As speculated, on last night’s Friday Night Smackdown, the Bella Twins (Brie & Nikki) were announced as the newest members for this year’s WWE Hall of Fame Class.

Signed to WWE Developmental in 2007, they made their debut on the main roster in 2008. Their first few years were non-eventful, as they were involved in mediocre storylines, and often served as arm candy to the Guest Hosts on Monday Night Raw.  Both twins would win the Diva’s Championship in 2012, but they would leave the WWE in April of that year.  

The came back before Wrestlemania I 2013, but they would have a higher profile role. Not only were they getting more screen time on the wrestling shows, they were the cornerstone of the new reality show in E!, “Total Divas.”  Nikki and Brie would feud in 2014, and while that did not last long, it was given a lot of attention on WWE programming.  Nikki won the Diva’s Title in November of 2014, when the Bellas reunited.

In 2015, the “Women’s Revolution” began, as fans saw the work of the females of NXT and started the hashtag of “Give Divas a Chance.”  Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks were called up, and this coincided with the improved skills of the twins.  Nikki lost her championship to Charlotte Flair, and had to take time off due to neck and back issues.  Brie continued to wrestle, but would go into semi-retirement.  

They both came back in the 2018 Royal Rumble, and later that year, Nikki challenged Ronda Rousey for the women’s title at Evolution.

The Bella Twins may not have been the best workers in the business, but they became very well known, and were two of the most recognizable female wrestlers in the 2010s.

We had not ranked them in our most recent Notinhalloffame.com WWE List, as we had them in the futures section instead.  This decision was due to their youth (once a wrestler is 46, they are automatically ranked), and their ability to come back full time if desired.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate the Bella Twins for earning this honor.

It flew under the radar of most music publications, but the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame made a huge announcement as they added five new members to their Board of Directors.

They are:

Michele Anthony (Executive Vice President Universal Music Group)

Jody Gerson (Chairman & CEO Universal Music Publishing)

Pam Kaufman (President Viacom/CBS Consumer Products)

Jon Platt (Chairman & SONY/ATV Music Publishing)

Pharell Williams (Artist/Producer/Entrepreneur)

The RRHOF Board Chairman, John Sykes, brought this group in, and it is a strong step towards his mandate to have more diverse representation as it includes three women and one African-American.  

What this means going forward is still up for discussion.

As always, we will be watching!

Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we here at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the 50 of each major North American sports team.  We have a new one to unveil today, that of the Edmonton Oilers. 

Debuting as the Alberta Oilers in 1972 in the World Hockey Association, they would exchange the Alberta for Edmonton after one year.  The Oilers were an original WHA team, who would be one of four franchises that would be absorbed into the NHL in 1979.  When they joined the NHL, they had a young Wayne Gretzky in tow, and after drafting players like Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Mark Messier and Grant Fuhr, a dynasty occurred that would win four Stanley Cups in the 1980s and one in 1990.  Since that time, they made the Finals once in 2006.  

As for all of our top 50 players in hockey we look at the following: 

1.  Advanced Statistics.

2. Traditional statistics and how they finished in the NHL.

3. Playoff accomplishments.

4. Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles not reflected in a stat sheet.

Remember, this is ONLY based on what a player does on that particular team and not what he accomplished elsewhere and also note that we have placed an increased importance on the first two categories.

This list is updated up until the end of the 2018-19 Season.

The complete list can be found here, but as always we announce our top five in this article.  They are:

1. Wayne Gretzky

2. Mark Messier

3. Jari Kurri

4. PaulCoffey

5. GrantFuhr

We will continue our adjustments on our existing lists and will continue developing our new lists.  

Look for or All-Time Top 50 Colorado Avalanche coming next!

As always we thank you for your support.

When the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame announced their Finalists, Chris Bosh was left off of it.  This is his first year of eligibility after being forced to retire due to issues with blood clots in 2014.  He had this to say on his Instagram:

"I'm going to be honest with you. I'm a competitor, man. I've been competing my whole life. A lot of people don't really know that about me, but I'm a fierce competitor. Losing bothers me. Coming up short bothers me. It always has, you know, since the moment I started playing basketball and it kind of bleeds over into everything that I do. So I'll just get ahead of it, and so you hear this from me: I'm disappointed."

Only five men (down from ten) were named as Finalists this year, with three of those being former players (Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett).   The conspiracy theory in us feels like Bosh (and other previous finalists like Chris Webber and Ben Wallace) were put on the shelf for now to clear the path for Bryant, Duncan and Garnett.  With all due respect to Bosh, he is the clear number four behind those three.  The delay of Bosh also gives the Hall a headliner for the 2021 Class, and let’s be honest, they need to sell tickets to.

As always, we will be watching.