The 2026 WWE Hall of Fame Ceremony was tonight, or this morning depending on where your are in the world.
No matter. After April 17’s WrestleMania SmackDown, the night before Night One of WrestleMania 42, WWE streamed live from Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas. The Ceremony streamed on ESPN Unlimited in the United States, and on YouTube pretty much everywhere else. Get a full rundown of the show, complete with video highlights, here.
WWE promoted Stephanie McMahon as if she’d close this year’s Hall
Ceremony, almost from when she was announced all the way back in September of last year during Wrestlepalooza, the first domestic premium live event after those moved to ESPN. But the company’s former interim CEO was actually up first, perhaps because that’s when the most subscribers were still awake to be drawn in by the Billion Dollar Princess.
After the customary video — which was excellent, as is also WWE custom…
Stephanie’s inductees were introduced: Her mother, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, Linda McMahon, and Aurora, Murphy, and Vaughn Levesque, Steph’s three daughters with current WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
The inductee’s daughters were all impressive, delivering proud, loving speeches with poise. Their grandmother didn’t fare as well, and spoke largely to a quiet room.
During her own speech, Stephanie touchingly responded to her daughters. She also thanked both her mother and her father, Vince. This was something many WWE and wrestling fans were interested in, and Linda’s husband (on paper, at least) was mentioned multiple times during the night and thanked by more inductees than just his daughter. All of those times were reacted to favorably, including when a “Thank You, Vince” chant broke out during Stephanie’s joke about how she especially wouldn’t be there without her parents.
After starting in sales and spending time working on multiple other aspects of the family business, Stephanie served as WWE’s Chief Brand Officer for more than a decade before taking over as CEO and Chairman when her father was forced to step down from those roles because of his 2022 hush money scandal. Stephanie resigned in January of 2023 when Vince forced his way back into power and executed WWE’s sale to Ari Emanuel and Endeavor. Vince briefly served as Executive Director for TKO, the umbrella company Endeavor formed of UFC and WWE, until he resigned again in January 2024 after the bombshell allegations in his former lover and employee Janel Grant’s sex trafficking lawsuit.
That case is still in active litigation, and many hope and believe McMahon shouldn’t return to WWE or its product ever again. But as the Hall of Fame reminds us every year, WWE and TKO are very good at selling legends. And fans love reliving its past, which can sometimes mean overlooking a favorite wrestler’s life outside their fictional world — and can sometimes mean attacking those who don’t want to let them overlook their favorites’ flaws.
Judging by the crowd at the 2026 Hall of Fame Ceremony*, it seems like just a matter of time before Vince McMahon is back in the WWE fold, at least for an appearance at an event like the Hall of Fame.
Agree? If not, tell us below. Or just shout out the Levesque girls for a job well done.
* Like most things related to WrestleMania 42 and crowds, said to be smaller than in recent years.
