Original subtitles

Growing up with close to nothing in South Park, Texas, kicking it around New

York City is kind of surreal.

The sound, the energy, there's nothing like it.

It's like another world, man.

It's also a place that I dreamed of as a kid.

Because of Shaft.

I watched that movie at least a hundred times and I literally wanted to be John

Shaft.

I didn't see black guys like this in movies back then.

He was a bad man and didn't back down from nobody.

Chef, he resonated with me and inspired the five words that define

the two -time WWE Hall of Fame.

Can you dig it, sucker?

Act one of being a pro wrestler is when you come through that curtain.

He went in and he took it to the moon.

Can you dig it, sucker?

She probably just soaks up the adulation and the energy. It just makes it bigger

and bigger and bigger.

Our two -time WWE Hall of Famer, Booker T.

Booker's persona is a street smart, hungry, athletic, over -the

-top, kick -your -ass professional wrestler.

Take a look at this book!

Even growing up, Junior was never afraid to fight. He would fight big kids,

dogs, cats. I mean, he just loved to fight, and he could fight very well.

You try to get somebody.

Like, did you see that?

One of the things I love about Booker T was his flair for the theatrical side.

And the drama of it.

This is show business.

The key in this business is charisma.

Booker T walks into a room, you notice him.

Fun, larger than life personality and big and loves to laugh.

Go to every length just to entertain you.

Tell me I don't look like that!

And let me tell you, Booker is the same way when he's at home.

I'm like, really? Are you really doing this right now?

Pioneer, trendsetter, two -time Hall of Famer, five -time champion.

He's always managed to stay on top.

It's very, very important to see people who look like you doing great things.

If he's doing it, so can I.

This is where it all started so many years ago.

You don't miss what you don't have.

We didn't have a lot, but what we had, it was enough.

There was a lot of shooting dice.

We were shooting marbles. We were trying to get the mischief, looking for some

girls.

Don't let nobody push you around, you know, amen? If you get into a fight, you

know, make sure you throw the first punch.

You know, and that's what not my brothers was teaching me, but my sisters

teaching me that.

That's what life was here in this neighborhood.

We moved here back when I was actually about seven years old. We moved around

Houston until we finally settled right here in this neighborhood. And I tell

you, Just standing here right now, the memories just flood back.

I was born in a little place called Plain Dealing, about 50 miles outside of

Shreveport, Louisiana.

I was the youngest of eight kids.

I never knew my father. He passed away when I was 10 months old.

My mother was a registered nurse, and she packed up, and she moved us here

because she just wanted more for her kids.

As long as I can remember, my mother worked from 11 at night to 7 a .m. in

morning.

It was very important for her to be there when we woke up and to be there

we came home from school every day and to make sure that we were.

fed, that we did our homework, and that we were in the bed before she left. So

that graveyard shift can be very, very tough, but my mom did it, and she did it

for us.

We had four girls, four boys, and some of the older ones were already out of

house when we moved to Houston, but she was still a single parent with a full

household. My older brother, Lash, others know him as Stevie Ray, his

name.

Booker T, myself, the three of us were all three years apart, so we were the

closest, and all three of us were the youngest.

Sports was always in the equation, and my brother would always play football

with me and my friends. For some reason or another, he wanted to play with us.

Whatever Lash wanted to do, Junior wanted to do.

Whenever we would get new mattresses, Junior and Lash would ask for the old

mattress. And they'd set it up in the backyard and make a makeshift ring.

And me and my niece, we were guinea pigs for the sleeper hold.

He did look up to his big brother.

My mom, not that she didn't love all of us, but she loved Junior because he was

the baby.

He could cry for three hours without stopping. Sometimes he'd cry so much

have to pay him to stop, and he'd get your money. And then when she'd come

he'd cry again so he could plead his case.

My mama would be, oh, my baby, my baby.

And he'd be hugging her and looking over there, wanking at us.

I was a mama's boy.

I always said one day that I was going to buy my mother a big house.

And she wasn't going to have to ever work again.

I just lay on my mother and just listened to her heartbeat.

The relationship was very, very special.

We had an attic fan. And for some reason, the attic fan had stopped

All my brothers are older. And she had been trying to get one of those guys to

go up there and take a look at it for the longest. And finally, one day, she

said, I'll go do it myself.

She went up to the attic to check it out. No, she stepped on the sheetrock,

she fell through the roof to the floor.

From that point on, she always had bad problems. She had to have surgery.

She had the surgery. She came through. Everything was fine.

Her leg began to stiffen, and she was in pain again.

And when she went back to the doctor...

They said that they needed to go in again.

It was basically, I'm going to go to the hospital, I'll be there a couple of

days, here's lunch money, and you kiss your mom goodbye.

Something happened, complications, and my heart stopped beating.

And, man, 49 years old, my mother was gone.

We had lost our leader, our rock, our provider, our strength. We had lost

Everything changed for me, of course, being a 13 -year -old kid with no

I don't blame any of my sisters and brothers for not stepping up and being a

father figure, a mother figure.

I don't think anybody was prepared or equipped for the loss.

My mother, no one was.

We were like little aunts without the queen.

Everybody was just like everywhere.

And it kind of splintered our family somewhat.

I knew it did me.

And the younger kids, Booker and Benita, that's all they knew was their mom.

