WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2008

[Enigma 0]

The more I read about it, the more I think HHH's comment was just playful since Rock made a funny joke about HHH earlier in the show. Rock said "Triple H is so obsessed with being the WWE Champion that everytime he thinks about it, Stephanie McMahon gets pregnant."

 

Flair's barb seemed like he was taking up for Cena against Rock's comment about the Marine earlier in the show. I'm sure Flair knows what Cena said about Rock back in that Sun article and was ready to defend Cena if Rock said anything. Sure Rock then made fun of himself by mentioning "Doom" but hey, whatever.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

That would be great, (in fact, it would be perfect), but they'll probably bring him out AFTER the match and retirement hoopla, fresh out of the shower.

 

"Hey Ric, I know that was your last match and you're a complete wreck, but hit the showers! We've got the HOF segment in 20 minutes!"

 

Remember at WM 21 when Piper went back out there an hour or so after getting pummeled by Austin during Piper's Pit?

 

And Bob Orton sold his arm from his altercation with Taker!

 

I would not be entirely surprised to see Flair vs. Michaels go on last at this point.

 

The Score began showing this around 1:15 am but I fell asleep during the "earlier tonight" montage. Rock's speech was really funny though, especially the Marine / Doom thing. Just like Dames, Ben Miller over on WO.com said between Cena, HHH, and Flair the whole thing was 90 minutes. It also sounds like the event was over 4 hours which sadly means some cuts will probably need to be made to get it on just one disc as a Mania bonus (unless they release it separately, which they haven't done since 2004).

[TheTomster 0]

Saw it on USA and liked what I saw

But between Flair and The Rock alone, I know the DVD will have to be bought this year, especially so I can see full speeches.

[The Dames 0]

That reminds me, one of the coolest moments about Flairs speech was when he made the camera man do a close up shot of his cufflinks. Earlier in the day, HHH gave him cufflinks that are an exact replica of the domed NWA title belt. It was quite badass.

 

Dames

[Perfection 0]

Flair got a standing O for the first 5 mins and he was choked up, which got people in the audience choked up right away. During the course of his speech, he put certain guys over huge and they cried, Big Show, Edge and Steamboat especially. It was about a 90 minute speech and HHH had to come over and whisper to him 3 times to wrap it up but Flair had so much to say that every time he was getting the wrap up signals, the fans would boo it ferociously. I really didn't want the speech to end.

 

Oh and HHH and Flair took some pot shots at the Rock during their speeches which came off kinda petty. HHH said something along the lines of "The Rocks fans, or should we say DWAYNE fans now" and the place almost booed HHH out of the building to the point he had to backpedal and say "it was a joke, geez...".

 

And Flair made it a point to put over Cena (who also cried) and said that he truly loves the business and won't be leaving for Hollywood. But the fans weren't about to shit on Flair tonigjht.

 

Dames

 

Thanks for providing us with all these details. I'm dying to see the entire thing. WWE.com has a link to flair's speech, don't know if it's the entire thing but for some reason I can't get it to play. Is anyone having this problem?

[RonL21 0]

Is that the first time they've made mention of Yokozuna actually being Samoan?

I seem to remember when I was watching as a was kid that they would announce he hailed from the Polynesian Islands.

Like they simply stated he was a Sumo champion, not necessarily that he was Japanese.

[The Dames 0]

A funny moment occured right when Ric came to the podium. After HHH talked for 10 mins, Flair came to the stage with a beer in his hand and a production runner came by and snatched it from him before the hard cam could get a shot of it. People laughed.

 

He told a great story about how the night after summerslam 92, he went to a bar and dropped 30600 on a bar tab. His card was denied and he needed to call the office for help. HHH then said "that's called in the biz "Natichin"

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

Some more HOF notes that people sent to Dave:

 

Some notes from the Hall of Fame:

 

Even with guys being asked to keep it short besides Dwayne Johnson and Ric Flair, it went 4 1/2 hours and Flair wasn't over until 11:30 p.m., well into the USA Network special. They wanted to be done long before the 11 p.m. air time.

