WON’s HOF voting results are circling the ‘net. DVDVRs thread is here. The new entrants are Undertaker, Bob Backlund, Ulitmo Dragon, Kurt Angle, Masahiro Chono. (I’ll discuss the lucha votes over on CMLLBlog later, but it’s not too pretty.)
I think I’ve grown past caring who gets and who shouldn’t – it’s too strong the voice of one person, it’s standards are inconsistent, and the bar to become a member is too low. It’s got the football disease of being more a Hall of Very Good. (It’s saving grace is, as far as I’ve noticed, not using the Baseball Writers ultra-lame superficial ‘first ballot’ justifications for waiting to vote for someone.)
I want it to stay around forever, though, not as much to get any particular wrestler in as to continue to inspire people to write comprehensive bios of wrestlers to compare them to the (mythical, oblique) HOF standards. While it’d be nice to find out about older/under publicized starts without constantly being framed as “Are They Good Enough?” and “They Are Good Enough!”, if that’s the only way I can get the information, I’ll still be happy to have it.
Maybe someone can steal Sports Guy’s Pyramid HOF concept; you can recognize a lot of people but you can still separate them.
Hey, Justin, did you get a ballot this year? Your vote had to put Kurt Angle into the Hall of Fame (assuming you voted for him.)
This is going to turn into a demented version of that duelling e-mail gimmick Simmons ran on Monday.
I, too, don’t like a lot of the aspects of the hall, but seeing as how Vince is more likely to induct me than anyone outside Canada and the U.S., I think a it’s safe to say this is as good as it’s going to get. Not that I wouldn’t mind at least knowing WHO voted in this thing, mind you; that’s just the start of the list of my gripes with the whole process. At least with football or something, I can write Peter King and have a reasonable chance that, if I was coherent at the time of writing, I’ll have a decent chance of hearing why he doesn’t want player (X) in the PFHOF.
(aside: Football’s big problem is that it’s so ridiculously hard to judge the relative merits of, say, a QB, Lineman and Safety. So you wind up with a lot of people getting in largely because they were the best defensive / offensive player coming up, rather than being a true HOF-worthy candidate.)
With all that being said, I can’t really quibble with the choices other than saying that I’m still not convinced Sakuraba belongs there. But the Observer covers MMA, so I’ll deal. Other than that, Backlund should’ve gotten in, ‘Taker was probably a lock, and Angle… well, it’s nice, but there’s probably still a couple of chapters to be written.
HHH makes it next year, as it looks like a ludicrously weak class (biggest name is Jericho, who’ll be lucky to get 20%). Eddy probably gets in, too, as he’s shown signs of being a good PPV draw with the GAB number.
Sleep now. Discuss relative merits of Taker and Villano III later.
– Sven