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Wrestling Halls Of Fame (FSM, 2012)

Posted on February 26, 2024March 12, 2024 by John Lister

The concept of a Hall of Fame dates back to the mid-19th century when the King of the German state of Bavaria commissioned a statue and exhibition in Munich to celebrate the region’s history. The exhibition is a permanent memorial containing marble busts of major historical figures in the area.

 

In the US, the concept is most popularly associated with the Baseball Hall of Fame, a museum in Cooperstown, New York that opened in 1936. Unlike the Bavarian exhibition, the management of the museum decided to elect new players each year, displaying plaques in their image. The idea later spread to other sports and industries, among the most high-profile being the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. There are also several variations on the physical implementation of a hall, such as walls of fame and Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, which involves names being embedded in the pavement of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, including Vince McMahon who was honoured for his achievements in the television industry.

 

Most halls are set up through a combination of independent governing bodies, industry organisations and mainstream media such as writer associations, none of which have traditionally held much status in the promotion-driven world of pro wrestling. It wasn’t until 1993 that a wrestling Hall of Fame was started, and even in this case there was little planning or organisation behind the launch. Instead the concept was simply created by WWE as a response to the death of Andre the Giant five days earlier, with his induction as the initial member considered the only way to mark the passing of such a major figure in company history.

 

For the following three years, the company held annual induction ceremonies in local hotels the night before the King of the Ring (1994/5) and Survivor Series (1996) pay-per-view. The last of these provided a trivia note, with Jimmy Snuka (rather than Ric Flair) the first WWE Hall of Famer to wrestle a match for the promotion after his induction. The ceremonies were low-key friends-and-family affairs, with only brief clips appearing on TV. The selection of candidates was largely limited to wrestlers and management figures from the pre-1984 expansion era who’d remained on good terms with the McMahon family: there was no place for Bruno Sammartino, Billy Graham or Bob Backlund, who’d arguably been the three biggest stars in the company over a two-decade period.

 

The concept then faded away until 2004 when WWE was looking for ways to make WrestleMania more of a week-long celebration rather than simply a one-off show. The Hall of Fame ceremony became an annual affair, held the night before WrestleMania in a hotel or theatre with access opened up to paying fans. By 2008, interest among fans making a holiday out of WrestleMania week meant WWE began holding the event in full-size arenas, usually the same venue used for the post-Mania edition of Raw. Wanting to keep the event classy while upping the takings, this was the point when WWE began actively cracking down on fans shouting and screaming during the acceptance speeches as if they were watching a wrestling show promo.

 

During this period, the company also widened the scope of the entrants: those in 2004 were largely men who’d starred in the WWF as it went nationwide, while the 2005 class was made up entirely of men who’d performed at the original WrestleMania. From 2006, the field began expanding to include people who had made their name primarily in other territories and, in some cases, had never appeared in the WWE.

 

That move only fuelled debate about some of the names who remained absent from the Hall of Fame. Among historians at least, once the hall became open to anyone, there was no excuse not to include six-time NWA world champion Lou Thesz who, taking into account wrestling ability, box office success and promotional status, was arguably the biggest name in the business over the 30-years after the war.

 

Among WWE names, the absence of Randy Savage for many years (which appeared likely to continue at the time of writing) remains something of a mystery. One persistent rumour remains unsuitable for printing in FSM without hard evidence, and all that is known for certain is that simply raising the subject with Vince McMahon guarantees a frosty reception.

 

Not all high-profile absentees are entirely down to McMahon however. For example Bruno Sammartino, who was the company’s figurehead babyface for most of the 1960s and 70s, reports refusing repeated offers to be inducted, having fallen out with the company over his aversion to widespread drug use and abuse. WWE has decided against inducting him against his wishes, believing such a move would simply attract negative publicity.

 

Meanwhile the former Ultimate Warrior (who legally changed his name from Jim Hellwig to Warrior) says accepting an induction would be hypocritical for both sides given the company’s utter burial of him in the “Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior” DVD, which led to a failed defamation suit.

 

And even those wrestlers who do take both the payday and the honour sometimes later change their tune. Billy Graham claimed to have quit the Hall of Fame in protest at the induction of Abdullah the Butcher on the grounds that the madman from the Sudan had never worked a date for the WWE. It should be noted Graham had already offered his Hall of Fame ring for sale on eBay after being dropped from a WWE contract. Ironically Abdullah admits giving his own ring away to his brother, having seen the ceremony as simply a payday.

