Bruce Prichard Thinks Vader Came To WWE A Shell Of His Former Self
After overcoming the threat posed by Psycho Sid at WrestleMania 13, The Undertaker moved on to a rivalry with Mankind. However, the preliminary promotional material for the subsequent PLE, In Your House 14: Revenge of the 'Taker, featured a singles match between Vader and The Undertaker for the WWE Championship. The match never came to fruition after reports surfaced of WWE executives not trusting Vader in the main event spot due to a knee injury.
Bruce Prichard, a key member of WWE's creative team at the time, verified the reports on his "Something To Wrestle With..." podcast recently, explaining why Vader was overlooked for the high-profile rivalry with Undertaker.
"This was a time when Vader had put on an awful lot of weight," Prichard began. "People romanticize about Vader, but when he was in Japan, he would just beat people up. I don't think anybody ever accused Vader of being a great worker. He was a bully that liked to beat people up, and they let him get away with it."
"By the time he got to WWE, he was a shell of that guy [in Japan]," Prichard added.
Prichard then pointed to the infamous backstage brawl between Vader and Paul Orndorff in WCW, which led to Vader being fired by WCW, as another reason for Vader to "lose his confidence" and never recapture the magic of his earlier years in Japan and WCW.
"In many ways, we [WWE] got damaged goods," Prichard admitted. "You didn't get the guy that you had seen for years. You got a guy who got his ass kicked in the shower by somebody in flip-flops. It's no shame to get your ass kicked by Paul Orndorff, but I think when you're supposed to be the tough guy and bully, I think there was shame in there for him."
'He didn't have the same swagger'
Prichard believes Vader "could never get his groove back" following the incident with Orndorff, and the fact that he added a few pounds and struggled with knee issues only fast-tracked his WWE departure.
"He was breaking down," Prichard said of Vader. "All of a sudden, he realized that, 'Oh, it's a little different when you've got guys as big as you and they're hitting back.' It's all good when you're in there bombarding people and they don't hit back. You think Undertaker is going to take that? Nah. He was younger, stronger, and faster, and was not going to get pounded on [by Vader]."
At this point, podcast host Conrad Thompson clarified if the perception of Vader — among WWE executives — changed because of his incident with Orndorff, or if there was more to the story.
"No, I'm saying Vader changed," Prichard clarified. "The human being changed. He didn't have the same swagger. There was a fairytale that he was this big, bad, tough guy that couldn't be beaten. And he did — he got beat up."
Prichard, admittedly a big fan of Vader's work in WCW and Japan, was shocked to see the former WCW World Heavyweight Champions struggling with not just weight and injury issues but also "bad hygiene" during his WWE run. Furthermore, Prichard noted that Vader had significantly lost his athleticism and was "sloppy" during his matches, ingredients that made him "a bad fit" with the WWE.
In conclusion, Prichard believes Vader "felt exposed" following his brawl with Orndorff, and began to doubt his own toughness and mental fortitude.
"The audience never saw that [fight] but they witnessed the change after the fact," Prichard said. "They knew something was different — something was wrong, he wasn't the same. They couldn't put their finger on it because they don't know what happened."