Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest big man
in the history of wrestling...
Vader!
[Narrator] In the world of professional wrestling,
every hero needs a villain.
And few villains were tougher,
scarier, or more dangerous...
Oh, gosh!
...than Big Van Vader.
The most amazing super heavyweight
that I've ever seen. Ever.
When you looked at him, you'd think, my God,
who would ever fight that guy?
Argh!
He is one of the most sadistic,
one of the most physically intimidating athletes
I have ever seen in my career.
He was 400 pounds, and could do moonsaults.
The moonsault!
Vader was a world champion in almost every continent
on the globe that had professional wrestling,
but he had a reputation.
Oh!
When you start hammering people, they were like,
damn, that had to hurt them, because it did.
He was the stiffest wrestler
I've ever been in the ring with.
Whack!
He was really good at that style.
But, it can be a scary thing.
But the violence that made Vader a sensation
also sabotages his career, as the industry's
biggest stars turned their back on him.
You got to remember what's show biz and what's real.
And sometimes Leon had a hard time
separating the fact from the fiction.
Out of the ring, the man who became a champion
by inflicting pain,
struggles to deal with his own.
He lived life hard.
He did things that a man his size
shouldn't have been able to do, and...
paid a big price for it.
Pain will change you.
Your personality will change.
You will change.
Big Van Vader is the greatest super heavyweight
of all time, but he's still human.
And sometimes many of us forgot that.
Vader, he fears no man...
and he feels no pain.
♪
[Evil laughter & growling]
If you look at some of the great movie villains,
they were just so overwhelmingly powerful,
that they were terrifying.
You rooted for your favorite character
to survive that encounter.
And in professional wrestling...
Vader was the greatest monster, really, of his era.
Vader!
My name is Mick Foley.
I'm a three-time WWE champion,
and I was pummeled by Vader on many occasions.
Oh!
Leon was one of those few people who could come in and
make it look like not only might your favorite be
losing their title...
they might be losing their life.
Like they were fighting for something
bigger than a victory.
Vader was going to give it to you,
and if you didn't give it back,
he was going to eat you up.
Argh!
My name is Jesse White, and I have the
honor and privilege of being the son
of Leon White, aka Vader.
Dad grew up in Lynwood, California,
about two miles outside of Compton...
in a, a house with a lot of violence.
A lot of it revolved around alcohol.
Growing up, he kind of had to step up
to take care of his family...
and become the head of the family.
He had a rough one,
he had a rough one, you know?
I'm Debra White, and I was married to
Leon White, aka Big Van Vader.
The school he went to,
he had to pretty much fight every day.
This is late 60s and now LA's starting to get
a little bit more rough.
My dad was probably about 12 years old.
He was at home watching Star Trek with his sister,
and someone's coming to break in the house.
[Shattering]
So they ran down to the bar where Grandpa was at.
Grandpa took them back home,
boarded up the window, gave him a shotgun,
and said, "If someone comes through,
you know what to do this time."
He made sure that Leon knew
you don't take bullshit from anybody.
He was trying to make him tough.
And obviously, he turned out pretty tough.
[Laughing]
Sports is where my dad found his identity.
If it wasn't for football, I don't know if
Pops ever makes it out of LA.
He was a hell of a player.
When he would hit you,
even if he was messing around...
Man, it hurt.
My name is Dave Logan.
I played a long time in the NFL.
I met Leon his freshman year, University of Colorado.
And after that, we just became fast friends.
His nickname was Baby Bull.
Bull fit him perfectly...
because he was very, very tough.
Unbelievably strong.
An incredible, incredible athlete.
He was drafted third round to the Los Angeles Rams.
But unfortunately due to knee injuries that he had,
he couldn't play anymore.
That's what he worked for his whole entire life,
was to get there and go have that success.
And this wasn't the success that he wanted.
He was trying to figure out what was next for him.
Being an athlete, he still felt
he can contribute something athletically.
So he decided to give pro wrestling a try.
