Big Van Vader and Otto Wanz Practiced Consequential Violence

Generally speaking, I don’t like wrestling matches that are supposed to be good. I don’t mean this in terms of a match’s reputation, but in its intent. Take the current best of seven series for the AEW Trios Championships – there are other stories being told within its structure, most notably how fucking annoying The Elite are Death Triangle’s drama over Pac’s love of hammers, but what’s more important is that these matches have the potential to be match of the year candidates.

That shit wears me out. 

There are exceptions, of course, but I don’t like modern epics as a type of match. To me, they feel like the professional wrestling equivalent of the kind of screenplays that come from practitioners of screenwriting bibles like Save the Cat. Despite the obvious athletic skill that goes into it, I feel like I can see beyond the curtain and see the wrestlers punch the buttons that make the crowd chant. I know I’m in the minority, and I understand why people who love this stuff are wild for it, but it ain’t for me.

Big Van Vader is for me. Otto Wanz is for me. 

What I like in professional wrestling is consequential violence. I don’t mean “realistic” violence, necessarily, but I do enjoy when chops and kicks leave welts, when wrestlers bleed without meaning to, when it looks like a wrestler is catching their breath because the last move took effort, not because there’s another spot coming. 

In other words, I like rough edges. Big Van Vader is one of the kings of rough edges. An All-American center who played a season for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, Leon White’s kind of athleticism was put towards pushing around men as big as him. He had a moonsault – one of the most impressive top rope moves in wrestling history, frankly – but even that was an act of menace, a big man showing off at the expense of someone he’s spent the past 20 minutes bullying.

Otto Wanz is built to withstand bullies. Vader had uncanny chemistry with Sting and knew it – in 2015 when he was booked for AIW’s Absolution X, he specifically requested someone of Sting’s height and build, which is wildly uncommon on the indies – but with Wanz, things are different. He works out from underneath Vader to begin this match, but unlike Sting, whose Vader matches are built around magnificent, sudden comebacks, Otto Wanz endures, darring the bully to push him around. Vader can, to some extent, but Wanz is a wall of solid mass, Vader’s equal in that regard.

It took a couple of rounds, but it slowly dawned on me that this match is a classic.

That isn’t to say that it’s not great from the start, where Vader is quick to throw his trademark stiff shots, forearms and punches that may or may not be illegal, battering Wanz into the corner while daring him to fight back. Immediately, one announcer declares that Wanz has no chance while the other one asks about Vader’s closed fist. A fun fact about Vader’s punch is that, in an interview on a UWFI show, Vader shows the mechanics of his punch, as it was an issue there, too. In it, he explains that his “punch” is actually an open palm strike, as he opens his fist at the last sentence. He says it so matter-of-factly that one wants to believe him, but if you watch how Vader operates, it’s classic heel bullshit, “I’m not cheating” muddying the waters enough that the referee won’t call it. 

Wanz bleeds hardway from the shoulder, and after a brief flurry, Vader knocks his challenger to the mat. The announcer who believes Wanz has no chance goes on about Wanz’s ability to continue, but already he’s playing things smart, staying down for the count because the round is about to expire. When the second round begins with Wanz toppling over, Vader mocks him. Take these things in hand, and you have the makings of something very fun, where Vader’s hubris allows Wanz a little daylight here and there, entreating the crowd to lose it for their hero, who does not wish to disappoint. 

Vader rarely faced men his size, so it’s wild to see his dominant style transpose itself so easily to Otto Wanz. That’s what’s so captivating about this. The stereotypical marquee Vader match (really any superheavyweight) is whether or not a smaller opponent – think Sting or Ric Flair – can outlast his opening onslaught. Here, Vader is the better conditioned athlete. 13 years removed from his first World Championship victory, Otto Wanz is fighting a man 12 years his junior, a man who, in just four years, had risen to the status of wrestling’s most fearsome monster heel, having caused a riot in Sumo Hall after defeating an Antonio Inoki who had already wrestled once that evening.

By every measure, Wanz should lose this match. He’s sucking wind and looks like a man at the tail end of his career and not on the verge of triumph. Call him an aging gunslinger, a man who could absolutely go in his prime but who needs a miracle if he’s to stay alive. This is one of the great dynamics in wrestling, something that isn’t really possible outside of combat sports, which are the realm of lucky shots and cagey veterans. 

I’m not as sure as the announcers that Vader landing a top rope Vader Attack on his ribcage is the turning point of the contest, but Wanz recovers miraculously after the break, exploding on the champion before clotheslining him over the top rope. It’s a miracle, this exchange, a complete reversal of fortune for Wanz, who was hanging on for dear life in the prior rounds. Wanz cheats, throwing Vader into tables and chairs, but it doesn’t matter – the crowd is so deep in his pocket that it whips them into a frenzy. Vader is bleeding. He is staggered. 

He is going to lose. 

 When Wanz lands his final clothesline, both men are spent. Wanz would have preferred not to fall over with the momentum of the blow, but he has enough adrenaline to get up, and Vader does not. There is nothing elaborate about any of this. It is a story told mostly in punches and forearms, embellished by Vader taking the occasional chance, at first because of his killer instinct, and later out of desperation. But each punch matters. Each clothesline has the potential to be the killing blow. There is no coming back from being thrown into a table, and the blood that is so pivotal to the momentum of this match isn’t cause for theatrics.

This is what I mean by consequential violence. Everything here, no matter how slight, has a singular purpose: winning the match. There are no rest holds and no real spots – the one contrivance is a late-match fighting spirit slap battle, but even then there is a point: to show that Wanz is, at that point, fresher than Vader. There’s nothing flashy about it, but listen to that crowd and tell me that they haven’t just seen an epic.

This kind of wrestling still exists, obviously – the most famous recent example being NJPW’s NEVER Openweight Championship at its peak, particularly when it was held by Tomohiro Ishii and Katsuyori Shibata, with Ishii leaning more into this kind of heavyweight wrestling and Shibata leaning more into shoot-style wrestling. Both men took no-nonsense approaches to wrestling and were (and are) beloved for doing so. Why? Because the language of professional wrestling is pain, the goal of professional wrestling is to fill the screen with violence, and that will never change. This match is the ideal. It’s my ideal, at least, and it will remain that way until the next Big Van Vader match I decide to watch.