TheBoySaunders.com

Take a good look at the gentleman in the photo above. His name is Leon White, and he could have been the most dominating wrestler in the world in the late 1980’s to late 90’s. Only problem is, he stunk.

White made a name for himself in Japan as Big Van Vader. His name, surprisingly, given the time period, came from a Manga character and not as a tribute to Darth Vader. (As an aside, ‘Vader’ is also Dutch for ‘Father’, which kind of gave away the plot of the Star Wars movies for our Low Country cousins.)

From Japan he moved onto WCW where he won a couple of World Titles before having a fight with another wrestler backstage and getting sacked.

Vader later turned up in the WWF, where he famously tried to throttle a Kuwaiti television host live on air for suggesting that wrestling was fake.

And then, almost overnight, after rumours of a WWF World Title win never came to fruition, Vader vanished. And I’ve always wondered why.

Until I read an excerpt from Ken Shamrock’s autobiography where he states that, although he had some good matches with Vader, he hated working with him. Because Vader was a superstitious man, he believed he would have a bad match if he ever washed his singlet, gloves or mask. Years later, Jim Ross, the then WWF President of Talent Relations, hinted that this lack of personal hygiene had been one of the factors in his fall from grace.

Take another look at the picture above. And then imagine getting up close to a 400lb sweaty monster who hasn’t washed his tight-fitting lycra clothing in over ten years…

And people ask me why I love wrestling…