15 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Vader

This is when the episode took a darker turn towards sensitive subjects like domestic abuse, addictions and the unhealthy toll being out on the road for so long has on people. Leon's ex-wife Debra hinted that her husband was physically abusive. Not towards his son Jesse, but towards her. There's a particularly chilling moment when she says, “He loved me to death”. She meant that literally.

‘Dark Side’ includes audio snippets of Leon admitting that he became “addicted” to the power of playing Big Van Vader and found it hard to switch that side off when he wasn't in front of the cameras. In the same breath, he confessed that he often went “overboard” with it and didn't have an off switch. That proved troublesome whenever he was at home between tours in Japan or in between loops with WCW.

Debra: “It looked like a beautiful life, but you never know what’s going on behind closed doors”.

A few family snaps of Leon, Debra and Jesse together kinda sum it up. There's a haunted expression in Debra's eyes, and Leon just doesn't look all that happy to be home. Maybe that's one internet writer creating his own narrative and looking a little too hard into things, because Jesse did say that he has happy memories of his father too. Hell, Debra closed the doc by saying it wasn't all bad.

Something seems...off in the pics though, and it's hard to put your finger on. Leon's inability to remove the Vader persona like he would the character's mask after matches made it more challenging to have a happy life back home.