Leaving his NFL career behind,
Leon is welcomed into the pro wrestling business
by one of the sport's toughest men.
King Kong Brody against Leon "The Baby Bull" White,
and it's underway!
Oh! Another one!
When Leon White started,
he was trained in the Midwest,
and he had notoriety even as a rookie because of
his size and NFL background.
He was close to 400 pounds,
but he was amazingly agile and nimble.
He was six foot three and as wide as a wrecking ball.
So he was very convincing in that
he could kick the shit out of you.
Oh, look at Leon.
At the time, Stan Hansen was a champion for AWA.
Stan Hansen!
The biggest, the nastiest!
He was teaching my dad the ropes in AWA.
Well, he was a very impressive guy.
Oh, look at the agility of him.
But, I'm pretty aggressive.
So, when he stepped into the ring, it's on.
Oh!
Hi, this is Stan Hansen.
I'm here to talk about Vader.
Stan Hansen and Bruiser Brody
introduced Leon to a rough in-ring style that
pushes the boundaries between
showmanship and violence,
a style insiders call "working stiff."
It was much more physical.
We just decided to go all out as long as we could.
That's what made us strong.
That's where it starts, and that's where it's gonna end.
When a guy's stuff lands really well...
he's stiff.
It didn't injure you, but it hurt.
But that's the way he was trained,
live in front of a crowd.
Brody and Stan beating the hell out of my dad,
and my dad took it, didn't complain.
And I think both Stan and Bruiser
respected that about my dad.
I never looked at him like a student.
I always looked at him as a very equal competitor.
[Cheering]
[Indistinct commentary]
But, Leon "Baby Bull" White
did not exactly set the wrestling world on fire
until he got a deal to go to Japan.
And they made him the character of
Big Van Vader.
It was an amazing gimmick.
It was an amazing outfit.
And, Vader became an instant sensation.
I'm Jim Cornette, and in the WWF,
I was the manager of the man they called Vader.
From Tokyo, Japan...
Antonio Inoki!
Antonio Inoki, Japanese wrestling legend,
was the owner of New Japan Pro Wrestling,
and he was always looking for monster foreigners,
monster heels, that he could vanquish somehow.
And with Leon's size,
he knew he had something.
The legend goes that
Big Van Vader was a samurai warrior
who represented an island, and him and another warrior
had fought to the death.
Big Van Vader won that battle,
and so Inoki always wanted to make a character
based on that...
samurai warrior come to life for the Japanese fans.
He also created the helmet.
The headgear and the shoulder pads were
custom made in Japan,
and it required a person to operate it remotely,
where the steam would come out of
the shoulder pads and the spikes.
It was something that people hadn't seen before,
and that's what Antonio Inoki needed for Japan.
[Japanese commentary]
Antonio Inoki, he hadn't lost a match in 3, 4 years,
and Big Van Vader comes out and
beats him in under 3 minutes.
The fans were so upset they rioted.
It's probably the most impactful debut
in professional wrestling history.
I think the Japanese fans started realizing that this
is someone who is special and important.
My dad was the first American
to hold an IWGP championship.
They would bow to him.
He was the Hulk Hogan of Japan.
With interest from Japanese fans at an all-time high,
Stan Hansen and Big Van Vader
are scheduled for an epic match...
destined to become one of the biggest of all time.
Oh, yeah. Or a nightmare.
[Laughing]
[Cheering]
My dad and Stan Hansen are the main event.
There is 60, 65,000 people in attendance.
Sold out Tokyo Dome.
There was two big horses in there,
from opposite stables.
He started hammering me hard and...
I hit him back.
It was the real deal.
They wanted it to look real.
Sometimes, you didn't know.
The line was really close.
And the result could be...
scary.
And boom! He hits Leon right in the eye.
Stan Hansen knocked Vader's eyeball
out of his head.
[Audience] Oh!
When he pulled off his mask...
I mean, there was a huge reaction.
[Shouting Japanese commentary]
You could see the swelling and the discoloration
had started almost immediately.
I freaked out.
Leon takes it, pushes it back into his head,
and goes for it.
After ten minutes of exchanging blows,
I can remember saying, "Take it easy, Leon."
[Laughing]
I was scared to death.
But I will tell you, it was a phenomenal match.
The brutality of the match with Stan Hansen
cements Vader as one of the toughest and
most popular wrestlers in Japan.
Leon was in Japan probably 32 weeks a year.
He was gone all the time.
Growing up, he probably missed half of my childhood.
It's tough for him. It's tough for my mother.
It's tough for me.
But that's the life he chose...
and it's the life I was born into.
As Leon's infamous match with Stan Hansen
circulates among tape traders,
a new opportunity opens up stateside.
When I was at WCW,
somebody sent me some footage of the Hansen match,
and that gave me the idea to bring him in.
This is one big, big man.
I'm Jim Ross, and my relationship with Leon
goes back a good while.
This is big time.
We're signed with Ted Turner, right?
So extremely important for him,
for us as a family.
And instantly he's in the main events.
I mean, you can't put this guy in the second match.
He was just a human demolition machine.
He's the big, bad villain.
He's the one that beat up the pretty boys.
Ah!
[Shouting] You ain't man enough!
He took pride in his craft, but what truly
separated my dad is his athleticism.
Well, here comes some pain.
His ability to have a 25-minute main event match.
Oh, no!
This guy is just tough, man.
Vader had a big impact on me.
Cactus Jack!
The irresistible force versus the immovable object,
and you wonder which one's going to give first.
Whoa!
The stuff Leon and I were doing was a little edgy.
Whoa! Falls back with him.
Oh, the moonsault was crazy.
Vader going up...
Yeah, I can say that as a guy who was
on the receiving end of it.
Oh!
Here's a 400 pound athlete
doing a backflip from the top rope.
Moonsault!
How many big men in the business
have you seen do that?
At about the exact time that
Vader debuted his moonsault...
it was like the whole complexion
of that company changed because
he just raised the bar incredibly high.
The intense matches with Cactus Jack elevates Vader
into being one of WCW's top attractions.
Nobody was going to be able to stop Vader.
Vader has won!
Vader has won the world title!
It was extremely big for my dad, right?
Winning a championship for any federation,
it's big time.
So this is when things start escalating
to a new level of fame.
-Vader's here. -Who's the man?
You're the man.
Vader! Vader!
Growing up and seeing your dad on television
3 or 4 times a week...
Being on "Boy Meets World"...
"Baywatch"...
A couple movies. That's pretty cool.
Accept the challenge of Vader!
But it was, it was a double edged sword because
you're trying to develop a relationship with
your father, and he's constantly on the road.
He wasn't around like the rest of the fathers were.
He enjoyed being on the road...
'cause it's a fun lifestyle.
Right, rock star lifestyle.
He worked very, very hard to get there,
but he got to where...
that's all he did...
was be a star.
He's coming to my basketball games, and...
we have a line of, you know, 20,
25 people asking for autographs and,
I'm, I'm starting to...
get, ah, jealous. And I'm like,
"No, no, no, Dad, you're here to watch me,
not sign autographs."
He did have a Jekyll and Hyde quality to him.
Very soft hearted,
but he also had the ability to change.
I believe, anything you say, I believe it.
And I mean at the flip of a switch.
Doug, get him out of here.
He could go from 1 to 10, like fast.
There was a side of him
you just didn't want to see.
He'd go from being Big Van Vader,
and trying to be Leon White.
And sometimes that was a little bit
of a challenge for him.
Pretty soon he just lost Leon, you know?
And he just became the character.
And that's not who I fell in love with.
I fell in love with Leon White.
And, when he couldn't leave the other one at all,
you know, that's when things got pretty rough
around the house.
He liked being the tough man.
And, you know, unfortunately...
he'd bring it home sometimes.
The one thing is, he never went to Jesse.
It was always me he came to.
But if I tried to leave, I...
