Booker T was the latest guest on Chris Van Vliet’s Insight podcast, discussing a wide range of topics, including WCW’s Mount Rushmore.
This is an opinionated question, as people have different answers to the Mount Rushmore question of listing their top 4 all-time wrestlers. Here are the highlights:
On his WCW Mount Rushmore: “I got a picture on my wall at home that somebody painted it, and it’s the Mount Rushmore of WCW, and it’s Goldberg, Sting, (Diamond) Dallas Page, and Booker T. That’s a pretty good list.”
On the narrative that WCW talent was buried in WWE: “Yeah, they did. They did get a chance. Everybody got a chance. They tried to bury everybody, but everybody did get a chance. Buff Bagwell did get a chance in that match. Bagwell did get a chance. I mean, he really did. I know there are a lot of stories, but I was there. They tried to bury me. I was just like everybody else. You know, I was no different, but the one thing that was different about me was that I was prepared for them to try to bury me. I knew exactly what it was going to take to make it in WWE, and I knew it was just as good as anybody in the WWE. I was talent man. There’s no way they could, you know, deny me other than saying, you know, ‘Well, let’s just blackball.’ They weren’t going to do that because I was going to make their asses some money. I was going to sell some merch. I was going to go out and perform at the highest level every night. They wasn’t going to have to worry about, you know if Booker T was going to show up, they wasn’t going to have to worry about if Booker T was going to be able to perform tonight. That wasn’t going to happen. I had to make it in the locker room before I had a chance to make it in the ring. It was a lot of elements that you know coming from WCW. A lot of guys thought it was going to be easy, and they really thought making that transition was going to be easy. They found out that nobody there was going to give them anything that they were going to have to earn it, and a lot of guys just wasn’t in a position or ready to put through that I really think that’s what it was more.”
Booker T added that he also thinks guys didn’t make the transition because they were used to living it up while in WCW.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