From a legal standpoint, we were orphans because we didn't have a mother or

father and we were both minors.

For short.

period of time we did struggle because we were basically the two that were

left in the home after my mom died so here's this kid at age

13 living with his sister in a house that is abandoned you know the

electricity's being turned off now it's becoming a derelict house they don't

have any food they have nowhere to go they kept the lights on as long as they

possibly could

They kept the water on as long as they possibly could.

And then no lights, no water, no gas, no anything.

There was a lot of scary nights in the house, you know, with candles.

We toughed it out as long as we possibly could.

The house got foreclosed on, you know, the bank took it. My sister actually,

know, took us in, and we were in a better place as far as we had lights and

had gas.

We had water. We had food.

But we were still in an environment that two kids shouldn't have been in.

Right now, we're deep in the heart of South Park, Texas, where I pretty much

grew up and always say created all my dirt.

Lifestyle that I had was a little bit different than most kids because most

were thinking about getting home.

going outside and playing with their buddies. And it was like that for me to

point. And then after I lost my mother, things totally went in another direction

as far as now I had to police myself.

Now I had, you know, peer pressure. In the neighborhood, the kid on the corner

is asking you, hey, man, you want to smoke some of this?

You know, and you go, yeah, man, I'll smoke some of that.

And, you know, that's where it all starts.

One of the first things I saw, actually, we were at the car wash.

A friend of mine by the name of Ted, he was a kid that I went to school with. So

I'm getting to it with another guy at the car wash, and it was just going to

a regular fight.

And next thing you know, Ted pulls out a gun, boom, shoots the kid.

And then a friend pulls out a shotgun, boom, it kills Ted.

So as a kid, you know, seeing stuff like that.

You just wonder, man, what is life all about?

You know, what are we here for and how long are we here for?

Life in the neighborhood.

I could pretty much do whatever I wanted to do. I didn't have to think about

going to school if I didn't want to go to school.

I would just stay home or just go somewhere else.

Who was going to tell me it was wrong?

No one. Who knew I was at school or not? No one. Who cared? No one.

When you find yourself in that position, you start doing things a young kid

definitely shouldn't have been doing.

Going out and partying, drugs, hanging out at the 4 o 'clock in the morning,

on the waterfront, watching the ladies of the night.

Things change in the neighborhood, South Park, but nothing, nothing like when I

started coming in this area right here. It's called the waterfront area.

You know, the dock was not too far from here. Everybody would freak with this

area, you know, especially on Friday nights after they got paid.

Prostitutes, gambling, you see gambling on the corner. The drug scene, the

needles. That's what I remember more than anything is the needles.

Listening to some Willie Hutch.

Some of his music went hand in hand with the game.

I knew I didn't want to do drugs. I knew I didn't want to be a pimp. I knew I

didn't want to have that lifestyle.

I knew I didn't want to do that, but I was right in the middle of it.

Booker just kind of fell through the cracks.

Here's a kid that was literally on his own, and then he ends up getting a job

sweeping the floors in a heroin den, and it doubled as a brothel.

He's trying to survive. He's trying to live till tomorrow.

I had no ambitions.

I was in that whirlwind, and it was spinning, and war had stopped, and

where I was going to go.

When you have that mindset and you're stuck in that position, you do things

are, you look back and say, well, that was a terrible decision.

Just start making your own rules, whether those rules are right or wrong.

just start making them. And that's what I did. I remember hanging out with my

buddies, and they became my family.

And we started writing our own blueprints.

So when he sees an option to deal a little pot or rob a fast food

course he's going to do it.

The robbery, the incident, the way it started.

It was myself, a friend of mine, Zachary.

a friend that I grew up with, Wendell.

We worked at Wendy's. It was this one manager.

Just used to give us a hard time all the time.

We were talking about it one day, man, we should rob him.

We did it, and we got away with it, the store that we actually worked in. Then

we did it again, and we got away with it. Somebody said, hey, man, when are we

going out again?

Let's do it.

We got away with it again.

It was like we were ever going to get caught.

We saw it on the news and we were like, man, this thing is getting crazy. You

know, we're getting really big. We were like rock stars then.

It's like cat and mouse.

Catch me if you can.

It's hard to understand. How do you think you know more than the cops?

That's their job.

They'll come to the office. Only thing they do is sit around and investigate

try to figure out how to catch someone doing wrong.

I was coming home to my apartment, came around the corner, and I saw no one. It

was so quiet that night.

And I just remember, man, just something does not feel right at all.

And literally 10, 15, 20 people came out at the same time.

And they all had guns, and they were all pointing at me.

That ride from 45 and 610 to downtown Houston to the county jail, that was the

longest ride I ever had.

I was in Harris County for about eight months.

I sat in that jail waiting on whether I was going to go to trial or I was going

to take a plea.

And I was going to take a plea. I knew I was wrong.

I knew I was guilty.

I knew I would have been convicted very, very easily. I took the sentence, which

was five years.

I had to go to a place called Pac -2.

It was in Navasota, Texas.

I remember seeing the chain gang on television.

I didn't think that was a real thing. I thought it was just something that was

outdated or in the past.

But we really had to wake up early in the morning and we'd get on the back of

this big truck and we would go to literally just clear a field.

And we would do it pretty much by hand, pulling up stumps.

