Booker T On Scripted Promos, Reality Of Wrestling, And Running For Mayor
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Booker T was the latest guest on Lillian Garcia’s Chasing Glory podcast, and the two wrestling legends had a long conversation covering a wide range of topics. Inevitably, one of those topics is the differences between today’s WWE and the wrestling promotions he came up in. While he agrees that scripted promos “take away a lot of the originality” of performers, he doesn’t think that backstage producers are without merit.
I remember back in the day, John Laurinaitis, he used to write a lot of my matches for me. Just the finish, he would write the finish for me. In the beginning I told him, I go, “Man, I don’t work like this. I’m an artist.” He’d go, “Just look it over and just try it.” I went out and I was like, “All right, I’ll try it.” I went out and I did, and I was like, “Wow, man, I look like a million bucks.” If I got someone working with me and I know they can make me look better and then they give me the liberty to say, “Hey, use it if you like it. If you don’t, throw it out,” that’s going to make me a whole lot better, opposed to someone just telling me, “Hey, this is what you got tonight.” For me, I had Brian Gewirtz, back when I was doing the King Booker.
Booker T runs his own wrestling promotion in Texas called Reality of Wrestling. He’s proud of what he’d done for the state of Texas and wants it to continue to prosper. “My goal has always been to … I’ve always felt like Texas was big enough for me to actually run a wrestling organization and not have to leave the state of Texas. Our goal is to run Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin on a weekly basis and run TV from each place and try to cultivate young talent as well in all of these spots, and try to teach them and mold them about what wrestling is and what I think it should continue to be.”
Booker T is dedicated to Texas, even beyond a wrestling capacity. He wants to continue to build his legacy even outside the squared circle. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t about me. Still to this day, it’s still not about me. It’s about passing it on. It’s about having a lot of fun. That’s it. That’s the only way I can look at it. You talk about the success. I understand, I’ve been very successful. I want more success. I want to be the mayor of Houston. That’s my ultimate goal.”
For more, including talk of his days in prison and advice he would give to kids listening at home, be sure to check out the full episode of Chasing Glory embedded below: