Billy Gunn Calls Chyna's WWE Hall of Fame Induction a 'Huge Relief'

Around this time every year, Chyna would be snubbed of a WWE Hall of Fame induction. But now that [...]

By Jeremy Snodgrass

Around this time every year, Chyna would be snubbed of a WWE Hall of Fame induction. But now that she's going in alongside D-Generation X, her old running mate, Billy Gunn is loving the catharsis.

A few years ago, Triple H told Steve Austin on-air that WWE hesitated on Chyna's HOF bid due to her work in the adult film industry. But to Gunn, that was not a justifiable reason to deny her enshrinement.

"I think that was the most exciting thing about this whole thing. When Brian had said to me 'and Chyna is going in', I think that was a huge relief for me. Because you're right, I always said she needed to go in. What goes on outside of wrestling is what goes on outside of wrestling. It has nothing to do with the fact that she was a huge impact in wrestling (industry), and that's what this is recognizing," Gunn told Busted Open Radio.

Chyna has long been championed by fans and her peers as one of the more obvious Hall of Fame omissions. Triple H's explanation may have its merits, but given Chyna won't be alive for her moment, things still feel tragic.

Triple did seem to double-down on the company's right to pump fake at Chyna's induction during an interview with ESPN right after news broke of DX's induction.

"From a career standpoint, should she be in the Hall of Fame? Absolutely," Triple H said. "It's a bit difficult, though, and this is the flipside of the coin — and this is the side nobody looks at — I've got an eight-year-old kid, and my eight-year-old kid sees Hall of Fame, and my eight-year-old kid goes on the Internet to look at Chyna. What comes up? And I'm not criticizing anybody. I'm not criticizing lifestyle choices. Everybody has their reasons. I don't know what they were. I don't care to know. It's not a morality thing or anything else. It is just the fact of what it is. That's a difficult choice."

A favorite fact of fans is that Triple H and Chyna were in a relationship during DX's earliest chapters. But now that Triple H is married to Stephanie McMahon, some feel that lends itself to a melodrama that would keep Chyna blacklisted. How valid that idea is will forever remain a mystery, but the only thing that really matters is that Chyna is now a Hall of Famer.

"Look, people believe what they want to believe," he said. "When I said a few years ago on the Austin podcast, or show, or whatever you want to call it, there's complexities around it. But absolutely, definitely deserves to be in there. It'd be tough to pick a female that was more impactful on the business. She did something that was completely so out of left field that it wasn't even being considered when we first brought it up for her to come in. It wasn't even a consideration ... it wasn't an easy thing, and against all odds she did all of that. She earned everybody's trust. She won over the fans. She won over the boys. She did all of it.

[H/T Cagesideseats]

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