It wouldn't have turned out well.
Leon loved me to death, but he loved me to death,
you know, so either he's in prison and I'm dead or,
you know what I mean?
It looked like a beautiful life.
But you never know what's going on behind closed doors.
♪
Leon understood one of the most important things of
our business, and that's the psychology of it.
His role in the ring was that of a really violent man.
But as good as Vader was, he always had a reputation
of being that stiff guy that could hurt you at any time.
Hey, everybody. Gerald Brisco here,
better known as Jerry Brisco,
WWE Hall of Famer.
A lot of guys bitched and complained about
how stiff Leon was.
But if he wasn't stiff and snug on you,
you wasn't having a good match.
When he manhandled you,
you knew you were being manhandled.
That's one of the reasons why Vader
looked so impressive.
Sting is hurt!
He broke Sting's ribs.
Nikita Koloff, he ended his career.
He gave Cactus Jack a concussion.
On more than one occasion, I saw young men
whose entire lives were built around this goal of
becoming professional wrestlers,
when they saw their name against Leon White,
they just looked at their friend and said,
"I don't think this is for me."
Especially after Leon temporarily paralyzed
a kid named Joe Thurman.
Thurman is gonna be coming in to Big Van Vader.
Oh! All the power in the world!
This is something that...
I've never...
talked about this to anybody.
Vader does just what he wants to in the ring
when he wants to do it. Oh my goodness!
Growing up, the only thing that I ever
wanted to do was to be a pro wrestler.
I had just turned 20.
This is the very first time that
I had got to work for WCW.
This is the biggest night of my career.
I'm living the dream, literally.
I'm Joey Thurman.
I was a professional wrestler for WCW.
The biggest claim to fame in my wrestling career
was the incident with Big Van Vader.
Right before we're getting ready to go out,
Vader goes, "Hey, I'm working you.
It's gonna be quick. You good with powerbombs?"
I was like, "Yeah." And he was like,
"Okay, cool. See you out there."
Introducing first, Big...
Van Vader!
I found the hard camera.
Done a big smile.
Get in the ring, and he does the Vader growl.
I went and bounced off of him.
[Grunts]
Ah! All the power in the world!
And, ah, I don't know...
I don't know what changed.
♪
And this is the part that has really bothered me...
for 32 years, and the part that I will-
there's no way that I'll ever find the answer to.
This is the first time that I realized
that something was different.
Because he leans down, he goes,
"You better jump, you little mother----er."
And we're gonna do the chokeslam.
Went up, come back down, big crash.
And, as I'm getting back up from that,
it was something to the effect of,
"Come here, you little piece of shit."
He's just absolutely too much man.
The mood absolutely changed.
He sets up, we go to do the powerbomb.
I mean, the carelessness is obvious.
Look at that. Oh! Oh, my gosh!
Right on the back of the neck and the shoulders!
The way that I land, the impact,
it was like a rifle. It was that-[Snaps] "Pow!"
And I remember just feeling...
the numbness.
Nobody's taking care of anybody.
♪
When he comes down for the pin,
he's not even touching me.
Whatever had switched...
between backstage and in the ring...
had now switched back.
You could see that there was concern at that point.
Ladies and gentlemen, here's your winner!
I remember the ref saying, "Holy crap,
are you alright?" I told him, I said,
"I can't feel my legs."
Broke my back in two places.
The trauma was so...
great that...
it almost severed my spinal cord.
♪
I was there and I saw Leon crying,
you know, backstage, you know,
I saw it, he felt terrible about it,
and I know he visited him in the hospital that night.
About all he got out of his mouth...
was...
"Hey, brother, you okay?"
And, I unloaded on him.
I called him everything that I could think of.
And he's crying and...
I couldn't care less...
because they just told me,
"You'll never get in the ring again."
[Sighing]
♪
Yeah, he would cry.
It broke my heart, you know,
'cause he never showed that side very often.
And I would hold him, and say,
"It's okay, baby, it's okay."
