August 26, 2002 Observer Newsletter: Hall of Fame preview, tons of news

Next week will be our annual Hall of Fame issue of the Observer. In doing this preview, I want to mention a few things.

First, all the voting has been completed. I’ve got all the ballots, and there was a record number, coming from active and past wrestlers and industry people, as well as historians and active wrestling reporters. The rules of the Hall are that wrestlers are divided into three categories, which are U.S. and Canada region, Japan region and Mexico region. To be elected, you have to get 60% of the vote from your specific region. As history has shown with these elections, that’s a pretty difficult figure to achieve. There is always controversy each year among people who aren’t voted in, but rarely is there much among those who are voted in. So this piece has no bearing on the election, other than I did vote. All balloting is confidential, because there are people who probably would get heat not only for who they did and didn’t vote for, but also because they participated in the first place. There are people, mostly reporters and historians, who have and will say who they voted for and why and we will probably include a lot of comments in next week’s issue from various balloters anonymously.

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