This year’s WWE Hall of Fame was a memorable one and the night started off with a an all-time great speech by Paul Heyman but a lot of the chatter at the show and on social media was that something needs to be done with the SmackDown/Hall of Fame combination because there were fans who left after Heyman’s speech after a long day.
While speaking on the “Six Feet Under” podcast, The Undertaker talked about going to rehearsals and then going back a couple of hours later for SmackDown and the ceremony. Taker said that it’s something that needs to be figured out because the hours are long.
The WWE Hall of Fame was a standalone show for years and aired on Saturday night on the WWE Network but now with WrestleMania happening across two nights, the decision was made to move the ceremony after SmackDown because NXT is scheduled in the afternoon, hours before the first night of WrestleMania.
“So, Friday I had to get up early and go to Wells Fargo for Hall of Fame rehearsals,” Taker said. “I went over there, did rehearsals, and then came back for a couple of hours and turned right back around and went back to the Hall of Fame. I was there forever. They gotta figure that out because that’s a really really long night between SmackDown and then the Hall of Fame.”
Taker continued, “It’s a long night and again we’re in Philly. Once they’re (the fans) done, they’re done. They started out the Hall of Fame with Paul. Usually, the headliner goes on last, right? It was smart, obviously they had stuff they had to do. So Paul [Heyman] starts the Hall of Fame and that’s what most of the people were there to see was Paul. The speech and everything else was so good and engaging. That’s another problem. You give a great acceptance speech and all that. They’re popping and carrying on and they get tired too, right?.”
Moving the Hall of Fame ceremony to Thursday might be the solution but it’s unclear if that is something WWE is open to doing.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Six Feet Under with Mark Calaway with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Quotes were transcribed by Jim for WrestlingNews.co.