I was told later that he was under a lot of pressure.
He was supposed to be that big beast
that nobody could beat.
But if I'm working hand-to-hand with
another guy, his safety is my responsibility.
It just felt like having your dream...
put in your hand.
But before you can close your fingers around it...
it's snatched away.
Word got around that this was what he did.
Guys like you make me sick getting up here and
bragging upon the fact that you take young guys like
Joe Thurman and break their back.
Leon was a nice, caring man,
but you have to turn that side of yourself off
when you're in front of the camera.
And that man is lucky that's all he got
was a broken back.
That's what they wanted. They needed a killer.
And he gave it to 'em.
Ah!
You know, they had to play that up.
Well, if you didn't, then what a waste of time.
It just advanced my dad's aura of
being a badass and being real.
Although WCW embraces
Vader's vicious reputation in the ring...
his actions alienate him
from the rest of the locker room.
That wasn't a good thing.
Talk about two people that didn't like each other.
Hogan was the massive star babyface...
and Leon was the killer heel.
It's a marriage made in heaven.
Egos.
Here he comes!
Hulk is a different type of wrestler.
And Leon was not going to be Hulk type of wrestler.
My dad's matches with him were...
respectfully, a watered down version
of my dad, unfortunately.
Let me see what you got. Oh, my goodness!
He's gonna powerbomb! Oh, no, God! Oh, no!
Look at that! Hogan's back up!
-He's not human! -[Cheering]
Egos made it go wrong.
And, and wrong it went.
Ego's a terrible enemy of a lot of wrestlers.
Vader's conflicts with other talent reach
a breaking point behind the scenes.
Paul Orndorff, who had retired from the ring
because of nerve damage in his arm,
had become a producer for WCW.
They needed to do interviews at a TV taping.
Orndorff went back, "Hey Vader,
you got interviews." "I'll be there in a minute."
And he didn't come, and then Orndorff says, "Hey,
get your fat ass in there and do the interviews."
Well, then that's when Leon stood up and said,
"You ain't gonna call me a fat ass."
And Paul Orndorff, bad arm, wearing flip flops,
punched the shit out of Vader. Bam!
♪
And then when he went down,
he started kicking him with those flip flops.
One of the guys in the locker room said it sounded
like you were slapping two dead fish together.
Somebody had to take the fall for that.
So, Leon had to go.
And that brought his WCW career to an end.
That was the beginning of him making bad decisions
and bad mistakes.
That was the beginning of the end pretty much.
Following a humiliating backstage fight with
Paul Orndorff, Leon White is let go from WCW.
Leon was never quite the same emotionally
after the Paul Orndorff incident.
Everybody in the whole wrestling world
was talking about it- Japan, everywhere.
It took away from his aura of being this invincible monster.
Vader's status as a free agent quickly results
in a new opportunity from an old friend.
I was in charge of talent relations in WWE,
and I just believed he was a great addition to our team,
if we could keep him sane...
and healthy.
All of us in the WWF office were thrilled.
This guy's a major star.
He's gonna be a champion here.
Who is it? Vader!
They debut Vader at the Royal Rumble,
where he makes a huge splash.
Then the next day on Raw, when I introduce him,
I say, "It's time! It's Vader time!"
It's Vader time!
The people are cheering.
They're going ballistic because one of the
biggest stars from the only opposition has now come
to the WWF, and the fans are going crazy.
They do a deal where Gorilla Monsoon,
legendary wrestler who was then the
president of the WWF...
Vader beats him up and lays out Gorilla Monsoon.
That's the president of the World Wrestling Federation!
Holy. I got goosebumps right now.
This was the start...
of making the first...
monster heel of the modern WWF era.
I thought.
But Vince McMahon had no clue
who Vader was because
Vince McMahon never watched any other wrestling,
besides the WWF, and Vince thought,
"Pal, let's call him the Mastodon."
Call him what? Vince didn't get it.
So, this began...
a relationship where neither one of them got the other one.
