Booker T Reveals Insane Contract He Missed Out On In WCW
Booker T was one of the biggest stars to emerge towards the end of WCW but the company’s demise in 2001 cost the star a whole lot of money.
The WWE Hall of Famer was the man who captured the WCW World Championship once again on the final night of WCW’s history as he defeated Scott Steiner for the gold on the last-ever Nitro.
Booker T brought that championship with him to WWE and he would go on to become a major star in that company as well on his way to a Hall of Fame induction in 2013.
Speaking on his Hall Of Fame podcast, Booker T reflected on contract negotiations during his time in WCW and admitted that when the company was sold to WWE, he missed out on a massive seven-figure contract:
“I had an agent in WCW. In the beginning, he handled all of my contracts until I went singles. I handled my biggest contract, I negotiated my biggest contract. it was well above all the money that my agent had ever negotiated for me, sometimes twice as much, maybe three times.
“The way I did it was, I remember being asked how much was it going to take to keep me in WCW. I go, ‘How much am I worth?’ They came back with a number well above what I was thinking of. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ I was like, Wow, they think of me that much. I can tell it, it was $750,000.
“My next contract, it was $1.3 million. If the company wouldn’t have folded, my next contract was $1.3 million. It was a great time back then, Eric Bischoff was making us all rich. He said he was going to do that. He said, ‘Book, I’m going to make you rich.’ His goal was to make all wrestlers to be paid like NFL players. I give him a lot of credit for that.”
While Eric Bischoff enjoyed compensating his talent with Turner Broadcasting’s money, the former WCW boss recently labeled Tony Khan’s AEW a “well-funded hobby.”