And it was for hours.

And I'm like, man, this is real. This is as real as it get right here.

It was an education for me as well.

I got a chance to get my GED.

I wanted to go to school. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to be able to teach

myself.

I got a chance to work on the laundry, you know, and do a detail from that

perspective. Learning about myself.

Atone for my mistake and, you know, try to move on in life.

I never went to visit him because I never wanted to see him locked up.

We kept in touch via letter.

In those letters, he talked about his regrets, his dreams, and his goals.

I've made the mistake.

I own up to it. I'm going to do my time, and I'm going to come out and do

better. I remember talking to him about stick to the goals and not just the

dreams, because dreams you have to wake up from.

He needed to stand on his own two feet and be a man.

So he was in the penitentiary for 19 months, and then he came up for parole.

Booker T.

I'm like, yeah, you go.

You're out of here.

I was like, oh, man, you kidding me, right? You know, he's like, yeah, man,

you're out of here. Get your stuff.

And when I left that prison wall, it was just one guard, and he was sitting on

his big horse.

Had his big cowboy hat on.

And he said, I'll see you when you get back.

And got my 200 bucks.

They put me on that Greyhound and sent me back to Houston.

Life was what I was going to make it from that point on.

One thing when you got out, you wanted to get your son Brandon back.

You didn't have the money in the bank.

You pulled one last heist.

I was a kid when Brandon was born, myself.

I was 17.

His mom and I, we never was anticipating on getting married or anything like

that. It was two kids, having a kid, you know, not knowing anything about life.

When I ended up going to prison, she was on drugs really, really bad.

That's when the CPS came into play.

and took him, and from that point on, he was in foster care.

I wouldn't say I abandoned him or anything like that, but I definitely

dad or a father in the beginning.

Was I going to leave my son in foster care, or was I going to go through the

system and get him out?

And it was a very simple answer.

My mother raised eight kids. How could I look at myself in the mirror and not

raise one?

When I came home, I got parole.

To my sister's house.

And, you know, she was still in the game selling weed. My sister's dealer, you

know, he was supplying, you know, five pounds here, five pounds there. And, you

know, one night I knew where the stash house was.

It was about five pounds. I crept in.

I got all of it.

I got out of there.

You stole from a drug dealer. Stole from the drug dealers.

But for the right reasons. You want to get your son back.

You got to have money in the bank.

I needed money.

And I needed it quick.

And I just needed a platform, a springboard to get out of that life.

But I still needed a little bit more help. And that's when my brother came

asked my brother, you know, for a little bit of help. I said, I asked him to

help me get a job. You got to get out of this environment if you want to be

something in life.

And that's pretty much the conversation that we had.

I've been put in a position to help him, and that's what I did.

But it's up to you to make it work.

First job he got me was a security guard.

Fresh out of prison, he gave me a job as a security guard.

And at the time, my brother actually let me stay with him.

I had to prove to the court system that I was worthy of being a dad, and it took

me about a year. Those certain days, I had to make sure I was there, keep a

steady job, and I showed him that.

They ended up granting me full custody when Brandon was five years old.

You know, we didn't have a lot, but we had each other. You know, we had our

You know, we had our apartment. And I had a job, working that security job.

know, it only lasted for a few months. Then they found out about my prison

record. They told my brother that they was going to have to let me go. But the

guy that I had worked for, his name's Bruce Kisarch, saw me as a human being.

saw my character.

I saw how hard he worked and tried.

We found another job for him. One of the properties we bought was a mini

storage, and he ended up helping me run that property, leasing new tenants,

cleaning up the property, making sure that people have paid their rent.

I was working for Bruce. My brother, he was like, hey, man, I know this guy

opened an arresting school. You want to try it out? I'm Ivan Putzky. If you've

got what it takes to be a professional wrestler, let me show you the ropes.

You do what you like, and I love wrestling.

Ivan Putzke's freshman school wrestling, I drew.

Hey, I watched him on TV.

People read that, they came in.

I'm like, hey man, you doing it, I'll try it out too, you know.

Since I was a kid, whatever my brother was doing, I wanted to be a part of it.

It was like a tag team, even before we were a tag team.

Wrestling school was $4 ,000.

I knew I didn't have the money for it, but I was blessed.

My boss, he sponsored me to go to the wrestling school.

He wanted to do something to improve himself.

You want to improve yourself? And I can help. I will.

I had the money available, so I'll help.

And if you're willing to take a little chance, sometimes it pays off.

When Booker T and his brother first arrived, they didn't know a thing about

wrestling.

I mean, they were just green.

I just showed them how to get the holes on you, the bumps, the slams, throw

punches. Taught them how to take their falls, how you protect yourself.

Then we blend in their personality.

Scott Casey was the main trainer there.

I didn't open the school, but Scott Casey opened our minds.

We went 7 o 'clock to 10 o 'clock, Monday through Friday, for like three

straight.

This is when I clap it on somebody's head and make it pop.

Goes the weasel.

And after that, they give you a certificate, kind of like these online

that you have today, you know what I'm saying?

90 days, I'm a professor of wrestling, you know what I'm saying?

So it's like, wow.

Booker was what you call a natural.

He caught on so fast.

I always wanted to be the best student, you know, in the school, so I would go

and push myself.

