10 People WWE Should Remove From The Hall Of Fame
A cancelled ceremony.
In July 2015, Hulk Hogan found himself haunted by the ghost of Jeremy Beadle, when Candid Camera footage somehow slipped into the public stratosphere depicting him repeatedly using racial slurs, before openly admitting to his bedfellow that he was "racist, to a point".
Hogan has effusively apologised for the tape since - or at least, for being caught.
Over night, the prestige Hogan had built up over thirty years was shattered. Having brought him in from the cold for the umpteenth time in 2014, WWE again severed ties with the Hulkster. Only this time, the door was shut completely; Hulk was scrubbed from the record books, not for ethical reasons, but because of the damage his now toxic brand would cause to WWE's investor-and-advertiser wary one.
As part of Hogan's airbrushing from history, his Hall of Fame ring was handed over to the pawnbrokers. Though clearly a big public show of denunciation, the act served to highlight WWE double standards; if Hogan was out of the Hall for his despicable blooper reel, then so too should a whole host of other problematic inductees - many of whom probably shouldn't have got the nod in the first place.
But then WWE accepted Hogan's 'apology', indirectly in exchange for several tankers full of Saudi petrodollars. Any pretense of moral high ground was utterly flattened. If the company had anything like permanent principles, their Hall would be a lot thinner...
10. Abdullah The Butcher
The scars left on the Hall of Fame by Abdullah the Butcher's inclusion don't run quite as deep as the famously quarter-grasping creases carved into his head, but his craggy cranium offers a hint as to WWE's likely remorse over his ring-fitting. His face simply doesn't fit.
The butcher's choice was shaky to begin with. Though Lawrence Shreve's fork unquestionably left a bloody mark across the industry during a decades long career known for its longevity, if not it's quality, his hardcore innovations - if that's even to be celebrated - came outwith the confines of the sanitary Stamford.
Even if the Madman from Sudan had had any particular prior association with the Big E, his 2011 induction was typically tone deaf. At the time, Abdullah faced allegations from Canadian wrestler Devon Nicholson that he'd infected him and others with hepatitis C as a consequence of sharing a blade. For once, the old scare stories proved true, with a court upholding the claims and ordering Shreve to pay over $2 million in damages.
The upshot is that WWE now have a Hall of Famer, one who never worked for them, legally condemned for spreading blood disease through barbaric business practices - a business they claim as their own. It's not a good look.