 

They wanted to start earlier but there was a traffic jam.

 

Johnson and his family went 90 minutes. The crowd loved him. He was gracious to everyone. He talked about loving wrestling, growing up in wrestling, he made a joke about them sending prisoners a copy of "The Marine" as torturous punishment to get a jibe in on John Cena, but then joked that he made "Doom." He talked about having never wrestled Cena or Shawn Michaels (who he praised) in a major match situation and put both of them over strong. He looked at Steve Austin and asked him if he'd like to do one more mach and Austin smiled and gave the indication he would. The idea was about 30 minutes as he started at 7 p.m. and they would start the Internet broadcast at 7:30 p.m., keeping him off for the television show.

 

Later, JBL, Dusty Rhodes and HHH all made cracks about how long Johnson went. HHH was booed momentarily when he tried to make a remark about Johnson, because Johnson was so over with the crowd, saying something about all the Rock fans, "I mean Dwayne fans," which saw the crowd start to turn on him until he smirked, "Come on, I love the guy."

 

Pat Patterson inducted Mae Young, which must have been a last minute change since at the press conference a few hours before the show they announced it would be Stephanie, and Mae herself was told it was Stephanie.

 

JBL gave a short speech about the Briscos. He didn't read from notes and was said to be unbelievably funny. Jack gave a short acceptance and Jerry went on a little longer.

 

Besides the two big ones, most of the speeches were kept short. It was clear Jim Ross was unhappy about having so little time to induct Gordon Solie. He praised Solie as the greatest wrestling announcer ever, which is something at times when fans have told him he (Ross) was the greatest announcer ever, he has often responded, "That's because you never heard Gordon Solie." It was said there were catcalls at one of Solie's family members, obviously not a professional speaker, chanting "We can't hear you."

 

Mike Graham, accepting for Eddie, brought out a framed poster of an early 60s NWA Board of Directors meeting with many of the legendary promoters, and said he was donating it to the WWE.

 

John Cena was booed vociferously as he went to give a speech before HHH. While most fans were respectful there were enough that weren't that it put a major damper on the evening at times. Most of the comments we got included people who felt they needed to do something about fan behavior. Cena, who never gets flustered, seemed to have a feeling of "This isn't the time" when fans chanted "You can't wrestle" at him. He did get a lot of cheers when he was done because he gave a good speech.

 

Flair went on forever, but all I heard was people were wanting him to stay out there until 2 a.m. On three separate occasions HHH told him to wrap it up, and finally HHH was insistent and Flair rushed to the finish. The production people must have been going nuts as they were on the air on USA and Flair, who was supposed to be the focus of the show, still kept going and it needed to be edited before being put on television. He praised many of the current wrestlers, who were in tears. He said to Big Show that if he got his head together he could own the business. Show was crying as Flair put him over. He put over the office staff, mentioning tons of people by name including the people who do make-up, all the way to the top people. He made a remark to the fans saying Cena could wrestle and that Cena would never go off to Hollywood. He said he was tired of hearing people call Hulk Hogan the greatest wrestler of all-time, saying the biggest star in the history of the business was sitting in the room and said it was Austin. Flair felt indebted to Austin for coming up with his angle, but also for Austin to have publicly put Flair over as the greatest champion and greatest performer ever in so much recent media work. He went through the story of his career from his training with Verne Gagne, and even praised his ex-wives, for enduring with him. Everyone was respectful to him and reports we got was that nobody wanted to see it end, and were hoping after the confetti was thrown to end it, that Flair would come back out and finish his speech.

