Harlem Heat Announced for WWE’s 2019 Hall of Fame Class

Booker T may be a five-time World Champion, but now he’s a two-time WWE Hall of Famer — the Harlem Heat just got added to the 2019 HOF class.

Booker T and brother Stevie Ray were arguably WCW’s most impactful tag team. While they never wrestled together in WWE, their resume is undeniable as 10-time Tag Team Champions and on Monday they joined D-Generation X, The Honky Tonk Man, and Torrie Wilson as part of 2019’s inductees.

USA Today’s For the Win originally broke the news and had a few quotes from the freshly enshrined brothers.

“I was speechless for a couple of seconds. The last thing I was thinking about was the Hall of Fame,” said Stevie Ray. “I’m going to be honest with you, I hadn’t really thought about it. You know, I get the fans hitting me all the time with different things about Harlem Heat needs to be in the Hall of Fame, so on and so forth. But you never know, so I never gave it very much thought.

Booker T was also caught off guard by the news.

“It was surprising, actually, I guess because one reason, my brother and I, we never actually wrestled in the WWE. My brother took a step aside at that point in time because he had a daughter, and he wanted to see her grow up and see her go to college. He got a chance to do that. But our career in WCW was awesome,” he said.

While Harlem Heat never actually competed in a WWE ring, they were a pillar of WCW. After getting their start in the company in 1993, Booker T and Stevie Ray became a stabilizing force in a promotion that proved to be tumultuous for so many others.

“My brother and I were together for eight and a half years in WCW and together another two years prior in the Global Wrestling Federation. So we had a career as a tag team, and to be recognized as one of the great tag teams of all time…. [there were] a lot of great tag teams that we competed against back in the day, like the Steiners, the Nasty Boys and the Road Warriors, Sting and Lex Luger, Public Enemy – so many guys we got a chance to grapple with back then, and to be recognized, it’s pretty awesome,” said Booker T.