WWE today presented a three and a half hour Hall of Fame ceremony thanks in part to overruns by both Amy “Lita” Dumas and a weird induction speech by Mr. T.
The night started with Lita being inducted by Trish Stratus. Lita – sporting a rare dress – took her time with the speech and went pretty long with WWE eventually cutting her off. She remained on stage for a bit then got the hint to exit stage left.
Diamond Dallas Page then inducted an emotional Jake “The Snake” Roberts who talked about almost dying, the help he received from DDP, the fans chipping in for his surgeries, and love for his family.
The weirdest HOF induction speech then came from the one and only Mr T. Mean Gene Okerlund and T’s son T Junior inducted the A-Team star who came out to his old show’s theme song. Mr. T went longer than anyone quoting the bible, thanking God, and dedicated the whole speech to his mother, repeatedly saying how much he loved his mom. The fans started the “What?” chant and then a “this is awesome,” sarcastically of course as it was quite a train wreck. As Mr. T kept going, Kane’s music hit, and he came out, shook T’s hand, and basically told him to get off the stage, an order which Mr. T quickly obeyed. Awkward.
Kane then inducted the late Paul Bearer, and gave a nice, touching speech about his “dad” and former manager. Bearer’s two sons came out to accept the honor on their dad’s behalf in a short speech and then the Undertaker’s theme song hit. Taker – decked in full gimmick ring gear – came out with the urn and went on his knees and saluted Bearer, making this the first time that the Undertaker ever appeared at a Hall of Fame ceremony. Nice touch.
Kevin Nash inducted Razor Ramon who gave a short speech as things were running late. Hall looked absolutely great and after he was done, Triple H, Sean Waltman, Shawn Michaels, and Nash came out to pose with the Bad Guy for a Kliq reunion that didn’t happen when HBK got inducted a few years ago.
Carlos Colon was inducted by his two sons Carlito and Eddie and nephew Orlando. Carlito cracked some jokes first but then took a back seat as Los Matadores talked about Colon. Colon spoke in Spanish during his last part of the speech and again this was cut short.
Lastly, Linda McMahon came out to talk about the Ultimate Warrior, revealing how he had asked to be his direct contact when he last returned in 1996 and how often he would call her to vent off, sometimes calling her mom. Warrior then came out with his two young daughters and had a 40 minute speech which didn’t have any surprises and he stuck to mostly words easily found in the dictionary. He did take a dig at WWE lead attorney Jerry McDevitt after he said WWF instead of WWE and said he can’t believe McDevitt got his ass kicked by the World Wildlife Fund. Ouch! Warrior acknowledged Cena’s work for Make-A-Wish and put him over big time, a remark that got a nice applause from the fans. He only mentioned Hogan once, saying he was 30 years old when he fought Hogan at WrestleMania VI and stayed away from any controversial topics.
The show ended at 11:30PM and after Warrior left the stage lights came up and that was it. None of the newly-inducted Hall of Famers were brought out on stage again as in previous years, most likely because the show ran super late thanks to Lita and Mr. T.
