The 50 Greatest Wrestlers Of The Last 50 Years: Former WCW World Champ Comes In At #34

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#34 Vader

Some people will think that this is way too high of a ranking for Vader, that he deserves to be lower on this list if he deserves to be on it at all. That is fine, I don’t think my opinion is inherently more valid than anybody else’s. However, I do think that Vader has had one of the most successful careers in wrestling of the last 50 years and he has accomplishments on his resume from all over the wrestling world. Vader was a big star in North America and had world title reigns, but he was an even big star in Japan where he got his career kicked into high gear and where he would return after he ran out of options in the United States.Leon White grew up in Los Angeles where he was a top college football recruit, eventually going to the University of Colorado where he became a two-time All-American on the offensive line. He was drafted in the 3rd round of the 1978 NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Rams. Despite showing promise as an NFL lineman and playing for the Rams in Super Bowl XIV, White was forced to retire after dealing with several injuries, including a ruptured patella. Following the end of his football career, White was told to give pro wrestling a try and he found an early home in the American Wrestling Association after being trained by Brad Rheingans, eventually wrestling under the name Bull Power. A fast learner, White quickly climbed the ranks and earned an AWA World Heavyweight Championship match against Stan Hansen and worked a series of matches against Hansen throughout 1986. In 1987 White’s career changed forever when he made his first appearance for New Japan Pro Wrestling, appearing as a member of Takeshi Kitano’s Puroresu Gundan stable under a black mask and going by the name Big Van Vader. The name Vader came from a powerful warrior character from Japanese folklore. Vader immediately asserted his dominance in NJPW, running into the ring after Antonio Inoki defeated Riki Choshu and challenged Inoki to a match. Inoki accepted and Vader quickly defeated Inoki in under three minutes, which caused a riot at the Sumo Hall in Tokyo, leading to a temporary ban for NJPW at the Sumo Hall. Just four years into his professional career, Vader became a world champion when he defeated Shinya Hashimoto to win the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship in the finals of an eight man tournament to crown a new champion, becoming the first foreign wrestler to win that championship.

Vader would drop the title to Russian amateur star Salman Hashimikov, who in turn would drop the title to Choshu. Vader would then defeat Choshu to win his second world championship on August 10, 1989. After winning the world championship Vader went on some international excursions, where he defeated Austrian strongman Otto Wanz to win the Catch Wrestling Association World Heavyweight Championship, the biggest title in Europe. In November 1989, Vader traveled to Mexico where he defeated UWA World Heavyweight Champion El Canek, becoming the first and only wrestler in history to hold three different world titles at the same time on three different continents. Vader’s wrestling style has become the stuff of legend within wrestling locker rooms. In wrestling, there is a philosophy behind putting in offense. There is stuff that doesn’t really hurt that looks like it hurts, which is good. There is stuff that doesn’t look good that does actually hurt, which is bad. Vader fell somewhere in the middle, where his stuff looked like it hurt, and boy did it. Vader has the reputation as being one of if not the stiffest worker in wrestling history, and it has been reported that undercard wrestlers would literally leave the arena when they found out they were working with Vader. Vader was a true gorilla in the ring, nobody ever watched a Vader match and talked about how fake it looked. Vader found his way back into mainstream American …

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