I would run the rope for five minutes and literally push myself further than

anyone in there could ever think about pushing me.

Man, I got a jewel here.

Notice how I concentrate mainly on the sweep.

We're pumping up these massive quads.

The GI bro can only do oh so well.

I was working at the warehouse, and I had to clean out one of the units.

It was an old army hat in there, and I was like, oh, man, I like this hat. And

went to practice, and I wore the hat.

Ivan Pusky goes, that's who you are. From now on, you're G .I. Bro.

And I go, G .I. Bro?

I like that. That's pretty cool.

Right after we finished the course, actually, by the grace of God, Ivan

had local television here.

Unless it's Johnny Valiant watching, just like all you other fans out here in

the WWE, of a local favorite here in Houston, Texas, G .I. Bro. This guy is

charismatic. G .I. Bro. G .I., brother. He's cranking it up.

Yeah. Count him out.

Did you get him? Yes, he did.

Control. G .I. Bro.

I got a chance to wrestle in the San Francisco Coliseum, you know, eight

after wrestling school.

I remember after I started wrestling, I had to take payroll to the bank.

And they go, hey, aren't you G .I. Bro?

And I was like, yeah, I'm G .I. Bro.

You know, because they had watched me on television.

Everybody's favorite G .I. Bro.

The kids, they would just mob me. And they

would just...

And I was like, man, what is going on here?

I got a new haircut.

What you like to see it, man? Yeah, I want to see it.

All right.

G .I. Bro. G .I. Bro is my name. And beat people up is my game. Look in my

That's when I'm going to declare World War III on you and take you clean on the

demon. I don't think I was ever asked one time what I want to be

when I grow up as a kid. I don't think I was ever asked that once.

Then I found myself through wrestling.

It was an escape.

It was something that I could do and I could do it very well.

Put my boots on and become like a superhero for a moment.

I realized I had something. I had a connection.

And I was like, wow, this is so cool.

And I had so much fun finding myself as far as possibly who I could be.

After the Western Wrestling Alliance closed down, Booker T and his brother

to work for TAP, Texas All -Pro Wrestling.

I got Stevie Ray in an issue of Wrestling Main Event magazine, and he

noticed. People up in Dallas at the GWF, Global Wrestling, Skander Agbarn called

him. They wanted him to come up to Dallas.

And him and his brother went up there.

Agbar and the Hot Stuff Eddie Gilbert took a liking to him right off the bat.

They went to give my brother a tryout.

And my brother was going to Dallas and, of course, jumped in the car and I rode

with him. We finally walk into Eddie Gilbert's office and Eddie Gilbert was

like, who's that?

And I was like, hell, that's my brother.

And he goes, is he a worker? And I go, yeah, he's a worker. He goes, have you

guys ever done any tag team?

And we go, yeah.

We were lying. We had never tagged together before, ever. But we had tagged

against each other before.

That's what we were saying. We have tagged together.

And that's why I wasn't lying.

Boom. That's how we got started in the Global Wrestling Federation.

Just by accident.

There was this wrestler back in the day. His name was Mr. Ebony. Black guy. He

wore a mask.

I never knew who Mr. Ebony was.

But he was one of the black guys that was representing us.

So we remembered Mr.

Ebony. Why not be the Ebony Experience?

Booker T and Stevie Ray. The Ebony Experience!

The Global Wrestling Federation was on ESPN at the time, and it was geared

towards... That afternoon, kids coming home from school, 3 .30 in the

There was a 30 -minute show, and there was an hour show. And it was based out

Dallas, Texas, in the world -famous Sportatorium, which I think is just

-famous because it's old.

Ugly. It stunk. No air conditioning. And there were rats the size of dogs.

It had atmosphere.

It had atmosphere. Let's just say that.

It almost took your life in your own hands in this corridor.

Back then, the police, if somebody tried to stick you with a knife or hit you

with a whiskey bottle or something, they would bring them back to the dressing

room and literally let you beat them up. It was the Wild West.

But there was a huge racist element there, too.

People would sit there and shout out some of the most vile things imaginable

those guys.

We got called the N -word, of course.

They didn't want to see us.

And those people called us every racial epithet known to man.

It wasn't the first time I had dealt with racism in my life.

When I first got in the wrestling business, a very, very famous man by the

of Ox Baker, he told me, he said, kid, you got a lot of talent, but you're

to come up against a lot of obstacles in this business.

He didn't say racism or anything like that.

But I knew exactly what he was talking about. You got to figure a way around

under it. You may have to go over it. And that night, we had to go right

it, no matter what.

In the situation that you're in, you got to be able to adapt.

You got to be able to figure it out. We had to face the fire, and we dealt with

it. Gotta say, where did these guys come up with this Ebony experience?

What are they, a magazine or something like that for ugly people?

But... I learned the power of entertainment that night. I did the

that match. He did some type of hop, skip, spin type thing I never saw

Did you see that? What was that? They used to have them breakdance moves. He

some spin. Same guy that was calling me the N -word. He was totally excited when

he saw the Spinaroonie. It totally changed him all in one breath.

It was like, whoa, what was that?

Fans start to change.

Now the fans are rooting for us.

It was like the Rocky movie, man, when Rocky was fighting Drago.

The Russian fans started rooting for the underdog.

