10 who deserve to be in the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2019

Vader

Some would say that the reason Vader isn’t in the WWE Hall of Fame is because the majority of his success came outside WWE. Okay, I can handle that. Then why is Sting in? Perhaps Vader isn’t quite on Sting’s level, but there’s no denying that Leon White made an impact in the world of professional wrestling. Nick Bockwinkel was inducted in 2007, and I think Vader had a better career than he did.

After a few years in AWA, Vader made the jump to New Japan Pro Wrestling and found great success there, becoming the first non-Japanese wrestler to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, a title he would hold on three separate occasions, which was a very big deal back then.

While in New Japan, Vader also worked for WCW on occasion, and after leaving Japan in 1992, he focused in on WCW and became a big star there as well. He feuded with most of the big stars in the company and won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship three times. He also went on to hold the United States Championship before heading back to Japan for a short time in 1996 and eventually signed with WWE.

While Vader was a good draw for the company, he never became the big star he was in Japan and WCW. He was still a name and feuded with the likes of Yokozuna, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Mankind and Kane. The booking for Vader was just never done correctly in WWE, and he left the company in 1998.

From there, Vader appeared in various federations over the years, including stops in Japan and TNA. He’s made sporadic appearances in WWE, even beating Heath Slater in a match in 2012. He also inducted Stan Hansen into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2016, and is often shown at the ceremony, still wearing his mask. Let’s hope that one day he can wear it on the stage as an inductee.