 

----

 

More Hall of Fame notes

 

by Leon Peters

 

I was at the Hall Of Fame last night and I thought I'd share some things. First off, the traffic getting to the arena was horrendous. I did a mapquest search from my hotel to the Amway Arena and it said approximately 20 minutes. We left at 5:50 and didn't get in our seats until 7:10! I was shocked to see The Rock already on stage when we walked in. (I didn't read your news report yesterday until after the show). The Rock was fantastic. He was ripping on a few of the wrestlers in the crowd, playfully, making fun of Chris Jericho's hair and even asking what Santino's name was before giving his "It doesn't matter" bit. Then Rock got to Cena and I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it was something about The Marine not being a good movie which popped the entire crowd. Then his mic started cutting out and the crowd was chanting "We can't hear you". When he got a new mic he said "Billion dollar company and we can't get a mic that works... See Steph, buy cheap, get cheap". Which was funny.

 

Something I found very interesting was not only The Rock, but several other people throughout the night kept saying "WWF". And it was people who would know better. Of course there were the rude jackoffs in the audience who had to keep yelling out stuff for no reason. One instance in particular was when Gordon Solie's son was talking and somebody yelled "TALK LOUDER". The whole crowd groaned. Oh and by the way, yes JBL did make the Simpsons Brothers reference. He was talking about great brother teams and how the Briscos were better than them all. Something I found very unprofessional was that every snack stand in the arena shut down halfway through the show. I don't know why they did that as there were tons of people walking around trying to find a beverage stand.

 

Finally we got to Flair and it was very emotional and just a great speech. He may have went on too long for some, but to the majority of fans he could've kept talking til 4am and every one of us would've stayed. Now this is why I am totally aginst them showing the Hall Of Fame on tv. 4 times during Flair's speech a production guy went up to Triple H and told him to tell Flair to wrap it up. And every time H walked up to Flair to tell him, the crowd booed heavily. Flair was in the middle of talking about every great wrestler he worked with and seemed to be going in the order of his career. Then when they told him to hurry up he skipped over everything from 1991 through about 2001. Something I was absolutely shocked at was while mentioning the Horsemen he said Chris Benoit's name which the audience gave a huge ovation to. Finally they gave him the hook and he abruptly finished his speech. No mention of Sting at all which I'm sure he would've gotten to had he not been cut off. Overall a great show, but I really think they should stop showing the event on tv because that was the reason they had to cut him short. Take care.

 

Leon Peters

[TheTomster 0]

The video of Flair's speech on WWE.com is the same exact thing, maybe even shorter, as what was on USA last night.

[Perfection 0]

I swear to god, I wish someone would beat the fucking shit out of those assholes who act so fucking childish. Wtf is wrong with people. It's absolutely embarrassing and disgusting that these pricks can't behave themselves for one fucking night. Next year and from now on, they should have strict dress requirements because chances are these trailer trash punks don't own any suits and wouldn't have enough class or money to rent one either. They should have a lot more security to instantly kick these fucking pieces of shit out of the building immediately as soon as they start their classless behavior. And people wonder why wrestling fans are less than intelligent.

[10 Pounds 0]

I wonder how much Flair's speech would have been if not for the time constraints for the USA show. The reports indicates that Flair would have talked all night long and no one would have objected. I hope the complete, unedited version makes it to the Wrestlemania DVD. The idea mentionned earlier of Flair's walking the aisle for the last time right after the presentation of the Hall of Famers is perfect.

 

[Enigma 0]

I swear to god, I wish someone would beat the fucking shit out of those assholes who act so fucking childish. Wtf is wrong with people. It's absolutely embarrassing and disgusting that these pricks can't behave themselves for one fucking night. Next year and from now on, they should have strict dress requirements because chances are these trailer trash punks don't own any suits and wouldn't have enough class or money to rent one either. They should have a lot more security to instantly kick these fucking pieces of shit out of the building immediately as soon as they start their classless behavior. And people wonder why wrestling fans are less than intelligent.

And you wonder why prominent people like ESPN's Colin Cowherd refer to wrestling fans as "booger eaters".