 

The Honky Tonk Man gave perhaps the most honest reason for refusing an induction. He says he was offered $5,000 to take part in the ceremony and, treating it like just another gig, decided to stick to a pre-arranged independent date. Unlike many who speak of the honour of being inducted, Honky saw it as strictly business.

 

That attitude is at the heart of a curious piece of doublethink that is perhaps inevitable in the half-fake/half-real world of pro wrestling. Anyone who has watched or attended the event will know that the emotion is largely genuine, and backstage clips show McMahon views the event with real pride. At the same time, both insider reports of the selection process (which has involved varying degrees of discussion and voting among staff before McMahon confirms the final choice) and the names chosen each year make clear that it is not simply a case of choosing the best available candidates each year.

 

Instead the event is booked like any other show, with a carefully chosen mix of one or two genuine headline stars with the rest of the line-up being those who were traditionally lower in the pecking order. The reason for this isn’t just to make sure the event can build to a peak on the night, but also to avoid having potential headliners “wasted on the undercard” and thus unavailable in future years.

 

Indeed, there is already some concern within the company that there will one day be a shortage of men with enough status to headline the event. This may partially explain the repeat induction of Ric Flair, this time as part of a Four Horsemen block entry, a tactic that looks destined to one day be repeated with Hulk Hogan and the nWo. Beyond this, the Rock and Triple H both seem likely candidates, though the Undertaker’s induction could be limited by his unwillingness to break character. That doesn’t leave many options past the next five years or so, which greatly increases the chance that some of the members of the unofficial banned list may receive a call.

 

While WWE has considered opening a permanent hall of fame and has stockpiled memorabilia for such a venue (some of which is displayed at the annual WrestleMania week Fan Access events), the only physical wrestling hall of fame is located in Amsterdam, New York. Launched in 2002, the simply-named Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum mirrors the WWE by holding an annual ceremony with a presentation of rings to new inductees.

 

Unlike with WWE, it has a binding vote from a selection committee each year, electing a fixed number of wrestlers in specific categories covering female, tag team, and international wrestlers, plus those from the “pioneer”, “television” and “modern” eras.

 

Another hall of fame based in a physical location (albeit it without a display) is the George Tragos & Lou Thesz Hall of Fame, operated by the predominately amateur-based National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum in Waterloo, Iowa. This hall was originally designed to honour professional stars with a legitimate amateur background. In more recent years this criteria has been relaxed to allow entrants such as Harley Race who have a tough guy reputation.

 

The largest hall of fame in terms of membership is also the only one that doesn’t have an induction ceremony. It exists only within the pages of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, an industry trade journal (or “dirtsheet” to its detractors) published since 1982. After an initial class of 120 inductees was put together by editor Dave Meltzer while filling time on a trip to Japan, later entrants have been voted in by a panel of around 220 voters, the largest of its type. These are made up of active wrestlers, retired wrestlers, writers and historians. (In the interest of disclosure, I am among the voters in the latter category.)

 

The voting system differs from that in the other wrestling halls, being based more on those for “legitimate” sports. Rather than the top vote-getters being automatically elected each year, voters can nominate up to 10 candidates. Those named on 60% of relevant ballots (which are calculated based on geographical region and time period) enter the hall of fame, meaning there is no maximum or minimum number of entries each year: in both 1998 and 2008, no wrestlers made the threshold.

 

With so many voters, the Observer Hall of Fame arguably provokes the most debate over the validity of candidates each year, including on several prominent Internet message boards. These debates highlighting some of the problems of deciding what qualifies as hall of fame status in a business such as pro wrestling, in which “championship” are awarded rather than won, but in which rival performers work in tandem to draw revenue rather than being purely solo acts.

 

Even the question of eligibility is a vexing problem. There are inherent problems with rating a wrestler’s career before his retirement (for example, Kurt Angle’s election in 2004, just six years after his pro debut, has been criticised as too early), but it’s not viable to wait for a performer’s retirement as is common practice in other sports hall of fames. For example, Terry Funk is in at least seven wrestling halls (the four mentioned in this article, plus those based on wrestling in WCW, St Louis and the former ECW Arena), yet was still having the occasional match as late as last autumn. The Observer’s solution is to insist a wrestler have been in the business for at least 15 years (or 10 years if already aged at least 35.)

