10 superstars who still need to be in the WWE Hall of Fame

Jazz

Explaining this one could take a little while given the recent history between Jazz and WWE (more on that in a minute) but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

Inspired by WWE Hall of Famer Jacqueline, Jazz began her career in ECW in 1999 and quickly became one of the best women’s wrestlers in the world. After ECW shut down, Jazz was sent to Ohio Valley Wrestling to train and made her debut at Survivor Series in 2001, losing in a six-pack challenge for the vacant Women’s Championship. However, she moved up the ladder very rapidly and was soon put in a program with Trish Stratus, one of the top two females in the company at the time. Jazz took the title from Trish on an episode of Monday Night Raw. She was then set to face Trish and Lita, the other top star in the division, in a triple threat match at WrestleMania X8.

While the focus may have been on the other two, it was Jazz who emerged victorious in that match, a major feat. Beating Trish and Lita at WrestleMania? Yeah, that’s huge. And, since the company name change (from WWF to WWE) happened in May of that year, Jazz has the distinction of being the first-ever WWE Women’s Champion.

An unfortunate ACL injury took her out of action for months but upon her return, she had programs with Victoria and with Stratus, once again defeating Stratus for the title before later dropping it to Gail Kim in a battle royal. The division would go in a bit of a different direction around that time, with the focus shifting away from actual wrestling, and Jazz was let go as a result. She made a short return when the new version of ECW started up but nothing much came of it. This hasn’t stopped her from competing — at 45 years old, Jazz is still going and is currently the NWA World Women’s Champion, and has been so for nearly 1,000 days.

The problem with Jazz getting in is that she was part of a class-action lawsuit against WWE about brain injuries, something that Vince McMahon likely isn’t going to let go of anytime soon and likely the reason why she and many others aren’t in the WWE Hall of Fame. Hopefully that can be rectified at some point (especially since the lawsuit was dismissed) because Jazz definitely deserves to be among the elite.