Because when I did the Spinaruni, it seemed like everything changed in that

arena. I realized how much power the Spinaruni had, not just in Global

Federation with those fans, but throughout my whole career.

We all love to dance. My mom loved to see us dance.

And we all had good rhythm, too. Still have good rhythm. My cousin. Come over

here, man. This is my cousin right here, man.

The neighborhood boys were always trying to outdo each other with their dance

moves. That was the competition.

Michael Jackson had nothing on my brother. He used to break dance on the

That's where I learned to spin a rooney on his patio right around the corner,

you know. We would be on that patio. We had a cardboard box out there. We had a

beat box.

We'd be out there breaking ourselves, man.

But that's where the spin a rooney came from.

That's where they learned those moves. That's where they learned to spin. So

that spin a rooney came from a pop -lock dance move.

Ladies and gentlemen, they're dynamic, they're sensational, they're the

The lockers, they were it. That was the best dance group perhaps in the history

of the world.

Fred rerun Barry used to be on the show What's Happening. He was actually in one

of the lockers. And just watching these guys move the way they did and perform

the way they performed, I wanted to be in the group.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be one of the lockers. You know, when I saw them

on Soul Train, I was like, man, how do I get on Soul Train? Man, I got to be a

part of this.

The pop, lock, and craze start curving off a little bit, and then the

breakdancing curves start coming around.

I said, man, I'm going to try this now. So any wrestling fan around the world,

you say Spinner Rooney, they know who you're talking about.

You're going down.

We're going to take you out to the Ebony Zone. We're going to drop you off at

just some Ebony Funk, man.

It wasn't about how much money I was making.

It was just being able to do something that you love doing so much that you

would do it for free. And my brother and I, we was making 125 bucks, you know,

to make the drive all the way from Houston to Dallas.

And sometimes we would work four times in one night, sleep on my sister's sofa,

then get up and make the drive back to Houston.

Junior wore out the couch in my den.

Stevie Ray Lash wore out the couch in my living room. They would come every

Friday, and I know they did that for a couple of years.

It was just a great time to watch them get better and more popular.

The fans weakly warmed up, and they started liking something that they

even know they liked.

And then we started getting more black fans coming into the arena.

You just couldn't say anything anymore.

Within a few months, we were the hottest thing in global.

Everybody in the place had a sign with the Ebony Cabarrus on it.

We finally got to that point where we had to win the tag team championship,

all of my family was there.

That night that they won, we screamed and we cried.

It was so great, and all I could think about was that I wish my mom was there

see that.

My brother and I, we had accomplished something that we never dreamt of

accomplishing in our lives.

We had watched wrestling on television for so many years, and then we're the

ones who got the belts and holding them up.

These guys are superstars. You knew they were going somewhere.

There was not a doubt in anybody's mind. It was like Hansel and Gretel.

Somebody was dropping crumbs, and we were picking them up.

My brother and I, we had regular jobs, and we worked in the Global Wrestling

Federation one night a week.

And we did that for 18 months straight. We were getting ready to work one night,

and the phone rang, and my name, Mike Davis, came in and goes, hey, man, Sid

Vicious would like to talk to you guys.

Sid Vicious had been watching us on television, and WCW was interested in

were, like, really excited.

You know, like, wow, Sid Vicious, man, wow.

And WCW, wow, one of the biggest companies in the world, and we had a

spot. We just had to come up with a name.

Houston Heat might have been put in there, Miami Heat. We was like, what

Harlem Heat?

Harlem Heat, okay, you get a picture in your mind as to what Harlem Heat should

be. And boom, you start going for it.

artistically we needed some cool shirts and uh we didn't have uh no one to make

them for so i didn't know the country group or anything but it turned out to

brooks and dunn and they had shirts and they had this cool flame pattern on them

so i went got us some brooks and dunn shirts that i've had them tailored we

the hats out of the spoons actually uh because they had flames on them as well

the ensemble actually came together and looked pretty cool You know, we're going

to see a new tag team, the Harlem Heat.

And what an appropriate name, seeing that Harlem has been about 100 degrees

last two weeks.

As a kid, you just like all the bright colors and the energy.

I just feel like they represented us. You know, it felt like they was from

around my way. Like, you know what I'm saying? How they talk, how they dress,

how they carry themselves.

And even their music was tight. Like, they had the best music on WCW, like,

probably ever.

Harlem Heat had cool ring music.

They were two guys who were coming in who were bad to the bone, man.

And they were going to talk it. They were going to walk it. And they were

to kick your ass.

They had an aura about them. They were big. They were intimidating.

They were scary like big wrestlers should be.

With the name Harlem Heat.

I mean, come on. You can't come up with a better name than that anywhere.

All the years my brother and I slept in the same bed, we were a cohesive unit.

Both of us brought the pain in our own way. My brother was grounded. Sometimes

would go air.

But together, we gelled.

Harlem Heat did not really

have a gimmick. They were just big black badasses that really were themselves

turned up.

When they talked, I felt like if I ran into them in the street, that would be

exactly how they are.

The moves you punks making, the routes you're taking, it's going to lead to

heartbreak. This country hit town of Tupelo, Mississippi, going to get a lot

heat raised up. Any gimmick that really works is an exaggeration of who

you are.

It was so easy to actually go out and know what it's like to be in a fight,

because when you've been fighting your whole life, you know what it feels like.

