On a recent episode of his “Hall of Fame” podcast, Booker T shed light on his renowned WWE RAW face-off against Buff Bagwell in Tacoma, WA in 2001.
This match was meant to herald the rebranding of WCW, however, all plans for WCW were subsequently discarded by Vince McMahon.
Below are some notable snippets from the podcast:
On his well-known WWE RAW match with Buff Bagwell: “If we wanted to, we could have had the match in Atlanta two weeks later. But in WWF, we weren’t there to be praised. It wasn’t about making us look good, they weren’t concerned about that. I realized that early. Although I was initially the Heavyweight champion and the United States champion, I knew that in this company, I had to prove my worth…
“The week prior to our match in Tacoma, Buff and I had a match at a house show. From that, I knew Tacoma wasn’t going to be good. I reached out to John Laurinaitis, also known as Johnny Ace, suggesting if we could delay the match as I had a hunch it wasn’t going to go well. Johnny Ace was powerless to help. This made me realize that the situation was rigged. I have never discussed this before. Going into the match, it wasn’t a match that Buff and I have done a thousand times, it was quite the opposite. By that time, the matches we used to do frequently were no more. That was definitely the reality.”
On the disparity between his performance level: “I was completely ready to give my best performance that night. However, my performance that night didn’t measure up to the high standards I had set. That was one of the rare nights when I failed to turn the match into an extraordinary event. I can say this confidently: it wasn’t my fault… That was possibly the first time I was met with the ‘boring’ chant. The only time it ever happened was during that match. I remember precisely when it started. I was stunned! I was upset, as I had always aimed to ace at WWE. I yearned to show the world how talented I was, but that night I was unable to do that. Particularly, as I was playing against a WCW wrestler, not a WWE guy.”