WWE Hall of Fame Not Like Other Sports Halls

Shortly after the death of Andre the Giant, the WWF would create a wrestling hall of fame in 1993 to honor the man. For the next 3 years the WWE Hall of Fame would go on to induct several other wrestlers in a hotel ballroom ceremony.

From 1997 to 2003, there would be no inductions to the Hall of Fame, but in 2004, the ceremony was decided to be held the night before their biggest pay-per-view ‘Wrestlemania’. The 2004 event was released on a DVD set dedicated to the Hall of Fame.

There is no structure to being inducted, but several wrestlers have spoken out about having to be on ‘good terms’ with the WWE to get inducted., and how most of the inductees have never been ‘main event’ wrestlers.

The Hall of Fame was actually created five days after the death of Andre, but no footage of the event was ever shown until 2004 when the WWE Hall of Fame was re-enacted to go along with Wrestlemania 20. The ceremony was not broadcast on television, but was released as a DVD on June 1 2004.
Beginning in 2005 and 2006, were presented on Spike TV, and the USA Network respectively, and since 2005 they have been packaged with the Wrestlemania DVD packages for that respective year. WWE has not built an official building for the memorabilia, but there is a warehouse with all the respective memorabilia dated and under respective categories in case the facility is built.

Despite having asked WWE several time, Bruno Sammartino has not been inducted, due to being on bad terms with WWE.  Several others have been in the same situation including ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage, and The Ultimate Warrior.

As of 2010, the WWE Hall Of Fame has had a total of 88 inductees of which 72 members being inducted as individuals, five as tag teams, 4 women wrestlers, and one wrestling family.