You know what it's like to get hit in the mouth as well.

For my brother and I to go out and produce drama from a realistic

was just our fuel house. We were at home.

We created these two guys.

Now we got to be these two guys.

A lot of times I just want to come out and just bust out laughing.

But I got to hold it in.

And I got to try to keep this mean look on my face, man. I have to put myself

into this character.

I got to go into him all the way. What the run, them hillbillies?

Straight out of the hill, sucker!

We had so much fun going down the road in certain towns. Somebody is going to

get a Harlem hangover. People just hating us to the point to where, man,

want to kill these black guys.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

250 ,000 bikers are here for WCW All Wild.

There's no black folks there. None.

We're the only two black folks. None. It's Thursday, South Dakota at that

We almost started a riot.

Even the Steiner brothers was like, hey, man, don't do what

y 'all usually do every night, because y 'all got the Hells Angels out there. We

don't even know who the Hells Angels are, you know?

We're getting ready to go do what we do.

You just don't have to watch this, because we're getting ready to get in

everybody's you -know -what, Hells Angels or not.

We get out the ring and start talking trash to everybody.

You know, I got a problem with rednecks.

And as far as I'm concerned, everybody in here is a redneck. You know what I'm

saying?

Come on up in this ring and watch what happened to you.

Not everybody's infuriated.

By the time we got through... Oh, yeah, we got a roar going now.

25 ,000 motorcycles, it sounds like. As far as you can see, motorcycles and

people, and all of them revving their engines at the same time.

They're cranking up a sound.

Oh, yeah.

Because we just told them what we thought of them.

Harlem Heat was able to pull it off so well

that the people in Harlem felt represented by a couple of Texas boys.

The Harlem Heat, they are bad men off the streets of uptown Manhattan in the

heart of Harlem. And gentlemen.

Yes, Cole. Shut up, Mean Gene, before I slap a patch of hair out of the top of

your head. Being able to talk about certain landmarks in Harlem that we

fictitiously, you know, thought up in our own minds.

It was really, really cool. You know, one of the places that we used to visit

all the time was Artie's Pool Hall.

Three blocks south of Artie's Pool Hall, right on the corner of 110th Street.

Gene, the graffiti is written all over the neighborhood.

You're looking at a couple of straight OGs from the hood.

I've had several people come up to me to talk about when we were kids back then.

Did I remember them from, you know, back in the day? Of course you go, yeah,

yeah, yeah, I remember you. Yeah, yeah, you know, you go right along with it.

Only click you need to know about is the heart. Booker T is the most viral

wrestling moment of all time, I guess, right? Because he flips up, says the N

-word. We coming for you.

That was the problem with ad -libbing back then. That's probably why they

everybody's stuff today.

And that's a word that we use a whole lot.

back in the day when I was coming up, and that's the first time and the last

time any of my peers ever heard me say that.

It is an interesting lesson to not get lost in your character or not being too

real when you're talking about somebody.

But that's the risk you run when you are as authentic a character as Booker T

is, right?

That's right. We've been to her feet, punk. Harlem style, if you know what I'm

saying. When I think about the early 90s and I think about the black characters

like your Coco Bewares and your Papa Shongos and people who fit a lot of

stereotypes but also did not get put.

So watching two black guys who go on to win championships and did not

back down from who they were was great to watch. But also what's important is

that these are two brothers, right?

So seeing a familial relationship between black guys on TV who genuinely

loved each other, who celebrated together, who had each other's back was

empowering.

That was so important for my brother and I to go out there and represent because

we knew young guys like we were was watching us now.

Harlem Heat will go down in history as being one of the greatest tag teams that

ever put on a pair of boots.

That was just me and my brother being a natural born entertainer.

And that's what we pride ourselves on.

Those are memories that me and my brother will live with for the rest of

lives. It was a journey.

It was the coolest nine years of my life.

All -time greats.

We're immortalized forever in the WWE Hall of Fame.

I never thought about having a singles career.

Never thought about it until it happened.

how Booker T can operate as a single wrestler.

I never thought about having a singles career.

Never thought about it until it happened.

I told my brother, man, go ahead and go. Go ahead and do your thing.

And I gave him my blessing.

As Booker T goes solo, WCW starts getting to this point where they're

the biggest wrestling promotion in the world.

WCW was using money from the Turner organization. They were part of a bigger

corporation.

Scott Hall and Kevin Nash end up leaving the WWE for a lot of money in WCW. And

they start this reality -based storyline of a takeover and formed a group with

Hulk Hogan, who for the first time in his career became a bad guy, unheard of

the time, and started the New World Order.

The following announcement.

has been paid for by the New World Order.

When I came out as Hollywood Hulk Hogan, NWO, we took off like a rocket. So the

Monday Night War started getting really, really intense.

We had Monday Night Raw on the USA Network.

They had Monday Nitro on TNT, on Ted Turner's network. You're looking at

single rating point, every eyeball we were competing for.

They beat us for 83 weeks in the ratings.

WCW became the top game in town.

Honestly,

I really didn't care about the war.

It had nothing to do with me.

I was making a lot of money. I was in a place in my life that I'd never imagined

being in a million years.

As they're concentrating on the other big stars, Booker T right under their

noses.

