This past week on WWE Raw it was officially announced that the headliner of this year’s WWE Hall Of Fame Class will in fact be Sting! It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise as Sting is more than worthy of the honor and he lives in and around the Dallas, Texas area. Sting is a former 6 time WCW champion, a former 2 time NWA world champion, former 4 time TNA heavyweight champion, the list goes on and on. Sting was pretty much the face of WCW throughout the late 80’s, early 90’s until the company’s close in March of 2001.

From a personal standpoint, I’m glad I got to see two of his appearances for WWE live this past year including his first match against Triple H and his surprise return the night after Summerslam at the Barclays Center. In many ways it’s great that Sting got to have one last run with WWE as it didn’t seem right that he never had a Wrestlemania moment. Also by performing for a WWE audience it’s allowed Sting to gain exposure to an entirely different audience.  My girlfriend grew up a very casual WWE fan and for about 3 years has been following pretty closely, thanks to me.  She had no idea really who Sting was prior to his appearances for WWE, to the point that when she saw Surfer Sting in the Hall of Fame package, she asked me who that was! To her, and her younger brother (who has a bunch of Sting action figures now) Sting is still someone new and very much current.  If you think about it, Sting will be entering the Hall of Fame just a bit after six months following his last world title opportunity so you can’t really blame them.

As for who should induct Sting, it has to be Ric Flair and that’s the only name I’ve heard rumored to be doing so.  Flair has been apart of WWE programming over the past two years as Charlotte has continued to rise the ranks of both NXT and WWE and with him, arguably, being one of Stings greatest adversaries and the man that in many ways made Sting the star he became, Flair should be the man to do it.  The only other name I can really see inducting Sting would be his lifelong friend Lex Luger and I’m unsure that he’d be able to, due to his health.  Aside from Sting, some other names that I can see going into the Hall of Fame this year would have to first and foremost be the Fabulous Freebirds ( which I’ve seen reported around the web, I believe pwinsider had it first).  The Freebirds are from Texas and Michael Hayes is obviously still a very big part of the WWE family.  If they wanted to keep things in Texas, I’d throw out former WWE diva Jaqueline (who had a good run in WWE including being a really good FOIL to Sable during the Attitude Era) into the mix.  From there how about former WWE champion, proud Texas native and current WWE commentator, JBL?  WWE usually likes to include somebody a bit more current that the current crop of fans are more familiar with, so I think that JBL would be a great choice and obviously very deserving.  For a posthumous induction, since it appears that Wrestlemania will no longer be going to Minnesota, how about this being the year that Rick Rude goes into the hall of fame?  Or again if we want to stick with that Texas theme, what about the late great Dick Murdoch? Rounding out the class with a celebrity inductee, I feel like this year has to be Lemmy who recently passed away and meant a lot to so much of the WWE roster, most notably Triple H.

Of course, the big rumor about this year’s hall of fame was that the Undertaker would be the headliner following his 25th anniversary, this being in his hometown of Texas on the night before the biggest Wrestlemania in the company’s history.  Well what i think happened there was a few things.  For one, John Cena got hurt and by all intents and purposes John Cena vs. The Undertaker in one of their first ever big high profile matches was heavily rumored as being a part of this year’s Wrestlemania.  With that match now not being something that can get done, in my opinion, perhaps they have that match penciled in for next year’s Mania and wanted to hold off on the Hall of Fame induction with the Undertaker still having matches a year from now.  Next, let’s be honest no matter how old the Undertaker is, it doesn’t matter, he had some of the best matches over the last year against Brock Lesnar and the Wyatt Family.  If he can still have great matches like that and come away healthy then why not utilize the Undertaker in some of the bigger shows of the year.  Of course this is all speculation, for all we know Undertaker can still be announced for the hall but that wouldn’t make much sense for WWE to use two headliners that can sell out the Hall Of Fame on their own like The Undertaker and Sting.

Well, that’s going to do it for now but congratulations go out to Sting on a well deserved Hall of Fame induction.  We’ll have much more breaking news as it’s released.