Report: Vader Refuses To Board Plane For Indy Event

Vader, Funk, Masters and Corino – they all arrived yesterday in England. Harry Smith arrived last night directly in Germany, the wXw office already met with John Morrison yesterday evening for dinner. After Shane Douglas’ cancellation, all further guest stars seemed to be a lock, but ten minutes ago, we received a message that we never would have anticipated.

Our trainers and mentors implied to us again and again how important professionalism and respect are in this business, but today we learned how these golden rules can be put into question in an instant, even by a veteran of multiple decades.

This morning, when Terry Funk, Chris Masters and Steve Corino were about to got into their booked cab to the airport, Big Van Vader refused to leave his hotel room. Various attempts by our English partner promoter [author’s note: probably Steven Fludder of Preston City Wrestling, where all talent appeared last night], Masters and the end Terry Funk himself to convince Vader otherwise proved fruitless. After Vader already refused to wrestle his agreed-upon match last night, today he decided that, despite already having received an advance payment, the fact that there is a sold out meet & greet session for him and the fact that we promoted the event around him, he would not fulfill his contractual obligations.

We are deeply ashamed at having to make this announcement, but Big Van Vader will not be in Oberhausen today. After already agreeing to a huge list of concessions and special conditions for Mr. White, to be able to present you one of the biggest stars in wrestling history, this is a slap in the face for us. We can only imagine how big your disappointment must be, but as far as Vader is concerned, we are facing you empty-handed today.

Even though we already paid Vader, we of course offer to return the money to everybody who purchased tickets for his photo session.