Stephanie McMahon will be joining her husband Paul “Triple H” Levesque and her late grandfather Vincent J. McMahon in WWE’s Hall of Fame next year. This announcement was made by The Undertaker during the Wrestlepalooza Premium Live Event (PLE) on Saturday.
Right before the main-event Undertaker made a surprise appearance and rode down on his motorcycle. As he reached the ring the camera panned to the crowd and Stephanie could be seen close to Nick Khan. Undertaker approached her and they started to have a friendly chat. Then after some inane small talk Undertaker said “are you ready?” and teased her husband’s trademark catchphrase. But instead of doing something like announce a return or reveal the attendance figure for the event – the latter becoming a regular practice at WWE PLEs of late – he surprised everyone by announcing that she is being inducted into the Hall of Fame. The crowd cheered as expected, though Stephanie wasn’t seen shedding any tears.
Aside from her role as an executive and important figure in WWE’s management structure, Stephanie was also an on-screen personality for many years, mainly when she was much younger and fresh out of college. Some of her early roles saw her as a token “damsel in distress” who, among other things, was once kidnapped by the Undertaker as a means of him forcibly marrying into the McMahon family.
Soon afterwards, however, Stephanie turned heel and aligned with future husband Triple H as part o the McMahon-Helmsley Faction. In the years that followed Stephanie was regularly mocked by wrestlers, most notably The Rock and Chris Jericho, much to the crowd’s delight. She would later become SmackDown General Manager in 2002-2003, but then gradually transitioned into an off-screen role. She was involved in creative in the company (and was said to be an influential figure in introducing scriptwriters to the creative process). Eventually she found her main role as the company’s Chief Brand Officer, a role that played to her education in business and marketing. She eventually became company COO for a brief period in 2022 which ended in January when her father Vince McMahon returned to the company after an initial hiatus.
