Watching Dark Side of the Ring revisit TNA’s Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff era stirred up some strong feelings for Booker T, particularly around one decision he still considers a mistake: getting rid of the six-sided ring.
Speaking on his Hall of Fame podcast after watching the three-part series, Booker said TNA had genuine magic before the two WCW figureheads arrived, and that he could feel it during his own run there.
“TNA had something special, and I realized that when I was there for my short time. They really, really had something special,” Booker said, noting that Hogan and Bischoff came in right as he was leaving, roughly a couple of months apart.
The moment that stuck with him was hearing Bischoff, on the documentary, back Hogan’s push to scrap TNA’s distinctive six-sided ring.
“I know Hogan wanted to get rid of the six-sided ring, and then Bischoff backed him on that decision,” Booker said. “What can you actually do in the six-sided ring? That was his question. If you’re not doing anything in the ring to enhance the match with the six sides, why do you have it? I go, that is the stupidest thing I ever heard in my life.”
To Booker, the ring was never about what moves it enabled. It was the company’s identity.
“You just get rid of the whole identity of the company. You just gutted it for no reason, to make it a traditional, which we didn’t want to see traditional from TNA,” Booker said. “When I saw that, man, it totally, it was like a gut punch, and I’m like, wow, man, this guy was really willing to follow Hogan all the way off a cliff. And that’s the sad part. That was really, really sad to hear Eric Bischoff say something like that. It really left a bad taste in my mouth.”
Booker was candid that he personally had no attachment to wrestling in the six-sided ring. His point was about who it served.
“It wasn’t even about bumping. I wasn’t going to do a whole lot in it anyway,” Booker said. “It was for the young guys, to be able to go out there and do whatever they wanted to do and create whatever they wanted to create. It wasn’t for the older talent like myself coming in there. So taking that six side away totally took the identity away from TNA.”
Booker framed the decision as the start of a run of missteps, though he was careful about where he placed the blame.
“Getting rid of the six sides was the beginning of a cavalcade of bad decisions,” Booker said, adding that he put more of it on Hogan than Bischoff.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3eSjzX5P1QBu8SsLkZQaNl?si=ad07a2cb22dd4ecd