 

But it's WWE's own fault. They train their audience to chant "slut" at women heels and just to be rowdy in general. You can't expect certain wrestling fans to just flip their switch off. The only way to stop it is to have an announcement beforehand asking the fans to please be respectful or you'll be ejected.

 

I learned to never, ever expect anything from common wrestling fans when I went to a Georgia Dome Nitro in July 1999 and heard a ton of people (including little kids) make fun of Owen Hart dying while Bret Hart was giving his first interview since Owen died.

[pappajacks 0]

Is it the WWE hall of fame or the Wrestling hall of fame?

 

If it's the former, why is Flair inducted? They should change it to the Wrestling Hall of fame.

[Mike wanna be 0]

There's already a Wrestling HoF. Flair went in two years ago.

http://www.pwhf.org/halloffamers/inductees.asp

[Darth Pipes 0]

The WWE have allowed fans at the HOF to act like animals for the last four years. The fans there are incapable of behaving themselves and are the kind that make me embarrassed to admit I'm a wrestling fan. I don't mind opening the HOF to the public but it's time they got serious about cracking down on them. Someone on another board suggested last year that HOF tickets should be part of the Wrestlemania package. Fans should be given one warning if they act up and then they should be thrown out if they continue. If they were putting down big money for this (as part of the WM package) maybe they'd be a little less likely to act up.

[Darthtiki 0]

It also sounds like the event was over 4 hours which sadly means some cuts will probably need to be made to get it on just one disc as a Mania bonus (unless they release it separately, which they haven't done since 2004).

 

Maybe I don't know enough about the format, but they are releasing on Blu-Ray this year so there could be a 2 or 3 Disc Blu-Ray set with the full ceremony. Of course that means that the DVD set would have to be bigger or they could release as a stand alone double dip 2 disc-er.

 

The only way to stop it is to have an announcement beforehand asking the fans to please be respectful or you'll be ejected.

 

Or you make tickets only available through WWE.com, in which the site clearly posts the code of conduct before signing up for the opportunity to take part in a ticket lottery. Upon receiving the tickets and confirmation of purchase whether they are mailed or print@home, a version of the code of conduct will be attached. And finally the code will be visibly posted outside the venue so there is no excuse for not knowing how to act.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

..and why would Bruno be inducted? There's never going to be a resolution there and even if he was approached, he'd probably refuse.

Why should Bruno be inducted? Maybe because he was one of the best babyfaces the company had, was champion for eight years, and has sold out MSG a near-record number of times. If Bruno is going to refuse, that's his choice. But it would add a ton of credibility to the HoF to have Bruno inducted. If Bruno doesn't want to appear, fine. Induct him anyway, give him a nice speech and presentation, and let the choice be Bruno's as to whether he appears. It might make WWE look like the bigger people if they're willing to do all that for someone they admittedly have no love for.

1. You can't induct someone if they don't want to be inducted. They might as well wait until he's dead, then.

2. It wouldn't make WWE look like "bigger people" - no one cares about the feud between the two, anymore. Well, except the people who want to nitpick about the HOF inductees.

While you can't properly induct someone who doesn't want to be there, it can't hurt to make real overtures at doing so, if only to plug the few credibility gaps the HoF has. As for making WWE look like bigger people, I was referring to Vince, who would no doubt relish the chance to look benevolent in the face of such an outspoken critic of the company. As for your last remark, I actually don't care about the feud. I was just pointing out one of the few credibility gaps in an otherwise credible, for wrestling standards, HoF. If that makes me someone who wants to nitpick, then there are a number of other nitpickers in this thread as well.

[Darth Pipes 0]

Both Bruno and Backlund have been offered induction but have turned it down. Backlund has confirmed he turned down an offer and JR has confirmed it as well. It wasn't due to any hard feelings but Backlund really thought he had a last run in him in wrestling.

[Anakin Flair 0]

Watching it now... looks like Mae did have a few...

 

And did Dusty shave his head?!

