[1998-05-31-WWF-Over The Edge] Vader vs Kane (Mask vs Mask)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. Kane beats Vader with the tombstone on his way out of the WWF. He gets unmasked and they act like that's not something we haven't seen in particularly grueling Vader matches for years. Vader does the famous interview after the match about being a fat piece of shit and walks out.

[soup23]

The unmasking was so dumb here, like we don't know what Vader looks like. Anyway, Vader does a nice moonsault and goes up for the Tombstone well. After the match, Vader tells us he is a fat piece of shit and storms off.

[Childs]

I had never seen that Vader promo at the end for whatever reason. He seemed genuinely dispirited, which could've made for an interesting follow-up, though we know that never happened. I feel like Vader would actually fit better in recent WWE, with the plethora of more aggressive, athletic workers.

[soup23]

Vader vs. Cesaro is a match I havent ever given any thought too but sounds glorious. Also Vader being a bully base for Zayn. Damn it Childs, why did you have to bring that point up.

[Zenjo]

Vader is physically struggling to bring himself to say the scripted lines afterwards. I'm sure there were many other things he wanted to say that wouldn't have paid the bills. The piece of shit was whoever decided to denigrate a great wrestler like this.

[Superstar Sleeze]

Vader vs Sheamus...drools

 

This started off as a pretty good hoss sprint. I thought Kane actually brought it to Vader but you have to. I like the two Vader Body attacks leading to a zombie sit up. Finish was good wrench revenge by Vader to missed moonsault to the Tombstone. Never seen fat piece of shit. Sad. JR tries to spin as positive but Vader never recovers.

[funkdoc]

there's a somewhat related fun fact i remember from back in the day...

 

so the WWF website used to have photo galleries where you had to click on a separate page for each photo. sometime in '99 they had one of Vader doing the Vaderbomb, and the website title for that pic was "I'm a Big Fat Piece of Crap". you could only see the website title at the top of your browser, so it was a lot less obvious than if they had stuck it on the page itself.

 

was Russo involved with the website stuff? if not i dunno who it would be.

[PeteF3]

That was a KOTR montage. One of them showed Mabel's coronation with the similar title, "What were we thinking??"

 

Vader whiffs on a moonsault and takes a tombstone and we finally find out after all these years that Vader is Leon White. Bearer wearing the mask is kind of funny at least. Vader has his existential crisis after the match--JR does his damnedest to try to put Vader over as being noble in defeat but it was straight to JTTS-ville after this for the next few months before mercifully getting out of his contract.

[TravJ1979]

Just five years earlier he was the top monster in the business. Now he's a big fat piece of shit.

[TonyPulis'Cap]

This was pretty disappointing and nowhere near as good as I thought I recalled it being. I like Vader's body attacks, and the wrench is a nice call back to the injury that put him out (and also on a side note, a weapon which is logical for being under the ring as it's part of the ring crews tool box) but thought it lacked intensity and was very plodding when it was Kane on offence. The (missed) moonsault and tombstone are impressive spots at the end, but not really enough to make the match something I'd recommend going out of your way to see.