Honky Crop
At least one nerdlebrity is picking Wizard World over the Hall of Fame. On his blog, former wrestler “The Honky Tonk Man’ explained why he would rather be in Toronto for The Toronto Comic-Con than get inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. His reasons are sensible — he wanted to honor the prior booking, and the WWE has an onerous “no compete” clause that meant he wouldn’t be able to make money at personal appearances for several months:

“HTM declined the WWE offer to be inducted into the HOF class of 2010. There were multiple reasons why HTM decided against this induction. Negotiations started Friday Jan. 22 and carried over till Wed. Jan. 27 at which time HTM informed WWE that he would not be interested in this years induction into their HOF.

One of the main reasons was a conflict in the schedule. HTM is booked for the Wizard World Comic Con in Toronto for the same date WWE wanted. HTM felt he should stand by his Wizard booking since they had put out publicity on his appearance to be there. Also the Wizard booking has been on his books since early December. WWE had more than enough time to get their date locked in with HTM.



Wizard has HTM booked for 7 events this year and WWE had only 1 event for HTM. HTM would have suffered a serious negative cash flow by taking the WWE booking since they want a “no compete” clause over several months after the HOF. HTM would have been handcuffed with no way to provide income for his family during the “no compete’ months. The dollar figure from WWE for the one event was less than HTM could make in one weekend at Wizard World. Therefore HTM decided 7 dates with Wizard would mean 10 times the money WWE was offering and Wizard does not have a “no compete” clause.

5 COMMENTS

  1. I find this very ironic. Back in the fall of 2000 I was a freshman at San Francisco State University and All Pro Wrestling (which I knew from “Beyond The Mat”) was going to hold a show on campus and advertised that The Honky Tonk Man would appear to defend his APW Universal Heavyweight Championship. But he didn’t show…much to the small crowd’s dissapointment. He was then stripped of the title and it was given to some other guy.

  2. @Adam: To be fair, small wrestling promotions are notorious for not being able to pay. And Honky Tonk Man made it perfectly clear that it was all about the money.

  3. It’s also possible they announce people that are going to be there, before working out a deal to get them there.

    Honkey has/had his own small wrestling road show going on. A little over a year ago I saw him as he traveled through Canada.

  4. @El Santo: that makes sense actually.

    @Jamie: but I am willing to bet there was a deal in place, since he was defending his championship. But things could have fallen apart afterwards.

    I don’t hold the incident against “HTM” but it’s always the first thing I think about when his name comes up.

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