George Steele

William James "Jim" Myers (born April 16, 1936), better known by his ring name George "The Animal" Steele, is a former American professional wrestler, author and actor. Steele's career lasted from 1967 until 1988, though he made occasional wrestling appearances into the 1990s and 2000s.

Steele portrayed Swedish wrestler and actor Tor Johnson in Tim Burton's film Ed Wood.

Early life

Myers was born in Detroit in 1936 and was raised in Madison Heights, Michigan. During high school, he found success in track running, baseball, basketball and football. In 1956, Myers entered Michigan State University as a football player for the Michigan State Spartans, but his career as a football player was immediately cut short as a result of knee problems. In 1961, he was with the Grand Rapids Shamrocks (UFL) 1st place Western Division.

After gaining a bachelor of science degree from Michigan State University and a master's degree from Central Michigan University, Myers became a teacher, amateur wrestling coach, and football coach at Madison High School in Madison Heights, Michigan. There he would eventually become a member of the Michigan Coaches Hall of Fame.

WWE Hall of Fame

The WWE Hall of Fame is a hall of fame for professional wrestling personalities maintained by WWE. It was officially created on the March 22, 1993 episode of Monday Night Raw where André the Giant, who had died nearly two months prior, was announced as the sole inductee. The 1994 and 1995 ceremonies were held in conjunction with the annual King of the Ring pay-per-view events. In 1996, the ceremony was held with the Survivor Series event, for the first time in front of a paying audience as well as the wrestlers, after which, the Hall of Fame went on hiatus.

In 2004, WWE relaunched the Hall of Fame to coincide with WrestleMania XX. This ceremony, like its predecessors, was not broadcast on television. However, it was released on DVD on June 1, 2004. Beginning with the 2005 ceremony, an edited version of the Hall of Fame was broadcast on Spike TV (2005) and on the USA Network (2006–present); these were aired on tape delay. Since 2005, the entire Hall of Fame ceremony has been packaged as part of the annual WrestleMania DVD release, and from 2014, has been broadcast live on the WWE Network. In 2015, historical WWE Hall of Fame ceremonies became available on the WWE Network.

WWE Classics on Demand

WWE Classics On Demand was a subscription video on demand television service provided by WWE. It featured footage from WWE's vast archive of wrestling footage, including classic WWE, World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and more. It offered around 40 hours of rotating programming per month, arranged into four (previously six) "programming buckets", often centered on a specific theme. It was originally called WWE 24/7 On Demand. In September 2008, it was changed to WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand. In April 2009, it was changed again to WWE Classics On Demand.

WWE Classics was presented only on digital cable. Among the services carrying it were Comcast, AT&T U-Verse (discontinued in 2012),Verizon FiOS, Mediacom, Charter Communications, Cox Communications, Rogers Cable, EastLink, Seaside Communications, Cogeco, Armstrong, Cablevision, Sky Italia and not long ago, Astro. Some of its programming was packaged as Madison Square Garden Classics and began airing on MSG Network in the summer of 2006. In November 2007, the service had around 115,000 subscribers.