Former WCW / IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Vader recently spoke to Raj Giri of WrestlingINC.com. You can get a video message from Vader and other wrestlers and celebrities at CelebVM.com.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
The Ultimate Warrior originally being groomed for the Big Van Vader gimmick in Japan:
Vader: Yeah! This is just my understanding, but I heard that Sid Vicious was also up for it. And [Antonio] Inoki had designed this thing and he was going to put this helmet on somebody and pay him a lot of money. They brought the Warrior over and—let’s face it…may he rest in peace and with all due respect—he looked fantastic, he had a lot of energy, he’s a Hall of Famer, but athletically, he was limited; in other words, he was a little stiff. In other words, I don’t think he could play a real good game of basketball. I’m not trying to be disrespectful but I believe the best wrestlers are also athletic in nature. Look at someone like Sting who is a tremendous athlete. Look at Undertaker, who is just a fabulous athlete. A guy like Shawn Michaels, who is a smaller athlete but…tremendous athleticism. I think Ultimate Warrior and Sid, although they looked fantastic, athletically I don’t think they’d have been given college scholarships to play football or basketball or something like that.
“This is my point: over in Japan, these guys were just very special athletes. They were raised in this. They were like gods and these guys were raised to do this from childhood. These guys started when they were 10, doing squats and pushups and they were handpicked. The best athletes moved on. There was never a case when I got in the ring in Japan and I wasn’t with a superior athlete. These guys were all fantastic athletes. They could do anything. A guy named Mitsuharu Misawa—he worked for a while and then started his own company, NOAH—he could do anything physically. He was just gifted. He got heavy and smoked towards the end and still could do 20 and 30 minute matches with me and just do anything—and hold, any move, anything off the top rope. All of them: Kobashi, Akiyama, Inoki—was probably the least athletic of them all—Gret Muta—God, you talk about a 6’3” athlete. So that’s just my opinion and they didn’t work out because Inoki saw that they could not go 20 minutes a night and work with these athletic, smaller guys. Especially Sid, because of his height. He’s 6′ 7” and you know, I was a lot taller than these guys and compared to Sid…Sid towers over me. I’m 6’4” and he’s 6’7”…6’8” with a boot on. But again, if you watch Sid in the ring, he’s kind of stiff. He kind of reminds me of Kane. Kane is stiff. He moves… that robotic kind of thing. Not real fluid. And you compare Kane to the Undertaker and I think that’d be a fair analogy. Kane gets up to the top rope and he comes off and it’s kind of difficult for him and it’s kind of awkward. The Undertaker walks up backward gracefully and comes of the top rope and there’s just a difference in athletic ability. Don’t get me wrong; Kane’s a Hall of Famer and he’s going to do great but I’m trying to make a point here.
The sid Vicious – Arn Anderson hotel fight in the U.K. in 1993:
“Me and Steve [Austin] are sitting there [in the hotel bar] and then all hell breaks loose. Neither one of us really saw what happened but next thing I know, man, Sid comes walking up to me because I was headed that way to see if I could help or, you know, just hold somebody because it was a violent fight. I mean there were chairs and bottles. And Sid, if memory serves, it was either just to the left of his belly button or just to the right of his belly button, he had a hole in him and I looked and he was doing the Frankenstein walk and he just said, ‘Leon, Leon,’ and I said ‘Oh sh–‘ and I looked and it about a nickel sized stream of blood squirted out every time his heart pumped. It came out about four inches before it fell down, it wasn’t trickling down his stomach, it was squirting out, and it came out about two to three inches and then it dropped and I thought to myself, ‘He’s not going to last long, he’ll bleed to death.’ I said ‘Sid, trust me,’ and I grabbed a chair and I sat down and said, ‘Sid, don’t move, you’re gonna die’ and I slowly eased my thumb into that hole and higher and he said, ‘You’re hurting me.’ and I said, ‘You gotta take it’ and I got it in there a little bit more and it slowed the bleeding enough and kept him alive until the ambulance came.
“That’s the true story. This was instinct on my part, I knew if I took a towel he’d bleed to death. I thought I had to plug it and somehow I got in there and I had stopped the bleeding partially because I got my thumb on the vein that had been cut and it slowed it down and, you know what? As far as I’m concerned, Anderson owes me a “Thank you” because I don’t care if you’re right or wrong, when someone gets killed, you’re in trouble. Someone dies. And as far as Sid, I probably saved his life and, you know what? Not probably, most definitely did, because I was there, I saw it and (laughs) neither one of them thanked me. No good deed goes unpunished, brother.
Being promised the WWF title:
Vader: You know what, the title was promised to me two times. I was supposed to be a two-time heavyweight champion. If I did the job for Shawn at SummerSlam, and then something would happen and I’d get it then give it to somebody else, take it back and then give it back to Shawn in San Antonio. Instead, somehow that got changed around.
Anyway, Sid took that run and then I had a really great opportunity, Vince said to me, “You’re not just a good worker, you’re a great big man and there’s this guy coming in here called The Rock. Just take him under the arm about ninety days and just beat the hell out of him. I want you to teach him how to wrestle but be rough on him.” The Rock was just “Yes, sir, no, sir” to me and for ninety days, I beat him every night, but I made him listen. You know, “Hit me harder,” and “Do this,” and “This psychology and that psychology,” and the last night, he beat me and we shook hands and he went on and I think I did a pretty good job. He had a whole lot to work with. And then, for that, [Vince] said “We’re going to give you a run at the Intercontinental and then that never happened.
Vader also discussed another gimmick Vince McMahon had for him, getting his start in pro wrestling, his NFL career getting cut short, signing with WCW, Ron Simmons defeating him to become the first African American World Heavyweight Champion and what it meant to him, Eric Bischoff taking charge in WCW, his WCW departure, signing with WWE, WWE not pushing him properly and much more. You can read the full interview by clicking here.