Beyond the creative differences,
Leon fights to live up to his own reputation in the ring.
Dad was injury prone at this point.
Vader had a bad shoulder and needed surgery.
And, his weight had started to balloon because
he was off for so long.
He's gonna get too heavy.
It's gonna put additional pressure on his joints.
It's going to slow him down.
And now Vince got upset about his weight.
And Leon began taking it personally.
Vince probably was on him more than
he was on most guys.
He didn't fit in the program.
Duke University, in North Carolina,
had a world renowned weight loss facility,
and it was Vince's idea to send Yokozuna and Leon.
We were weighing them in on a regular basis,
and they're gaining weight.
How in the hell are you gaining weight
at the Duke Weight Loss Clinic?
Figure that out.
Then you found out they cheated.
They're smuggling fried chicken into their dorm.
You're going to eat yourself out of a job, man.
Act like an adult.
Then came Shawn Michaels.
He is the leader of
the new WWF generation!
Shawn Michaels was Vince's
anointed babyface hero
that needed monsters to try to menace him,
to try to take that title away.
They should have had wonderful matches.
Oh, no!
But, some things are just not meant to be.
Michaels was a prima donna.
He didn't like working with Leon
because Leon was stiff with him.
He was Vince's boy.
And, Leon was nobody's boy, and...
ended up being a pretty nasty situation on both sides.
Shawn said, you know,
"If you keep roughing me up like that,
I'm gonna get you fired."
And my dad rolls out of the ring, and he has,
like, tears in his eyes.
You know, you don't upset the golden boy.
Shawn's pissed off
because Leon didn't always wash his gear.
It was a regular discussion.
Goddamn it, you've got body odor.
People don't want to work with you.
And Leon's offended.
And Shawn Michaels was bitching about it
all the time, every day.
Crazy, isn't it? Body odor.
Michaels had already buried Vader to Vince.
"I don't want to work with this guy,"
blah blah, blah- whatever he said.
Now Vader's a nervous wreck and he can't be Vader.
And then, the SummerSlam match happened.
SummerSlam!
When you go back and look at that SummerSlam match,
it's a good match.
Michaels up in the air. Michaels from behind again.
And again, a clip in the jaw.
But there's a couple points, and one of 'em,
Michaels plants Vader in the middle of the ring.
And he's going to go to the top rope,
and he was going to come off with an elbow drop,
and he wanted Vader to move.
Well, either Vader didn't hear it, I don't know.
So instead of being a professional,
Michaels changes position in mid-air,
lands on his feet,
right over Vader, and then screams at him so
all the fans can hear, "I said move!"
And kicks him in the head.
He's an unprofessional ----ing asshole!
You're a gutless no good coward!
But after that match,
that's when Michaels really went.
Shawn, not wanting to drop the title to my father,
he convinced Vince that he's not ready.
He's not the guy.
That... day,
yeah, more than anything,
changed him to a very angry human being.
You'd think a guy like him would be armor plated.
But he wasn't.
He had feelings, and he was very sensitive.
And, I mean, you kind of saw Leon's career...
just end in that moment, as a main eventer.
He never worked in that main event level again.
Despite his demotion,
Vader remains a star attraction,
until his aggressive behavior threatens
his career and freedom.
The WWF was big on international tours,
and the last thing Vince wanted was
international incidents.
All of the Middle East opened their arms to the
ambassadors of goodwill, the world over,
the WWF superstars.
We got this big, elaborate tournament
where Vader's supposed to be the star.
So we get Undertaker and Vader booked on
the most popular talk show in Kuwait.
The host had asked, you know,
"Is wrestling fake or is that stuff you do?
It's not real, right?" Whatever.
They say this wrestling is not for real.
Is it like you act, or...?
Leon took it to heart.
I find your remark and your question insulting.
It's not my question. It's somebody-
Does that ----ing feel fake, huh?
Does that feel fake?
Now that's physical assault.
And it becomes an incident.
Why don't you come down tonight,
and before I kick his ass, I'll kick your ass.
