I have some suggestions for this - given that we're almost a year away I figure there's plenty of time to discuss them, even if they just get shot down at least they're out there:
Suggestion 1: A legacy vote, an entrant that can only be chosen from a pre-selected group. As Grim said, the likes of Rikidozan will never get selected naturally due to all of our ages (shit, I'm old as dust and he's before my time), Frank Gotch, Lou Thesz there's a number of names that just won't go in for years but probably should do. Probably put this on top of the original 5 so the class would go up to six.
Suggestion 2: Remove the part time criteria and just have an age limit: at least 45 years old (for example).
Suggestion 3: Potentially theme each year: so next year might be tag-teams, Japanese performers or guys that retired in the 90s (as examples) - I don't think we're near a point where we "need" to do this yet btw.
Just throwing stuff out there for people to discuss.
The second suggestion is one that I think should be effective immediately. You did suggest that to me a while back and I planned to institute it next time around. I think that's the right idea. So instead of trying to interpret who is and isn't part-time or retired, you have this exact guideline. They must either be retired or a certain age. For the record, I think 45 is a good baseline but then that also disqualified a few current guys. Brock Lesnar and John Cena most notably. Neither are full-on retired and neither is 45 yet either. Is that an issue? Maybe not. But I think 42 is the original age you suggested and I think that's a better age.
The first suggestion is one that I think should certainly be taken into consideration. When I did the Wrestling Punks Hall of Fame, I had the idea to have a "themed" induction every year. One year it was on-air personalities which Bobby Heenan won, and one year is was promoters, which Vince McMahon won. So we could do something along those lines where one year we have a pioneer era inductee, one year we induct a manager, one year we induct a stable and so on and so forth and just go in a cycle like that. (so for example: 2021 we do a pioneer, 2022 we do a manager, 2023 we do a stable, 2024 we do a pioneer again, 2025 we do a manager and 2026 we do a stable). But, the thing I
don't so much like about that is that it would potentially interfere with people nominating these kinds of people on just a normal basis. nWo, The Horsemen, Giant Baba, Bobby Heenan, Vince McMahon, as well as several others, all got votes for the HOF this year. I think if you establish that every few years we're going to induct a pioneer age guy, it will make people avoid nominating them on a yearly basis.
For the third point, I'm not too high on that. I feel like that's a bit too limiting, especially at this point in time. I would rather those concepts be incorporated into the above point if anything.
But all in all my concern with the first and third suggestion is: if we add in these extra things, will the Hall of Fame them become less reflective of our site's beliefs? Lou Thesz, Frank Gotch, Rikidozan... all these guys are worthy of being in any wrestling Hall of Fame. But if we're more or less forcing people to vote for these guys, it kind of devalues their induction, you know? Compared to if people were to rally behind them on their own accord.
Anyways, that's just me. I'd certainly want to hear what everyone else thinks about this.
