WWE promoted Stephanie McMahon as if she\u2019d close this year\u2019s Hall Ceremony, almost from when she was announced<\/a> 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\u2019s former interim CEO was actually up first, perhaps because that\u2019s when the most subscribers were still awake to be drawn in by the Billion Dollar Princess.<\/p>\n After the customary video \u2014 which was excellent, as is also WWE custom\u2026<\/p>\n Stephanie\u2019s inductors were introduced: Her mother, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education<\/a>, Linda McMahon, and Aurora, Murphy, and Vaughn Levesque, Steph\u2019s three daughters with current WWE Chief Content Officer Paul \u201cTriple H\u201d Levesque.<\/p>\n The inductee\u2019s daughters were all impressive, delivering proud, loving speeches with poise. Their grandmother didn\u2019t fare as well, and spoke largely to a quiet room.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s husband (on paper, at least<\/a>) 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 \u201cThank You, Vince\u201d chant broke out during Stephanie\u2019s joke about how she especially wouldn\u2019t be there without her parents.<\/p>\n After starting in sales and spending time working on multiple other aspects of the family business, Stephanie served as WWE\u2019s Chief Brand Officer for more than a decade before taking over as CEO and Chairman<\/a> when her father was forced to step down from those roles because of his 2022 hush money scandal<\/a>. Stephanie resigned<\/a> in January of 2023 when Vince forced his way back into power and executed WWE\u2019s 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<\/a> in his former lover and employee Janel Grant\u2019s sex trafficking lawsuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n That case is still in active litigation, and many hope and believe McMahon shouldn\u2019t 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\u2019s life outside their fictional world \u2014 and can sometimes mean attacking those who don\u2019t want to let them overlook their favorites\u2019 flaws.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Agree? If not, tell us below. Or just shout out the Levesque girls for a job well done.<\/p>\n * Like most things related to WrestleMania 42 and crowds<\/a>, said to be<\/a> smaller than in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 WWE Hall of Fame Ceremony was tonight, or this morning depending on where you are in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,165350,4366,94184],"class_list":{"0":"post-591807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-wrestlemania-42","10":"tag-wwe","11":"tag-wwe-hall-of-fame"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Linda](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SMfam.jpeg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n