10 Rumoured Wrestling Gimmicks That Thankfully Never Happened

6. The Ultimate Warrior Van Vader

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Big Van Vader is one of the greatest big man wrestlers of all time, and it was in New Japan Pro Wrestling that he first truly grabbed the attention of audiences. He was a big, huge dude that was wildly athletic to boot, and was also legitimately tough enough to go toe-to-toe with NJPW founder Antonio Inoki and gain the respect of the Japanese audience in the process. All in all, the gimmick was a success.

Would it have been as successful if it had gone to The Ultimate Warrior or Sid Justice, as was originally slated? Vader himself has confirmed that this was the case, in that Inoki had designed the idea and brought Warrior over with the intention of having him portray the Vader character.

Warrior (and Sid for that matter) was physically impressive, but athletic? Not really. Japanese audiences would have been quick to see through the one dimensional abilities of the Warrior, and as such the decision was made to give the gimmick to Leon White, previously known as Bull Power in the American Wrestling Association.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.