WWE Gave Legends Six Minutes For Hall Of Fame Speech

The WWE Hall of Fame speeches of some legends were shorter than anticipated.

At the 2026 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony during WrestleMania 42 weekend in Las Vegas, AJ Styles was the headliner while Stephanie McMahon spoke first.

For the McMahon and Styles inductions, they were given plenty of time for video packages, introductions from their family/friends, and then their actual speeches went fairly long.

It wasn’t the same for every Hall of Fame inductee, though. The Demolition tag team of Bill “Ax” Eadie and Barry “Smash” Darsow waited a long time to get inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

When it was time to give their speeches, the legendary tag team was told they had only six minutes between them to talk about their lives in pro wrestling.

During a recent episode of Demolition’s Demo Pod, Darsow shared some behind-the-scenes info about the process of coming up with their speeches.

“When they first were telling us to do all this, I had a speech that was going to be about a half hour long, and I was going to tell stories about Andre the Giant and different people and how I got in the business and all that.

And when they came to us and said, you had six minutes, six minutes between both of us? They said, yes. And it was like, well, how am I going to take three minutes? And Bill take three minutes?”

Demolition Went Over Time At WWE Hall Of Fame

Regarding their actual WWE Hall of Fame speeches, Smash (Darsow) admitted they went over the allotted time.

“Mine ended up being probably four or five minutes. And then Bill’s was four or five, six minutes, maybe. So we went over the time limit, but it’s almost, you know, you’re getting inducted in the Hall of Fame. How can you just not really tell what you’re thinking?”

As for the inductors, WWE used wrestling legends Arn Anderson, Haku, and The Warlord. Smash said Demolition was okay with that.

“And then it was probably, what, two days before, I think, Bill, that one of the guys from the WWE said, we’re going to use three of them, and it was going to be those three guys.

And when they were kind of debating which one of those three, then somebody in the office says, well, why not just have all three of them. It’s the ’80s. We’ve wrestled them all. They’re all friends of ours, and they’re all good guys with the WWE.”

Ax (Eadie) admitted he got off track a bit during his Hall of Fame speech.

“I have to admit, I got off track, because when I got out there, I rethought some of the lines that I had submitted, and one of the things that my wife mentioned to me right after is I forgot to thank Barry for his contribution to the team, and I didn’t mean to slight him.”

At WrestleMania 42, the Irresistible Forces team of Nia Jax & Lash Legend dressed as Demolition in all white. Darsow revealed that WWE’s Chief Content Officer, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, let them know during the Hall of Fame ceremony.

“We were on the red carpet, and we were doing the ring ceremony, and it was Bill, myself, and Triple H, and Triple H was talking to us, and there was probably 40 cameras in front of us taking all the pictures and everything.

And Triple H turned and looked at us and said, hey, there’s going to be something pretty neat at WrestleMania tomorrow night. We’re going to get you in the front, and there’s going to be a couple of girls that are going to do something for you.” (H/T Wrestlingnewsco)

The 2026 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony aired live on WWE’s YouTube channel and is now available for anyone to watch.