It's just getting better and better and better and better.

My peers, they always told me, there's only one Tiger Woods of wrestling.

And I go, I appreciate that, bro.

That's when he became no longer a tag guy.

That's when it was just like, oh, okay, he's a star.

You can tell when somebody has the it factor.

Booker T just looked mean at that material. He carried himself like the

the limit. He had it all.

I used to raise the roof back then. When I used to raise the roof, everybody

used to raise the roof with me.

And it let me know that, hey, I was moving up.

And it was the beginning of my run as a singles wrestler and a whole different

life.

I was born and raised in Gary, Indiana.

Had a great childhood.

I caught the entertainment bug very, very early. I started doing beauty

when I was 12 years old. So that was always something that I enjoyed. And

was always into dancing. That was my first love. So all that ended up paying

off. You know, I went on to become Miss Black America. I ended up touring with

James Brown, Godfather of Soul. So I spent three and a half years on the road

touring with him and then ended up in sports entertainment.

Here are the Nitro Girls!

We met back at WCW when she was a Nitro girl.

We started talking a little bit on the movie set of Ready to Rumble.

Then we just gradually became friends.

He was always very polite, very well -dressed, and he looked like a

instead of a professional wrestler.

That was my first impression of him.

But I will never forget when I heard him listening to Tupac, and that surprised

me because to me I thought he would listen to Frank Sinatra.

Not Tupac, so I got to know a few things about him.

He's a great guy all around. I got to see he's really, really funny.

He's really, really silly.

So we just kind of gelled. We just kind of met.

And it was very exciting to see Booker be able to carve out a path for himself

because he was such an amazing talent.

WCW, welcome you to the summertime tradition, the world championship.

All the backstage drama that went on that night put more light over me

winning the championship.

Me winning it just would have been me winning. The title match is between Jeff

Jarrett and Hulk Hogan. The story is that Hulk Hogan wants to win, doesn't

to lose to Jeff Jarrett. Jeff Jarrett's the champion. The writer, Vince Russo,

he doesn't want...

Hogan to be the champion, he wants Jeff Jarrett to hold on to it. They can't

come to an agreement because Hulk Hogan, in real life, has a creative control

clause in his contract.

There's a million stories, and everybody has their opinion.

All I know is when I signed on with WCW, I had what's called creative control.

I'm going to exercise my creative control. I'm going to go ahead and beat

Jarrett one, two, three. It went right up Russo's ass.

What's going on?

What's Jeff doing? The Russo, I think, told Jarrett to lie down. What's going

on? And Jarrett's down.

And Hogan is as shot as we are. What in the world? Jeff Jarrett. My God, this is

real life. One, two, three.

I took the belt and I left.

What the hell? I think we're deviating from the script. I hesitate to say that,

but what the hell is going on?

Is this storyline?

Is this real life? Is this some weird mixture?

Vince Russo says they have two world championships now. There will be a new

belt. Jeff Jarrett and Booker T fight for it later on in the evening.

Opportunity has knocked and I will be damned if I don't answer that door. I am

going to do what I have to do tonight to take that gold home, take it around my

waist and take it into the next millennium. Can you dig that, G? I can.

back to you.

Not just did the fans not expect.

this to be going on me and booker didn't expect it to be going home i watched

everything play out just like america i had about 10 minutes to prepare for the

biggest moment of my life in professional wrestling but i was

got there by working my ass off and i started at the bottom of that company

I went out and I performed every single night. It's been a long journey, a lot

of titles, but never the big one. This is Booker T's chance.

When I finally got in that position, I always wondered if the fans wanted to

a black champion.

WCW hadn't had a black champion since Ron Simmons.

It was a lot of questions in my mind.

You know, if the fans really, really wanted to see me in that position, I'm

so happy that people look past my color and said, this is the guy.

Booker T and Jeff Jarrett crawling through the crowd.

He's the world champion!

Crowd erupted. They went crazy.

I was like, wow, man, they really care about me. They really want to see me

It was the moment that changed my life.

One of my most fond memories in my career, I'm the guy that Booker beat to

become the world champion for his very first title reign.

I'm pretty proud of that.

He became champion, and it was a great crowning achievement for him, evolving

and elevating himself.

And Booker T, especially for black boys and girls who watch wrestling, he is a

hero.

Booker has so much respect from all the guys and girls in the locker room that

when he came back through the curtain after winning, people were standing

and applauding.

I remember a few of us had tears in our eyes. It just really was a special

moment to finally see him rise to the top because he really deserved it.

WWE was synonymous with the best in sports entertainment.

How you doing, pal? I'm fine. And now we were being challenged, so it creates an

atmosphere of having to fight from underneath, creating new and unique

storylines, new and unique talents, and changing the way we looked

at the business.

It made WWE regroup.

Taking the gloves off and changing what the company was and going with the

attitude era.

Somebody's going to get their ass whipped. When that energy comes out,

intensity comes out, and I look like an ass -kicking machine, it was all about

the attitude.

We had a badass locker room full of men who had starved, kicked, scratched,

clawed to get to the top and who weren't afraid to go out on a limb and push the

envelope.

When we started kicking WCW's ass, we just took off. And their infrastructure

was kind of unorganized and kind of started falling apart.

And then we just crushed them. And then, later on down the road, Vince would buy

the company from Ted Turner for pennies on the dollar.

