I'm not in the least bit surprised that Reed inducted Cohen - after all, both came from literary backgrounds and brought poetic sensibilities into the late 60s music industry (as opposed to Dylan, who may have paved the way for both in terms of his lyrical content, but was mostly self-taught).
I was very surprised indeed by Reed's induction of Zappa, though, considering that both parties took critical swipes at each other whenever possible. There has been a long-standing rivarly between those two ever since the Velvet's debut album was delayed a release for almost a year so that - in the belief of the V.U. at least - verve could concentrate on promoting the mothers of invention's "Freak Out" (recorded at the same time as "The Velvet underground & Nico" but issued nine months earlier.
Also, Zappa is reputed to have continually slated the Velvets onstage when the Mothers supported them at the Fillmore in San Francisco (yep, that's right, the Mothers supported the Velvets, not vice versa, as the latter were more established at that point due to their Andy Warhol connection), making statements along the lines of "those guys really suck". Reed responded in an interview by stating that Zappa couldn't write a decent tune to save his life, and that his over-ostentatious neo-classical arrangements and self-consciously weird dress sense were just products of his unhappiness with himself as a human being. Sterling Morrison slagged the Mothers unmercilessly during the same interview too (one quote I remember being "does he think he's the only person ever to have studied music?")
For what it's worth, I don't think Reed and Zappa shared the same vision at all. Virtually the only thing that they had in common was that Zappa and John Cale both had neo-classical / avant-garde sensibilities, but their influences were from entirely different schools. Cale was entranced by the minimalism of composers like LaMonte Young and John Cage, consequently seeking to strip everything down and make rock music more minimal and repetitive (hence the Velvets' all-pervasive influence on krautrock.
Zappa, by contrast, seemed to think that all pop music was moronic and sought to make it much more sophiticated and elaborate in terms of its arrangements and structuresd (hence his all-pervasive influence on a ton of horrendously dated prog-rock crap).
That's not to say that both parties didn't make great records in their early days, mind, but in my opinion Zappa dropped the ball a lot quicker than Reed or Cale did in the 70s. Both Reed and Cale continued to pursue erratic, but sporadically brilliant solo careers, whereas Zappa produced nothing but self-consciously quirky nonsense after 1972.
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