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R.I.P. VADER


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Vader vs. Kenta Kobashi 
This is the first singles match in their budding feud (which should be settled in a Slab of Ribs on a pole match at AJPW Souled Out.) This was also Big Leon's first singles match of note in All Japan. They started with the big staredown, Kobashi was sporting the head bandage, where Vader busted up his eye in a tag match. Shockingly for All Japan they started with some mat wrestling, which is the first mat wrestling I can remember since Dory Funk Jr. It wasn't Tamura v. Volk Han or anything, but Vader controlled on the 
top, and Kobashi was able to slip in a crossarmbreaker with Vader struggling for a rope break, perfectly acceptable Japanese shootstyle mat work and something All Japan should really get back to.  Vader then starts clubbering, hitting some stiff punches, mixed in with some WwhiFfs. Vader takes Kobashi to the floor, and hits a lame Big Leslian powerbomb, and a mediocre chair shot. When they get back to the ring, Kobashi attacks Vader's knee with some dropkicks. Kobashi hits the big DDT, and gets Vader in the corner and does his lame chops, which Vader sells like he was being hit with a crowbar. Kobashi hits a vertical suplex and a backdrop suplex and a nice missile dropkick. Kenta goes up and hits the tub of guts moonsault, which he had been building to for the whole match. Vader kicks out though and drops him with a lariet. Then Vader hits his bigger tub of guts moonsault for a two count. Vader then hits him with a lariet and a Vader bomb for the win. Pretty good match defiantly the best Vader has looked in years. I was into the mat wrestling which Vader did well (being from the AWA and the UWFI respectively), and I liked the race to the moonsault psychology. Kenta was less irritating in this then he has been in a while, but Vader still hasn't fully acclimated to the All Japan style. His stiffness is still hit and miss, as he has gotten all loose from years of wrestling the Godfather in Sioux City. He also oversells a lot, flipping and flopping at the first sign of contact which I am sure is a reaction to having to sell for the hammer like blows of Hunter Hearst Helmsley and Kane, however this match did show a lot of potential, and Vader showed he still has the 
athleticism to compete at a world class level. Hopefully he will adjust to the style and actually inject some submission and mat work 
 into the top level of All Japan. 

DVDVR #94

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&&&&&&&&&& Cactus Jack vs. Vader - Halloween Havoc (10/24/93 - Texas Death Match) 
(PHIL RIPPA) 
I am probably going to be all across the board on this match but who really cares. I still haven’t really figured out why WCW didn’t put Foley over in this match. I mean it was a non-title match (A fact I kept missing until I finally paid attention to Tony) so it isn’t as if they would have had to have had Jack as their champion. Plus, this was during the big Jack comeback from the injuries so it would have made sense to give him one clean victory of Vader. (By the way, Tony has a really comical line that went something along the lines of “Jack lost his bag, GOT IT BACK…” It really is perversely funny when listened to.) Now, come to think of it, Vader went over Sting in the non-title strap match so maybe they just didn’t like the idea of Vader jobbing. This was the second of the “Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal” matches and WCW learned how to rig a wheel so they didn’t end up with a Coal Miner’s Glove match again. This match is really good except for that fucking ending. Stupid fucking tazer. The match is just as brutal as their other affairs and it is so from the get go. The battling into the grave is a little contrived but the blade jobs that results were pretty mammoth. Did I mention the tazer? There is the wicked sleeper reversal that was all sorts of hurty (it has come out in the wash that Jack was really trying to hurt himself with that one.) There are plenty of our nasty things too as Vader wasn’t afraid to have his cranium cracked with some chair shots and Jack forgets that concrete has no give as he bounces off it a few times. Of course, there is the annoying 30-second rest period after falls, which means to win, your opponent had to be incapacitated for 40 seconds. I really don’t understand what Texas Death Match rules they were following there but it was stupid. Man, this match even had a good looking Vadersault. And, oh yeah, the fucking tazer. I would have easily voted for this match, right up to that point where Harley Race zaps Jack with the tazer to keep him down for the 10 count. What is even worse than that was since you had seen shots of Race playing with the tazer, you knew it was going to come into play and you knew that it wasn’t going to lead to anything good. I really don’t know what the harm of having a clean finish would have done but this is WCW and logic never applied. That was really WCW’s MO. Have really great matches with amazingly shitty endings.  There other MO was to have really bad PPVs with one really good match so that people actually forget what a good match it was because it was emersed in such udder crap. FUCK YOU WCW!

