10 Wrestlers You Can’t Believe WWE Ruined
9. Vader
You could make the argument that Vader is fat, and Vince is allergic to fat - but this was 1996, a year removed from the Great King Mabel Fiasco of '95.
Mass acted as a temporary substitute for artificial muscle in the cautious fallout of the steroid trial. Vader debuted during the year in which Shawn Michaels lived out his boyhood dream and in an era in which babyface champions reigned supreme. He was never earmarked for a lengthy WWF Heavyweight Title run. To suggest he should have been is a failure to grasp the pre-Attitude Era paradigm.
Still: this was Vader - an ultra-believable threat who, booked with a little more give on the leash, was capable of so much more. His 1997 work is underrated, having rediscovered his inner monster after arriving in 1996 with a little too much bloat and little too much protest on the part of Shawn Michaels. He was barely rewarded for it; he was used in an enhancement capacity to get Kane over.
He would have made an ideal opponent for Steve Austin in 1998, if he had been booked with a degree of protection in the months prior to WrestleMania XIV. Even if that is in itself a failure to grasp the pre-Attitude Era paradigm - his fans are still guilty of not grasping that Sid was simply in better form by late 1996 - he deserved better than being outed as a "fat piece of sh*t", as he was in 1998.
His subsequent revival in AJPW was evidence of that.