Leon White, better known as Vader, didn’t need WWE to become a wrestling legend

Leon White, a former college football star who captivated pro wrestling audiences as Big Van Vader (and later just Vader), died at age 63. His son Jesse White, a former college football player and wrestler in his own right, broke the news on Twitter Wednesday morning.

White was a unicorn in the squared circle, a 400-pound attraction who sold tickets and electrified fans on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. He was an eight-time heavyweight champion — twice in All-Japan Pro Wrestling, three times in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and three times with Atlanta-based World Championship Wrestling. He also spent three years in the then-WWF, endearing himself to American fans but never holding even a secondary title in the promotion.

But White didn’t need a belt in his home country’s biggest federation to stake him claim as a titan of the sport. Vader was larger than life, an athletic minotaur of a man — he was even known as Baby Bull and Bull Power throughout his career — whose strength and athleticism made him a credible threat no matter where he wrestled.

But if you’re gonna appreciate Vader, you’ve got to start from the beginning.

White, a 6’4, 300ish pound center, was a popular gridiron recruit out of Bell High School in Los Angeles. Quick feet, freakish strength, and an on-field mean streak developed into a full scholarship at the University of Colorado, where his NCAA career peaked with a first-team All-American season in 1977. Invitations to the Japan and Hula Bowls, as well as the East-West Shrine Game followed. Months later, the Rams brought him back to the West Coast as a third-round pick at the 1978 NFL Draft.

Injuries reduced him to just one season in the league (though conflicting reports suggest he’d lasted a second and got to play in Super Bowl XIV, there’s no official record of this), but he remained healthy enough to begin a second career inside the squared circle. His training began in Minneapolis — breeding ground for the AWA and athletes like the Road Warriors, Curt Hennig, and Jesse Ventura — in 1985, but his size and bruising style made him a natural fit for the wrestling halls of Japan.

There’s where he’d earn the name Big Van Vader, his hulking frame now topped by a black mastodon mask that spewed fog. He debuted in front of a packed Sumo Hall crowd, a reverent audience stunned by the silent behemoth lumbering to the ring to challenge a worn down Antonio Inoki. In his first match with New Japan Pro Wrestling, he’d become part of Japanese wrestling history.

Here was this foreign newcomer, a scourge from overseas, taking advantage of the star who once shoot-fought Muhammad Ali. Inoki was a demigod in his home country, the kind of presence who could turn a wrestling career into an elected position in the Japanese Diet. The veteran had already fought once that evening, but welcomed the challenge in true Bushido fashion.

The American manhandled him. The crowd rioted. Pro wrestling was banned at Sumo Hall for the following two years. While Leon White may have washed out as a football player, Big Van Vader was a star; the scourge of Japanese grappling.

Vader was an attraction; a tough son-of-a-bitch who hit hard in the ring and blended in, as much as a 350-plus pound man can, with the strong style that defined the nation’s wrestling at the time. He feuded with stars like Riki Choshu, Tatsumi Fujinami, and Shinya Hashimoto. He sparred with fellow gaijin Stan Hansen, who popped his eye out of his socket with a stiff punch.

No matter. Vader replaced the eye, took off his mask, and resumed walloping on his cowboy-attired opponent. The match lasted 13 more minutes.

In his prime, White was a freakishly agile big man who hit like a truck and performed moves once reserved for cruiserweights. His clubbering forearms were a page out of his o-lineman playbook, ringing off the domes of bullrushing opponents. He could devastate wrestlers with one of the most brutal looking powerbombs in the business:

Or flatten them with a not-exactly-graceful moonsault from the top rope:

That moveset, along with his behemoth size, made him a commodity back home. WCW signed him in 1990 but only used him sparingly as the the American company attempted to navigate the trademarks behind his name and gimmick. “Big Van Vader” belonged to New Japan, but “Vader” was eventually free to terrorize wrestlers stateside. Sadly, it meant saying farewell to the absurd mastodon mask he’d worn to the ring one continent over.

Vader was a legitimately terrifying force, streaking across the ring in homes across America every Saturday evening at 6:05 ET (TBS was weird back then). He Vaderbombed Sting so hard it gave him internal bleeding. He paralyzed, albeit briefly, a jobber named Joe Thurman. He beat the ever-loving shit out of Cactus Jack — better known as Mick Foley.

His ascension to heavyweight champion was inevitable. The only surprising thing about it was that it didn’t last a decade.

A decade of surprisingly real strikes in a product built on fake fighting left him with some enemies. His run with WCW left before the promotion could strike it big with its NWO storyline when he was fired in 1995 for a locker room fight with veteran Paul Orndorff. He was quickly snapped up as the pre-name change WWE’s newest monster. He beat up wrestlers and authority figures in the ring, then fell victim to behind-the-scenes politicking in the locker room.

An alleged title reign was scratched. Vader went from a monster to a high-profile jobber — the guys WWE pays to lose. He was fed to the superstars who found themselves pushed over him. He found himself going toe-to-toe with a lesser Savage — not Randy, not Fred, but Ben. He called himself a “big fat piece of shit.”

That WWE stint didn’t last. White’s time as a champion was nearly over — one last reign in Japan gave him a final taste of gold at age 44 — but he wasn’t forgotten. The mastodon who smashed clowns in the ring (though sadly, not literally) kept himself on the sport’s periphery. He became a feature on the independent circuit. He played conquering hero in a 2012 return to Monday Night Raw to turn Heath Slater’s lungs into soup.

More importantly, he fine-tuned his personality on Twitter. A previously unaccessible monster gave way to a goofy earnestness and a well-earned, if awkward, swagger. He retweeted fans. He told tall tales. He tooted his own horn, incessantly. He posted pictures from the gym where he looked like a keg a drunk Disney Fairy Godmother had regrettably made human.

He still found time to play the heel. He called a New Japan showdown between high fliers Ricochet and Will Ospreay “acrobatics” and compared it to high school gymnastics. He worked that into a feud with Ospreay and, eventually, a first-class ticket to London for a match against the young Brit. While he was no longer the athlete that turned a go-nowhere Baby Bull gimmick into a culture destroying Big Van Vader, he proved he could still tell a story and rile a crowd, even at 61 years old.

The showdown in England wasn’t quite his last act — matches in Japan against old foes Choshu and Fujinami, among others, followed last spring — but White made it clear the end wasn’t far off the horizon. He tweeted out that doctors had only given him two years to live due to heart problems back in November 2016. Back in May, he detailed surgery he’d had done to help correct an irregular heartbeat.

But news of his passing Wednesday was still a surprise. It’s telling cancer didn’t come for the mastodon, because even cancer was too scared of the Man They Call Vader. Four decades of pro wrestling — defying physics through the air and then allowing them to catch up in a hurry when throwing kettlebell-sized fists — finally caught up to him. His heart, taxed supplying blood to a massive body like a single generator powering all of Disneyland, took a rest.

The memorials and accolades will soon follow. The WWE will create a tribute to the wrestler who was unavoidable in every other major promotion but their own. The fact Vader wasn’t a WWE champion was frustrating. The fact Leon White isn’t a Hall of Famer is inexcusable.

But the mastodon never needed Vince McMahon to turn him into a legend or a superstar. He became one the minute he tore through Japan and sent Sumo Hall into a frenzy with one match.