This is Kuwait. It's a foreign country.
They don't have laws like ours.
-Okay. -All right?
-Just calm down. -Don't, hey.
We're not here to be insulted.
I'm not here to be insulted.
But at the same time,
I'm back at the office in Stanford.
And that's when I found out
Leon's being detained in Kuwait.
Is it just for the wrestling shows that-
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
I'm sorry, yeah.
You gave him a chance to respond to the question.
This is the question I'm gonna ask you now.
I'd like to respond to the same question.
Okay, please, go ahead.
Does that ----ing feel fake, huh?
[Laughing] And he snatched the guy...
and the guy freaks out.
Especially in a foreign country,
you can't physically manhandle somebody.
They can just keep you!
They wanted to put him in one of those Kuwaiti jails.
The company exhausted every resource that they had
just to get him under house arrest.
They kept his passport.
Vince got everybody out,
got on the plane, and left Leon there.
Now, I'm at home, and I'm finding out about this.
And it was very scary for me and Jesse.
I had no idea.
No communication, no nothing.
I didn't know, he- if he was still alive.
And I believe he spent the next two weeks
under house arrest.
Leon is lucky he didn't get put in prison.
We were lucky to get him out of the country.
This incident really set things on a bad path,
'cause now...
when Vince loses interest in something,
Vince loses interest in something.
Following the incident in Kuwait,
Leon's status in the company tumbles as
his physical and mental health deteriorates.
Leon, he wanted to be treated like "the" star.
He thought he deserved more.
And he may have. I guess you could say
he might have overstayed his welcome.
But he was getting older.
Time ran out on him.
He got to become too high maintenance.
We couldn't get him happy.
Couldn't get him healthy.
When you play that hard, it catches up to you.
Knees, elbows, shoulders.
You know, just pain. Pain from his neck, down.
Going back to football.
My dad was in an era of, hey, you got a sprained ankle,
try these new things. They're called pain meds.
And then, so now fast forward.
"Hey, I got a match coming up here tonight.
Let me take pain pills."
Pain will change you.
If you've ever been in pain, and I mean pain,
you will become somebody you've never known before,
ever seen before, and probably never wanted to be.
♪
Leon could be all over the place with his emotions.
When you get in chemicals and pain and all that stuff,
that's just like pouring gas on the fire for depression.
And I'm pretty sure that Leon had fallen into that.
He's...
self-destructive.
And it just got worse and worse and worse.
The biggest moonsault in the world!
Oh!
You saw he was human. Talking about one of
the great monster heels of all time.
We just couldn't handle it anymore.
Maybe Vader time's over...
I ain't nothing but a big piece of shit.
A big fat piece of shit!
Those words came from Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
Vince told him, be honest, just say,
"I haven't been able to give you what,
what you guys deserve
because I'm a big piece of shit."
That's the way Vince thought of him.
He was a big, fat piece of shit.
And he just got mad and went all the way with it.
And it killed the character of Vader.
His career was, was...
zilch after that.
He wants some more? Come get some.
Man, it's like what could have been.
He was just brow beaten...
to the point where he lost his mojo...
and was trying so diligently to please everyone,
that he lost track of who he was and
what made him Vader.
Vader's career bottoms out as his issues
spill over into his on screen persona.
[Indistinct commentary]
It was devastating for him.
He's not used to not being on top.
He blew it. That's all I can say.
He actually blew it.
At one time, he was on top of the world,
and then he just started spiraling
and went downhill.
I wish he would have taken better care of himself.
Eating healthier, losing weight.
Started realizing like, hey, I don't need to be
this 350 pound monster anymore.
But for my father, that was always a part of his identity.
I do think he struggled trying to figure out
what the next 15 to 20 years was gonna look like,
for his family, for him professionally.
There was sort of the great unknown in terms of,
what am I going to do?
He was done, I mean, he was cooked.
Nobody wanted to talk to him. I mean, he,
he burned a lot of bridges, a lot of bridges.
