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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
This year, the Hall of Fame will be broadcast live on WWE Network. This year's ceremony is the first one to be broadcast live as it happens, and of course, it is the year that the Ultimate Warrior is getting inducted. His enshrinement ought to be a hairy moment for the censors. Tune in at 8 PM Eastern/7 Central for all the fun, frivolity, and to see which celebrity gets booed off the stage.
Razor Ramon - Da Bad Guy was the last entrant announced for the Hall, but he's first in my heart. Razor Ramon wasn't the prototypical WWE wrestler to me. He was lanky instead of filled out, cool instead of heroic, and his finisher was pretty innovative, at least to 12 year-old TH. Him never winning the WWE Championship always bummed me out until I found out later that his affinity for the nose candy pretty much held him back. Similar addictions put him on a death watch lately, but thanks to Diamond Dallas Page and his miracle yoga, Scott Hall looks to be in good health and good spirits. Speaking of the real name, I found not mentioning that name interesting and a telegraph that he'll be inducted a second time as a member of the nWo.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Jake "The Snake" Roberts - Speaking of guys who benefited from DDP Yoga, Roberts was another guy in a rough way until Page got him in ship-shape. Now, the Snake is down to fighting weight and is back smiling and putting serpents on people again. Roberts' mic skills are legendary, regarded by many as one of the best with the stick in his hand across any era. While other peers used bombast and exaggeration, Roberts employed subtext and spook to get his point across. Despite being regarded as one of the best psychological heels ever, he was just as good as a sponge for sympathy. His feuds with Ted DiBiase and Rick Martel at consecutive WrestleManias were both stuff of legend, and his run against Rick Rude pushed the envelope further than nearly any other story before the Attitude Era. Plus, gotta love the man who innovated the DDT.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Lita - Much like with Trish Stratus last year, Lita's abilities in the ring might be a bit overstated, and her impact on women's wrestling in WWE is blunted by some questionable segments. However, I still feel both criticisms are more a reflection of WWE's treatment of women than it is a character judgment against Amy Dumas, the person. She was still someone for girls to latch onto as representation in the business, and before her whole heel turn with Edge, that representation was mostly positive.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Mr. T - I pity the fool who doesn't recognize that Mr. T is one of two super-important celebrities to the success of the early WrestleMania era (Cyndi Lauper being the other). T was the perfect celebrity to be super-involved in pro wrestling, as he had the look, the promo style, and even the shorthand stage name that made him fit right in with the Hulk Hogans and John Studds of the world.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Paul Bearer - Bearer was so good at his job that not only could I not imagine Undertaker becoming The Phenom without him, I couldn't imagine Mankind or Kane catching their first swells within WWE without him. Bearer was both creepy and strangely avuncular simultaneously, and he had a way with words that his charges, well, two-thirds of his charges, never could. His death still bums me out.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
The Ultimate Warrior - I still laugh that Warrior is the "headliner" of this year's class, and yet he's the only wrestler in history who's had what amounts to a digital slam book produced about him by WWE. I guess money and attention repair burned bridges right quick. Anyway, I have no love for Warrior outside of his match against Randy Savage at WrestleMania VII and his merciless squashing of Triple H five years later. Of course, the rampant homophobia doesn't help either, but even if he was an upstanding citizen and human being, I could not care less than I do now about his induction into the Hall.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com via Pro Wrestling Illustrated |
Carlos Colon - However, for all Warrior's foibles, he never helped cover up murder. I still see a tremendous amount of apologia for Colon's role in the acquittal of Invader Gonzalez for the murder of Bruiser Brody. "Gonzalez acted alone!" Like he would've gotten acquitted without Colon's alleged help. When subpoenas to witnesses for the prosecution don't arrive in the mail until well after the trial's conclusion, something fishy is afoot. "Brody was a real asshole!" This reason is the one I can abide by most, especially if theories of him instigating the fight and leaving Gonzalez to stab Brody in self-defense are correct. Still though, wouldn't due process have brought those things out to light? Even so, does being an asshole mean you deserve to die? I would hope the answer to that question UNIVERSALLY is "no." "Dutch Mantell and Tony Atlas are just as much to blame for not speaking out!" Victim-blaming is fucking deplorable, and to blame any of the Brody-sympathetic witnesses for the acquittal is not only an asshole thing to do, but it shows a real misunderstanding of how toxic the atmosphere was.
Then again, Vince McMahon himself may have helped cover up the murder of Nancy Argentino himself. He's already employed a freshly paroled rape convict before he showed any signs of rehabilitation. (AS an aside, I hate ragging on Mike Tyson now because he's clearly changed and rehabilitated. The system worked for him, and he's earned his second chance. But at the time of his WWE employment, doubts were still there.) He enshrined Abdullah the Butcher even after allegations of him spreading hepatitis C willfully came out. WWE's history is full of shady characters who deserve scrutiny rather than praise.
