Booker T Admits WWE Is Not Selling Wrestling
Booker T knows that wrestling is on the marquee, but in WWE it’s not always about the matches.
During his wrestling career, Booker T was a WCW guy through the 1990s before WWE bought WCW in March 2001. Once that happened, Booker became a WWE guy and went on to have an incredible run that made him a Hall of Famer as a singles wrestler and as part of the Harlem Heat tag team with his brother Stevie Ray.
While his days in the ring are over, Booker T currently works on the WWE NXT brand as an announcer. In addition to that, Booker has his own wrestling school and puts on wrestling shows. While doing all of that, Booker also has a podcast talking about the business using the knowledge he has obtained over the last 30+ years in pro wrestling.
There have been several names in the who have signed with AEW including Will Ospreay while bigger names like The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega and Adam Page all recently re-signed with AEW rather than test the free agent waters.
On his Hall of Fame podcast, Booker T explained why WWE shouldn’t make moves just because AEW is making moves.
“I really don’t think WWE is going to start making moves because of AEW signings. I just don’t think that’s going to happen. The reason why I don’t think that’s going to happen is that wasn’t the blueprint when WCW started hiring guys. They just let WCW hire everybody out there. They didn’t care.”
“They had their core guys and they were going to ride on those core guys and those guys were good enough to ride on.”
WWE Is Selling Entertainment, Not Just Wrestling
As he continued, Booker T spoke about how World Wrestling Entertainment might have the word “wrestling” in the name of the company, but the entertainment aspect is what really matters the most.
“I think WWE right now, the talent in WWE, I think we got good enough talent to actually ride on and compete against any wrestling company in the world. I mean, I could be wrong. I could be wrong, but I don’t think WWE is selling wrestling matches. I just don’t. I mean, the wrestling matches are the means to an end. That’s the payoff, but I don’t think WWE is truly selling wrestling.”
“WWE is selling entertainment every week and hopefully, somebody will wise up and realize that this is the entertainment business.”
“I mean of course wrestling is on the marquee, but the real wrestlers are in the UFC. The real wrestlers are, you know, those collegiate guys, NCAA, all that kind of stuff.”
Booker went on to talk about fellow WWE Hall of Famer being able to adapt as a superstar that could outwrestle people in the ring, but also knew it was about entertaining the audience.
“What we do is performing art and I really would implore these guys to understand to make it to that next level, you got to be entertaining, and I say that because when I came from WCW, I was a wrestler. I could do anything in the middle of that ring, but I wasn’t an entertainment guy. Once I started learning how to do it, that’s when I started getting over. That’s when I started really making money.”
“I say that, you know, from this perspective because everybody that has made it to that level has been able to entertain. I look at Kurt Angle and what I always think about is Kurt Angle with that little cowboy hat and that ukulele, you know, this is an Olympic Gold Medalist who won with a broken frickin neck.”
“So my thing is, if you don’t adapt to being an entertainer in this business, you’re not going to last very long.”