[Anakin Flair 0]

Anybody know if there is a full version of Flair's speech out there? The copy I dl'd was the one that aired on USA that only lasted like 10 minutes.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

So how much of a trainwreck is this going to be?

 

And what the hell is Mayweather wearing?

[Lil' Bitch 0]

I hope the complete, unedited version makes it to the Wrestlemania DVD

 

Word.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

Duane "The Rock" Johnson scored major heat at the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony for his behavior on and off camera. PWTorch.com reports that Rock left a bad impression on some WWE performers by showing up late and offending many in the company.

 

"This wasn't a roast," one wrestler said. "This was supposed to be a tribute to his dad and grandfather. Instead, he did an hour plus of comedy, running way long, then did a short tribute to his dad and grandfather, then left. It was rude of him." The Torch story also reports that Johnson came acted as if he were above everyone in WWE, including Steve Austin.

 

prowrestling.net

 

 

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

There's some validity to that statement, but something tells me whoever said it (if anyone - this IS the Torch) had no problems with JBL taking up time to talk about Christopher Columbus.

[foleyfanforever88 0]

The Torch story also reports that Johnson came acted as if he were above everyone in WWE, including Steve Austin.

 

He is.

 

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

Duane "The Rock" Johnson scored major heat at the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony for his behavior on and off camera. PWTorch.com reports that Rock left a bad impression on some WWE performers by showing up late and offending many in the company.

 

"This wasn't a roast," one wrestler said. "This was supposed to be a tribute to his dad and grandfather. Instead, he did an hour plus of comedy, running way long, then did a short tribute to his dad and grandfather, then left. It was rude of him." The Torch story also reports that Johnson came acted as if he were above everyone in WWE, including Steve Austin.

 

prowrestling.net

 

 

 

That more or less reads like one wrestler being jealous over the special perks that Rock gets. For a guy in the business, the Rock's whole act is probably nauseating at this point, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Johnson has done anything inappropriate.

[foleyfanforever88 0]

After watching Rock's HOF speech, I actually thought that it would be great if they had a roast someday, most likely of Vince. Two hours of listening to The Rock, Austin, JBL, Jericho, etc. make fun of each other and Vince would be great.

[Enigma 0]

From Wade Keller

 

=================

 

Duane Johnson, known in WWE of course as "The Rock," did not leave a positive impression on wrestlers at the Hall of Fame banquet on Saturday night.

 

Multiple sources report he did not hob-nob with old friends before or after the Hall of Fame speech. He showed up in time for the speech, delivered an overly-long speech that offended many in WWE, and then left.

 

He came across as "aloof" and "totally Hollywood," as if he were "above WWE now," including all of his colleagues. This surprisingly included one-time good pal Steve Austin, who was said to be openly displeased and taken aback by Johnson's demeanor.

 

"This wasn't a roast," says one wrestler in attendance. "This was supposed to be a tribute to his dad and grandfather. Instead, he did an hour plus of comedy, running way long, then did a short tribute to his dad and grandfather, then left. It was rude of him."

 

The ceremony ran way over the planned length in great part due to Rock's speech. Ric Flair also ran long, but everyone was more forgiving of that since it was his night.

 

Afterward, everyone backstage shared in their disappointment and disgust with how he acted. The feeling was, even if he has heat with some higher-ups in WWE for some reason, he had no reason to treat old friends like discards from a past life.

 

Several people expressed in front of the Hall of Fame crowd derision toward him afterward, including mocking how particular he was about being called Duane Johnson, not The Rock. Dusty Rhodes took a dig at him that did make it to the USA Network telecast.

 

The Rock did not attend WrestleMania, either.

[goldengreek 0]

I call bullshit

[Dandy 0]

His name is Dwayne. Wade Keller can't even get a name right. Does anyone listen to him anymore? He has been known to not be so reliable, so I would wait to see if Maltzer has similar news. However, I would not be surprised that WWE and its individuals had that reaction to The Rock.