WWE breaks from 32-year tradition with ‘long overdue’ WrestleMania announcement

WWE has announced a major change for this year’s Hall of Fame ceremony.

The annual event, which will be its own standalone show during WrestleMania Week this year rather than being held at the same location as SmackDown, has long honoured wrestlers, managers and teams in each class of inductees.

However, during last night’s episode of SmackDown at London’s O2 arena, the company confirmed that they will also be inducting specific matches from now on.

On April 18 at the new Fontainebleau hotel in Las Vegas, WWE will honour an ‘Immortal Moment’ for the first time.

Both Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart and ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin will be in attendance as their pioneering match from WrestleMania 13 is recognised in a special way.

While the change in tradition will take some getting used to for fans, for many it’s something that should have been introduced years ago.

‘Long overdue having matches in the hall of fame. UFC been doing this for a while. What a match to start with,’ wrote @Shrpshootr_ on X.

Fellow fan @butwhyalyssa added: ‘Inducting matches into the WWE Hall of Fame seems overdue, considering the entity WWE is.’

Pointing out that WWE’s TKO partners UFC have done something similar for a long time, @WrestlingRadar_ tweeted: ‘Finally I’ve been waiting for WWE to start inducting Matches into the Hall of Fame just like UFC does #SmackDown’

Another fan, @mg_holla_holla, insisted WWE already needs to be making plans to expand and induct more than one match for each class.

‘My issue is they cannot do one match per hall of fame. They need to at least 10 matches per hall of fame because they are so many of them,’ they said. ‘100s of matches are there which deserve their place in this.’

More inductees could come in the future, but WWE already has a stacked list of legends being honoured in each class.

For this year alone, the event is being headlined by Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque, who became a decorated world champion before running NXT, and later taking over the creative charge of the entire company.

Also set to take their place in the Hall of Fame next month is Michelle McCool, a former Divas Champion who will be supported in Vegas by her husband the Undertaker.

Elsewhere, Lex Luger and the team of Earthquake and Typhoon – the Natural Disasters – are confirmed for the 2025 class.

The WWE Hall of Fame will take place on April 18 in Las Vegas.

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