Sean Waltman recently spoke about Vader’s passing on the latest episode of XPac 1 2 360; you can read a few transcribed highlights and watch the full clip below:
(Transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com)
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen his debut as Vader in Japan, it was against [Antonio] Inoki. It was just like—he just came in and went behind Inoki and German suplexed him—he didn’t have the bridge—but right out of his shoes, right on his head. That was it; Inoki was out. If Inoki was down selling for you like that, the last time he sold for someone like that was [Hulk] Hogan, when Hogan hit him with the axe bomber.
I know Vader was the man, and people talk about Leon and Bam Bam Bigelow. Bam Bam was techinically a little bit better in the ring; he was a guy that you’d go out in the ring and you wouldn’t feel a thing. For the most part it looked like he was hurting you, but there were some things about Bam Bam’s work where you could see it was coming light. Leon was a lot more hard-hitting, and he’d hurt guys once in a while, mainly just rough the guy up. Me personally, I don’t have a problem with that. You’re not crippling somebody—that’s just me—I never minded getting beat up like that. I think Leon was a much bigger draw because he was going to go out there and hurt somebody, that reputation and aura about him. He was hurting guys sometimes and it looked like he was hurting guys all the time.
He could go and go and go. I never saw Leon blow up in the ring very often. At least I could say I’ve never seen it happen. It might have had something to do with the fact that he lived at something like 8,000 feet elevation in the Rocky Mountains. I’m sure that had a little something to do with it—a guy that big to be able to do the things that he did—guys half his size couldn’t hang with him half of the time. My experiences with Leon were always pleasant. He got to be a little bit cranky, to say the least at times, but when you’re a guy like that—that size and health issues—you deal with that and after a certain point it makes you a bit grouchy. Lord knows I’ve at least been as grouchy as I’ve ever witnessed him being, but he actually was a really wonderful guy.
Towards the end, he talked about his health issues, and he was actively campaigning to be in the [WWE] Hall Of Fame. It’s really sad now to be looking back that he wasn’t inducted while he was alive. That makes me really sad about that, people never really think—it’s just another one of those cases where you go ‘there’s always next year’—but there isn’t always a next year.
