LOTS OF BACKSTAGE WWE HALL OF FAME NEWS AND NOTES

While the WWE Hall of Fame received awesome reviews from everyone here at PWInsider.com, I am told that behind the scenes, it was not as well received. WWE management felt the show ran far too long and that it wasn't exciting enough. While it was a long night, I disagree on the latter as I felt there was a lot of legitimately wonderful speeches.

WWE requested that several cut their speeches short, which did happen with Kevin Nash, Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair.

WWE pushed hard to have Kevin Nash go into the WWE Hall of Fame as Diesel but Nash was having none of that. Nash wanted to go in under his real name so that whatever additional credibility the WWE HOF brought to his outside endeavors, he could use it. I was also told that Nash didn't want to go in under Diesel since for years the narrative was that he was one of the worst drawing WWF champions and now wasn't going to allow himself to be celebrated under that name for that reason. WWE tried to push Nash to cancel his late night Wrestlemania Shenanigans party but he refused.

I was told that several long-time executives, including Vince McMahon, weren't happy about the talk about how Kevin Nash helped transformed the business with all the guaranteed contracts since the feeling at the time was WCW was out to put WWF out of business and that since McMahon took it so personally at the time, this brought up a lot of old angry feelings on a night where things are supposed to be more celebratory.

Shawn Michaels wasn't kidding when he said on stage he was going to end up in trouble as the company wasn't happy with his use of the word "strap" and "wrestler" during his speech. Michaels legitimately tore his prepared speech up and was going off the top of his head when he inducted Nash.

The company wasn't thrilled with Madusa's use of expletives and some weren't happy about Eric Bischoff getting put over.

The company absolutely loved The Bushwhackers speech, feeling it was the perfect meshing of their "on camera" characters and telling old stories.

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