keep him off TV. Maybe have the story that he's trying to build himself back up again and retrain. I don't know, SOMETHING.
Thank you for this video. Even as kid in the early 90's Vader was one of my favorites. His look was like no one else. Like he looked so strong, but moved like a cruiserweight sometimes. So awesome.
He was one of the only wrestler action figures I ever had as a kid. His battles with Earthworm Jim and Jurassic Park dinosaurs though unknown were epic indeed.
Extremely underrated! I remember seeing him as a kid on TV and thought it was the most intimidating presence I had ever seen from a wrestler. His skillset was impeccable.
Definitely not underrated... Everyone praises him for being one of the best big men to ever grace the ring. The fella in the video even said that modern big men always get compared with Leon
There's a lot of nostalgia here for me. That Vader-Kobashi match VHS, which also had a lot of the buildup (including that brutal Kawada-Misawa match and Baba's funeral) was the first tape I ever imported from Japan. I opened my first checking account to buy it.
Kawada was originally my favorite of the 4 Pillars when i first TRULY grabbed on and could find tapes of AJPW in 94 . Then the more i watched i grew to eventually gravitate to others . Thank God for the internet and youtube ! I didnt have to spend hundreds of dollars to keep up ! But Ive been a fan since 85 and i love NWA , WCCW , Memphis and all in between . Nothing beats AJPW from the mid 80s till the exodus .
When kane cracked him with that huge wrench i legit was worried for vader as a kid, a guy that big with a giant wrench? Kane was straight up scary back then.
I needed this. I always felt like Vader got dealt a shit hand, but this made me feel a lot better. Thank you man. RIP to the best big man to ever do it.
I think the match between Kane and Vader at No Way Out 1998 is a fucking outstanding affair, it makes Kane look such a badass, it's a shame it's at an expensive of Vader and Kane getting fed to Undertaker constantly.
You forgot to mention he was the first wrestler to win triple crown, IWGP heavyweight championship and UWF-i world title. Vader mentioned that on his interview with the media after he won the triple crown.
Great video I've watched 3 times already but there's a couple of parts you got wrong, when Vader first left WCW in September '95 his first choice was to go back to New Japan but after working 2 shows Inoki didn't have any spots open. So Vader decided to use that opportunity to take some much needed time off to repair his shoulder and manage his real estate properties, but he had an incompetent agent who made a botched deal with the WWF that wasn't in Leon's favor at all. Vader wanted to make his WWF debut after Wrestlemania to give his shoulder time to heal, but Vince wanted Vader to show up at Royal Rumble and his agent didn't stand firm which was an inconvience for Vader. Fast forward to All Japan in '98 the May 1st show wasn't inter-promotional with AJPW and WWF, there was a clause in Vader contract where he could work one show a year in Japan and Stan reached out to Vader to work that show so Vader was able to exercise that clause. After that show Baba was so impressed with Vader's performance he had Stan to call him with the offer to join All Japan, but Vader turned it down bc Vince promised him a world title run, which he lied and still had Vader jobbing in the mid-card, in August of '98 baba extended another offer to Vader and this time he took it. This time Vader stood firm and negotiated his own release and as a result Vince had him to job on his way out, but gottdammit it was worth it bc he accomplished more in 6 moths in Japan than he did the entire 2 1/2 years in WWF.
Vader was world champion in WCW AJPW he became a job or in WWF later in his career but that man was a world champion and companies for years before WWF got him
My favorite super heavy weight. All of the various video game and anime characters inspired by him just further shows how popular he was in Japan back in the day. It was always fun to see him pop up in other media, like when he was on Boy Meets World and his appearance in the Fist of the North Star movie.
Great video and great channel. I read about a lot of this stuff back in the day but never saw most of it and this does a great job catching me up on what I missed.
Damn man, great video! Thank you for making it :D Loved Vader, I'm just mad I only got to see him during the end of his WWE run. I knew he was YUGE in JP, so much so he had a parody of him n a fighting game from SNK, but sadly, I've never got to see any of those matches. I know of some places to look, just unsure if I can find a "All Vader, All JP" content pack.
That entrance with the steam spitting helmet was the t!ts. Blew my mind that he didn’t do it more. I know he didn’t wanna carry the mask everywhere and other issues with it, but damn, that entrance alone was money.
This was a really good video, I didn't know all this stuff about Vader in new Japan, I definitely subscribed to your channel for more videos like this or other videos you make in the future
LOVED this vid ! And your last statements i agree without a shadow of a doubt ! Thank you . Such a great in depth vid . I really appreciate it . Sorry i commented so much !!!
This video was great. Real eye-opening look at a career I've always been interested in but never deep dived into. I'll definitely have to check out the rest of your videos
I'll always be in awe of wrestlers who push 350+ pounds, and are able to have 20 minute barnburners, really makes you question the human body. As for Vader himself, he's one of my fave wrestlers ever, I've once downloaded 40+ GB of his matches, from 80s AWA, his entire NJPW and WCW runs, some great WWE and NOAH matches as well. But nothing comes close to the 98-99 AJPW run, coincidentally one of my favorite eras for any wrestling promotion ever. Thank you so much, Mastodon, I hope you're trampling opponents beyond the Pearly Gates for all eternity ❤🖤
It blows me away, thinking about how WWF/WWE completely wasted Leon's talent. 😢 But we know they are known as the company that turns monsters into jokes. It's sad.....
This is a great comeback story for Vader. Didn't follow much of his post-WWF run back then but loved his WCW & NJPW runs so much of this was pretty new to me (especially him and Steve Williams winning the tag titles....that's a hell of a duo!). When Vader first came to WWF it seemed like they were really going to push him as the beast he had been in the previous companies but sadly it fell apart later on. Great to see him having got his swagger back in All-Japan. He's in my top 5 big men of all time in wrestling. R.I.P. to a legend.
I watched Canadian Stampede live, it is one of my fave PPVs.I remember the Raw appearance of Sid, I loved the new set of 5 we had to face the Hart Foundation, sadly it didn't work out.
Thanks for making this. I was always scared of Vader as a kid. Then one day it was like anyone could beat him I didn't get it. I'm so glad Japan was able to make him the monster again I knew he always could be. RIP Vader you were an amazing performer. My personal favorites were his battles against Sting. Those were the days!
That hit he did on Shamrock I have forever dubbed The Bear Paw and is one of the damnedest strikes I've ever seen in a wrestling match, WWF/E or otherwise. Probably the single best moment of his entire Fed run. Which isn't saying a lot, and literally everywhere else he's been did him better, but this was a highlight reel moment for sure.
Go ed Kim. I knew you would eventually end up doing a bit more wrestling on the side. Didn't expect a seperate channel though. Stupid algorithms have appeared to have stopped bringing your videos up as much as it used to, so i will get a good binge on the go. All the best mate. Hope you had a good christmas ✌️