DVDVR #125

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INOKI FINAL COUNTDOWN 5TH:  ANTONIO INOKI vs. BIG VAN VADER (NJ 1/4/96, Tokyo Dome): (PETE STEIN)- I know, I know... it's Inoki the fifty-something bastard selfishly putting himself over a vastly superior opponent.  That was what I thought at the time I read the result, but it's one thing to read "Antonio Inoki b Big Van Vader" in the WON... it's another matter ENTIRELY when you see the match and get a load of the ungodly beating Vader inflicts upon Inoki's person in exchange for doing the J-O-B at the end.  Prematch intro for Inoki may be the most dramatic one I've ever seen as a harpist suspended in mid-air plays his theme, which sounds like the music they would play at ones funeral. (1) Vader gives Inoki a massive pimp-slap before the bell and proceeds to spend the next several minutes just annhilating the old man inside the ring and out, no-selling what little offense Inoki can muster.  The pinnacle of this is The Spot.  Inoki finally struggles back into the ring, where Vader hits an uraken, teases a powerbomb only to get behind Inoki... AND KILLS ANTONIO INOKI DEAD WITH THE NASTIEST GERMAN SUPLEX IN THE HISTORY OF OUR GREAT SPORT.  A blind man could pop for The Spot based on sound alone. (2)  Vader continues to brutalize Inoki on the floor before Inoki backdrops him into the ring and gets in some offense with a Bombs Away, some strikes and the enzuigiri.  Inoki sends Vader to the floor and juices him with a chairshot, which serves only to piss Vader off even more. (3)  Inoki punches away and goes for the armbreaker but Vader gets a ropebreak, then slips behind and puts on a choke sleeper.  Vader releases the hold and fucking MURDERS Inoki with a chokeslam, then goes for the powerbomb; a bloodied (huh?) Inoki slips behind and goes for the enzuigiri again, but Vader ducks it and slaps on a Dragon Sleeper.  He hits the Vader Bomb off the middle ropes, but Inoki kicks out.  Vader then hits the MOONSAULT- ditto.  Finally Vader hits Inoki with the Big Van Crush, but Inoki slams him as he goes for a second and slaps on the armbreaker for the expected tap-out.  The result was annoying, but not nearly as much as you'd expect since Inoki got his assed destroyed throughout, sold it about as well as you could hope for from him, made Leon look like the big, scary monster he was and "got lucky" at the end.  I'm down with that.  (4)

You will have to live without the footnotes for right. Fucking footnotes

DVDVR #121

 

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1 hour ago, Control said:

 

Pretty sure Vader and Kobashi go skull-to-skull in that last one.

Vader hitting one from the MIDDLE rope might be the most insane thing I've seen him do. Egads.

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The best thing about Vader/Shamrock was that it led to a unofficial rematch in FMW of all places in a No Ropes cage match where Vader gives Shamrock a legit powerbomb on a stiff mat that KO's him almost dead for real.

 

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Even watching the match through snow-vision (tuning into the pay-per-view channel even though you didn't order the show) I was shocked at the thrashing Vader delivered to Sting at the 1992 Great American Bash. It probably had a lot to do with Sting getting countout victories over Vader on the Saturday Morning shows as well as reading house show reports in Pro Wrestling Illustrated that reported Sting going over Vader clean around the clock. It also seemed like they had been building towards Rude taking the title off Sting for a long time.

A work friend of my dad's told me about security confiscating a pro-Vader sign he had made while attending a show around the time Vader was feuding with Hogan. This was probably my first realization of how cool it was to root for the bad guys against certain corny types of dinosaurs.

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5 hours ago, Control said:

 

Pretty sure Vader and Kobashi go skull-to-skull in that last one.

Kobashi took the Vadersault twice??!! He wouldn't have if the order of these clips were reversed. That, my friends, was a good old fashioned headbonking in that last one.

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This reminds me that I purchased a Best of Vader in Japan comp like a decade or so ago, and it was actually a kayfabe Best of: it only included matches that Vader won.

Are any of the Otto Wanz matches worth a watch?

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On 6/20/2018 at 2:43 PM, J.T. said:

A riot broke out in Sumo Hall after Vader killed Inoki to death.

Pro wrestling was banned in Sumo Hall for two years after this match.

That's how hated and over that gimmick was. 

Since I was a African-American gaijin and have always had heat with Inoki for trying to make Muhammed Ali look like a buffon, Vader instantly became my hero when he suplexed the living dog shit out of Inoki. I loved the big guy.  I feel like I have lost a family member today.

The match you’re referring to happened in the 80s I think. Inoki vs. Vader where Inoki took that German was on the 1/4/96 Tokyo dome show. 

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I really started watching in late 97, so I probably saw Vader on Boy Meets World before I saw him in actual pro wrestling..

But yeah, when you're 400+, I think 63yo is beating the point spread by a little bit. Heart stuff can really be tough, especially at his size. He did a lot, and one could only imagine what would have happened if he had gotten into the business earlier (he'd be working Tulsa for Bill Watts?) or if he had gotten into the WWF before Yokozuna ended up at 600 pounds.

I recall downloading some matches involving Vader off of an FTP a long time ago (is there a statute of limitations for admitting that?) and now I can just watch YouTube on a TV and see him from all sorts of places. So I guess somebody could talk about timing where he 'missed' out on the boom periods, but in the scheme of things, he was on time.

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3 hours ago, Attila The Hut said:

The match you’re referring to happened in the 80s I think. Inoki vs. Vader where Inoki took that German was on the 1/4/96 Tokyo dome show. 

This is the sumo hall riot match 12/27/87

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7 hours ago, Control said:

This reminds me that I purchased a Best of Vader in Japan comp like a decade or so ago, and it was actually a kayfabe Best of: it only included matches that Vader won.

:lol: love this.

Me and my friends have been swapping Vader gifs in our Whatsapp group and it made me realise that when I first saw him during his dominant run in WCW it must have been similar to what it was like for people when they saw the Road Warriors for the first time in the 80s.

No other person could've done the gimmick justice, Leon White's work style and athleticism were just ideal for the character.

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10 hours ago, Control said:

This reminds me that I purchased a Best of Vader in Japan comp like a decade or so ago, and it was actually a kayfabe Best of: it only included matches that Vader won.

Are any of the Otto Wanz matches worth a watch?

I watched one of the ones where Otto gets the belt back and thought it was really good.

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