According to Fox News Sports and confirmed by WWE.com, longtime Smackdown General Manager Teddy Long will be joining the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2017.
Teddy Long has had a very career with professional wrestling, building his way from ring crew to referee to manager in WCW in the mid to late 80s/early 90s. His best time as a manager had to be as the manager of DOOM, taking the team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed to tag team championship gold.
All the while looking like this
Teddy is best known today as the longtime Smackdown General Manager, having held that role longer than anyone in history. His favorite (and overused) general manager decisions were those involving taking all those superstars in the ring doing a promo and making them have a tag team match or have a heel go “One on one with the Undertaker!”
While his career with WWE was long and he had some memorable moments, Long suffered from poor writing, bad and bad acting thoughout his tenure. His position as general manager will never be remembered as fondly as the other greats in WWE history (Eric Bischoff, Paul Heyman, Stephanie McMahon, The Authority, William Regal and Commisioner Foley (2000) ). For longevity sake, Teddy Long is in the WWE Hall of Fame. I feel kinda meh about it. His inclusion seems to be more about WWE’s consistent want to be diverse in their classes over Long’s much overdue inclusion.
I will do a full breakdown of Teddy Long coming up shortly.
Do you agree? How do you feel about Teddy Long’s inclusion?
I’m ok with this induction because there are a few managers missing and we all know Jim Cornette will never be inducted after he said the business would’ve been better off had Vince went to jail
Teddy Long was one of those guys who somehow kept a job in wrestling. I’m assuming that means he was well regarded back stage, which is cool, but that does not equal a Hall of Fame nod in my opinion. When he was with Butch Reed and Ron Simmons as Doom, people took notice because suddenly a ref became a manager, and Doom was a cool heel team. But that was so long ago and not really a big mark in wrestling history. I agree with you that this seems to be more about getting a diverse group into the hall, and also a sign that we’re running out of legit candidates.