Last week, WWE announced the WWE ID program to help independent talent with certain expenses and to help get them on a path to WWE. Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling is one of the companies that are part of the WWE ID program.
Booker discussed this on the latest Hall of Fame podcast:
“I wish I had it (when he started wrestling), a company willing to help me out financially, as well as help me make that journey a little bit more accessible. I’ll know if I’m good enough right off the bat because they’re going to let me know if I’m good enough right off the bat. I wouldn’t be chosen for a program like this if they didn’t see something in me as well.
There again, back in the day when I first got into the wrestling business, I was working a job six days a week, and I had that weekend to go and work in the Global Wrestling Federation. So I can only imagine if I had something like this to help me along my journey, it would have been a whole lot easier for me to be able to go and work a show here, take a day off and go work a show here, take that weekend, go work here, and still be able to get that training and that knowledge without doing a lot of what these independent guys are doing right now, you know, they got a booking on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in three different places. They’re just going all over the place. Nobody is seeing them. There’s no cameras rolling. There’s not a guy in the back, a veteran OG, that could tell him, ‘Hey, man. You might need to work on this’,’ because a lot of those promoters just don’t know because they have never been there, no disrespect or anything like that.
I think having a program like this, being able to be mentored, guided on a full-time basis, I would think it would be only beneficial to somebody that’s seriously thinking about working at that next level. Now, if they just want to do independent wrestling, if they just want to do backyard wrestling, if they just want to play wrestler, there’s a lot of places to do that, but a program like this, this ID program is going to be for the elite guys and girls out there that want to partake on this journey.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit The Hall of Fame with Booker T & Brad Gilmore with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