It came to a point when Jesse went to college, I just...
I'd had enough. I'd had enough.
Leon at that point was pretty much gone.
And, you know, I tried to get him to go to rehab.
I tried everything I could to save the marriage.
But, by then, he'd stay in bed for 3, 4, 5 days.
Maybe get up to drink, and then go back to bed.
He had been a diabetic for some time.
And, we did not know this.
With low blood sugar, you need insulin
to get back to normal levels, but my dad would
just take naps and kind of power through it.
He got an opportunity to go to Japan.
Decent little payday for him. Well,
on this particular trip, he had been drinking...
and levels were low enough to
where he needed to take a nap.
He went into a diabetic coma.
That's the most scared I ever was,
'cause he's essentially on the other side of the world
and I don't know how I'm gonna get to him.
Following a brief resurgence in Japan,
Leon's health issues continue to take a toll.
♪
I could just see his health declining.
He was having a lot of breathing issues,
a lot of chest pains.
We knew something was wrong with his heart.
So I immediately set up a meeting with
one of my doctors.
Dad had congestive heart failure.
And it was so bad, the doctor says,
"Hey, Leon, I think we need to, you know,
operate pretty quick."
So we were having a quad bypass.
We finally get him home. Unfortunately,
Dad had a very aggressive case of pneumonia.
So, I had to break into his place.
♪
Find him unconscious.
9-1-1, the whole bit.
We had to put him in a medically induced coma.
♪
Jesse kind of was his saving grace at the end.
We had three weeks of the coma,
and we had a tracheotomy, so when we woke up,
he couldn't speak.
It was hard watching your father, who was...
King Kong, he was Superman.
And now, not be who he was,
mentally or physically.
You know, my dad was feeding me at one point,
and now I'm feeding him.
Bull was so appreciative
of how Jesse had stepped up.
He really did the right thing by his dad.
It's the day after Father's Day,
and I walk into the room. The first things he says is,
"I love you." This is the first time I'm hearing him
speak in about a month and a half so, ah...
and, I, ah... said, "Hey,
I'm gonna see you after work tonight."
And he said, "Cool." Later that night,
I get a call from the nurse, and she's like,
"Hey, your dad wants to talk to you."
And he's like, "Hey, I love you so much.
Thank you for everything that you,
you've been doing for me." And I said, "I love you,
and I'll see you in a couple hours."
Unfortunately, that was the last time I talked to my dad.
Leon and I had an agreement.
We promised each other if that ever happened,
that we would pull the plug.
And that was my call, and it was the right call.
That was very hard.
Yeah, he, um...
He lived a short life, he lived a full life.
He got to experience some things most people
can't even fathom. Unfortunately, it just,
he was 63 years old and too young.
♪
Big Van Vader was the greatest monster heel,
the greatest big man that I ever saw,
and I've been doing this for 50 years.
Vader's legacy in wrestling is,
for a period of almost 15 years,
the most dominant big man in the sport of wrestling.
And that's what people remember.
He was a good man, conflicted man,
who wanted to bring it every single night.
No pain! No pain!
Even though he was one of the biggest stars of the era,
I just don't think he's gotten
the credit he deserves.
You alright?
And the lesson to me is that you should never let anyone
or anything define to you what being a success is.
Before he died, I mean,
we would talk every now and then,
and he actually became Leon White
at the very end.
He felt very bad about
how our life could have been...
and how it ended up.
There was a lot of bad.
But gosh, there was a lot of good too.
And it was a lot of fun
to be able to be part of that.
♪
The reason I am so successful,
my lovely wife, Debbie.
For without her, I could be nothing.
And to my little boy,
someday he will be champion...
because through him, I get my strength
and I am young again.
I think he is the bar for big men in this business.
And I got to be front row center for a lot of it.
I'm proud, blessed to be his son,
and I hope that he's proud of the man that he raised.
As crazy as his death is, and as dramatic as this
whole process was, there was beauty in it.
The love I have for my father and the love he had for me...
that never changed.
♪