 

As for the entry criteria, the Observer asks voters to give equal weight to a wrestler’s in-ring abilities, drawing power, and historical importance & influence, with longevity taken into account but not a deciding factor in itself.

 

Meltzer admits this can cause problems in comparing across different eras: “If Sting (not elected) and Chris Benoit (elected in 2003) had their respective careers in the 1950s where there’s little footage available, Sting would easily get elected based on his titles and headlining status, whereas Benoit wouldn’t have got in so quickly, if at all. Today we inevitably give more weight to in-ring work.”

 

Benoit’s induction would of course later pose a dilemma, the Observer being the only hall of fame to induct him before the events of 2007. Meltzer took advice from experts in other sport halls of fame and decided on a recall election in which he could be ejected by achieving the same 60% threshold as was used to vote him. In the worst possible outcome, 53.6% backed the recall, meaning Benoit remains in the list but with an explanatory note.

 

The scrutiny of candidates has, if anything, become more difficult as the years pass. Entrants to a hall of fame fall into something of a pyramid, with a handful of absolute dead certs (such as Hulk Hogan, El Santo or Rikidozan), a few more obvious candidates, a decent number of strong entrants, a larger number who have a good but not indisputable case and so on. By now there are only a few sure-thing candidates on the horizon (John Cena becomes eligible on this year’s ballot), instead leaving a wealth of borderline candidates.

 

The changes in the wrestling business have also started to had a noticeable effect. Aside from rare candidates such as Kurt Angle and the Rock, those under consideration so far have usually passed through the territories system, wrestled internationally or been on both sides of the Monday Night Wars. Last year saw Edge become the first major candidate of the generation of wrestlers who’ve spent most or all of their careers under the WWE banner.

 

That not only makes traditional measuring sticks such as headlining in different territories irrelevant, but raises the question of whether to relax the expectation that a Hall of Famer will have been a consistent headliner, a task that’s far more difficult now there are only a handful of slots available. It’s also tough to assess drawing power in an era where it truly is the brand itself that draws, with even top star John Cena’s absence making no discernable difference to pay-per-view buyrates.

 

Those with an interest in the British wrestling industry have also made their own argument that the current criteria, or at least the way voters interpret it, simply doesn’t work for British entrants. (Though now classed in a separate European category, no British grappler has ever been elected to the Observer hall of fame: Dynamite Kid and Bert Assirati were named in the original class, while commentator Kent Walton was elected as a non-performer.)

 

For example, some objective rankings of drawing power put forward by historians to provoke discussion are based on live events that drew more than 10,000 fans, which happened only a handful of times on UK-promoted shows. While there is a strong case that this shows a lack of drawing power, it misses a couple of key differences in the British wrestling set-up to the US territory order.

 

Firstly, British wrestling was based on running a large number of venues, in close proximity to one another, on a regular basis. Until the Big Daddy shows at Wembley Arena in 1979 through 1981, promoters had concluded that the benefits of building to a single major show would not outweigh the damage caused to the “bread and butter business.”

 

Secondly, with the Joint Promotions cartel alone running as many as 15 shows a night, promoters thus needed at least 30 men at a time who were capable of topping a bill. That made promoters far more reluctant to build up any one grappler as the type of undisputed top dog that would dominate a US territory as part of a hall of fame career.

 

Of course, the British argument is somewhat muddied by the unique nature of Big Daddy. To some he is a slam-dunk pick with few parallels when it comes to a literal interpretation of “fame.” To others, he is simply not under consideration when in-ring ability is even part of the criteria: if ever elected Daddy would be by far the worst performer in the entire hall.

 

That said, were he still alive, most account suggest Daddy’s attitude to a hall of fame would be along the lines of Ole Anderson who wrote a chapter in his autobiography about how he wasn’t bothered by not being elected to the Observer hall, nothing he was more concerned with making money and dismissing it as “a bullshit list that doesn’t mean anything in the real world”.

 

Of course, the same could be said of the WWE hall but, no matter how questionable its selection process, it’s not just an emotional and classy ceremony, but an event that looks to sell out the 15,000 seat Miami Airlines Arena and draw a live gate in the region of half a million dollars.

 

And even an old grump like Ole would appreciate that.

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