10 Great Wrestlers Who Never Got Over In WWE

2. Vader

By the time Vader made it to WWE (then WWF), the horse had already bolted. The Mastodon was already 11 years into his career, an incredible journey that had seen him reign supreme as one of Japan’s most dominant foreign talents. He had little to prove when he arrived in WWE in early 1996.

But does that excuse his lack of appeal to the fans? For their part, WWF certainly put their weight behind him initially. He destroyed Yokozuna’s ankle in his Monday Night RAW debut and was even given the honour of putting the legendary Gorilla Monsoon out of action. Despite all of this, Vader never seemed to inspire the same sort of reaction with the WWF audience. In the land of the giants, he was little more than another big heel.

Vader’s chances were all but destroyed when Shawn Michaels took creative into his own hands at SummerSlam 1996. That was the last chance to salvage the monster, but HBK threw his toys out of the pram and the rest is history. Vader is a true legend and a certainty to eventually enter the WWE Hall of Fame, but that rests entirely on his non-WWE career. Saying that, he did win a Slammy for ‘Crime of the Century’…