There’s been plenty of reports and rumors about who will be joining D-Generation X in this year’s 2019 Class of the WWE Hall of Fame. At the beginning of the month, prior to DX’s announcement, PWInsider reported that the original Hart Foundation, Bret “Hitman” Hart and Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, alongside manager Jimmy Hart, would be getting inducted. Now it’s been reported by Twitter user WrestleVotes, who has broken some big stories the past year, that there are two more names in play for this year’s class. While also stating that the Hart Foundation would still be entering as a group, despite a group being announced for the headliner already, they also mentioned that former WWE Intercontinental Champion The Honky Tonk Man and former ECW World Champion Tazz were currently in play.
Hearing that along with DX & The Hart Foundation, this years WWE Hall of Fame class may also include Tazz & Honky Tonk Man.
— WrestleVotes (@WrestleVotes) February 22, 2019
WrestleVotes would clarify in another tweet that their source seemed to think that while Honky Tonk Man was a lock, Tazz was still under consideration but not a lock.
Source saying Tazz not for sure. Honky seems definite. https://t.co/VGZUnWw1Qw
— WrestleVotes (@WrestleVotes) February 22, 2019
If the report is accurate, it would mean that the Honky Tonk Man is finally getting into the WWE Hall of Fame after seemingly rejecting a previous offer to enter back in 2010. In an interview with the Bleacher Report in 2013, Honky Tonk stated that “(w)hen they had the Hall of Fame ceremony here in Phoenix, they contacted me about that, and they contacted me way too late about it. It was like two weeks before, and they said, ‘We’d like to do this thing and induct you into the Hall of Fame and we think it would be a great honor for you.'” But he couldn’t accept at the time, saying “I said I thought it would too and I really appreciated the offer, but I had signed a contract to do these Wizard World Conventions and I was set to go to Toronto. I had to fulfill that obligation, so I turned them down.”
Should Honky Tonk Man accept the invitation this year, it would somewhat of a shift from his thinking from just last year when he spoke to Wrestling Inc. “The Hall of Fame, if it comes, it comes. It’s not something I pander for or I wait on. I’ve been critical of the Hall of Fame and some of the things they’ve done and how they do it,” he told them last March. “To the fans, I know that you’re gonna say I’m bitter, I’m hateful and all those things, but I’m not. It’s a TV show right now, it’s not a Hall of Fame.”
As for Tazz, the induction would make sense due to the location being in the New York/New Jersey area. Tazz, a former 2x ECW World Heavyweight Champion, 2x ECW World Television Champion, and 3x ECW World Tag Team Champion, is from Red Hook, New York, and New York City was a strong region for ECW.
The Hart Foundation, Tazz and Honky Tonk Man aren’t the only names strongly reported for this year’s class. Back in January, Brad Shepard reported on his Oh You Didn’t Know podcast that Bam Bam Bigelow, a New Jersey native, was also a lock to be inducted this year due to the geography of the event. Also in January, Joe Peisch of Barnburner Radio stated he’d heard that Cyndi Lauper, a New York City native and music star who helped launch the Rock N’ Wrestling Era of pro wrestling in the 1980s alongside Hulk Hogan and Wendi Richter, would be this year’s Celebrity Wing inductee.