I, Vince McMahon, bought my competition.

That's right.

I own WCW.

They raised the flag, and they say we won.

The war is over. For all of us in world championship wrestling, a historic day

in sports entertainment. This is the last Nitro on the Turner Network, and

going out with the bang. All the titles on the line.

I didn't know it was going to happen.

I didn't see it coming. Until that night, I found out that I was going to

going out dual champ.

We closed the company down as world champion and as United States champion.

I didn't feel sad like everybody else did. I lost my mother when I was 13, so

always knew nothing lasts forever.

I remember one of the guys actually talking to me and he literally had tears

his eyes. He was like, man, Booker, it's the end of WCW, man.

It's over.

He goes, man, what are you going to do, man? What are you going to do?

I said, man, I'm going to WWE.

I mean, what else could I do?

I don't think we knew that we were going to keep Booker.

I had no idea.

When you're looking at...

The talent base, and you're looking at talent that's available, all of these

-tier talents chose to stay on their AOL Time Warner contract, stay at

home, collect their money, not go to work. I stayed at home for 17 months and

got paid bank.

Bank. But then you have a guy, Booker T.

Who did have a pretty good guaranteed contract.

Who said, man, I want to work.

I want to be a star on the biggest platform I can.

I was a performer. I was talent.

Something I tell young people all the time.

Believe in your talent.

Do not forsake your talent.

Going into the WWE locker room, those guys didn't do much care for us.

They weren't going to treat us special or anything.

They didn't want us there.

And I understood that.

I was ready to go out there and show those guys I was just as good as I said

was.

Booker had enough confidence in himself to step up and say, put me in.

Man, it was a good night for me.

Debut, dropped Steve Austin.

I'm off and running.

Everything's beautiful.

My first thought was, hey, man, Booker T just came in here. He just took away

what I do for a living.

Broke three transverse processes in my back, and I was in intense pain.

And I was like, what in the F just happened?

There is that layer of, hey, man, we need to watch this guy, or is he safe to

work with, or is he going to do that to me?

Steve Austin had to kind of stroke at that time in the company where he could

have went to the office and said, man, this guy is reckless and doesn't know

what he's doing, even though it wasn't my fault. When I look back at it, he did

everything right. He executed with perfection.

But I was so sweaty when I hit the top of that desk, I just skipped off and my

back hit a chair.

It was an accident.

Accidents happen.

But, hey, man, any time the lead guy goes down and someone has done something

him, yeah, you might have some heat on you from the voice.

You walk in the door coming from somewhere else and you take out one of

guys that's putting food on all our tables, that's not going to sit well

lot of people because most of these guys never met him.

Who in the blue hell are you? Coming into that company, it wasn't going to be

easy for me by any means.

Hell, my name is Booker. It doesn't matter what your name is!

You can bring someone in up at the top.

It's difficult for them to stay there, especially when you have the kind of

personality and the kind of talent of a Steve Austin rock undertaker.

Book hung.

Book hung and said, y 'all come on up to me. But the bottom line is, if you come

to WWE, you better be able to work.

And Booker T could work his ass off. He wasn't accepted just because we liked

him. He was accepted because he was damn good.

It was kind of a Jack Nicholson, wait till they get a load of me.

Yeah, Big Henry, you better lay some up tonight.

Because we're going to be moving and flying and singing, baby.

The greats can't stick to a script.

It's emotional.

To make it real, it's got to look raw.

It's got to look uncut.

If we're close enough to the fans, I want sweat to fly all over them.

That part is as real as it possibly can get.

Book has a unique ability to relate to the audience and conversely. And that's

really what you look for. He's a man who gave it all. He had an opportunity. He

was going with it.

I want the fan that was watching to have that same feeling that I did.

It was an out -of -body experience.

I could tell what the fans were feeling because I was one of them.

You would have never thought that somebody with the talent that he had in

ring

He would have just as much talent behind the scenes.

You can't just define him as a wrestler.

He was an entertainer. Now can you dig that?

Booker watches a lot of movies. He's always studied movies his whole life,

whether it be kung fu movies or, you know, any type of action movie. So I

do believe that if he weren't a wrestler, he would definitely be an

A lot of those movies were my escapes as well.

And I used to skip school and go to the majestic OST. And all of those movies

made me feel a certain way. I literally would.

Go to that place. A little bit more structure here. I literally would be in

movie. I knew every line.

I knew every scene.

I knew what made that scene work because of what happened before it and what's

going to happen after. And that's what wrestling has always been. So for me, my

WCW career was so serious all the time. It was never a laughing moment.

And then when I got to WWE, everything changed.

Booyah! Hey, what's up, suckas? You ass! He was about to get whacked by the

firetop Master Jedi Champion.

Now can you dig that?

Sucker!

He was always a comedian.

He always liked to make people laugh.

Tell me I don't look like that!

That just came.

And we would all do little skits at home and make up things. So, you know, just

what kids do who don't have a lot of money. You have a great imagination.

Imagine what we could be and what we could do.

You didn't say that.

Tell me you didn't just say that.

You just gave me the key to your heart, baby.

Yeah.

It's like the actor in a film that you've only seen play a very serious,

role. Oh, my goodness.

And then you see him in a buddy comedy, and you're like, oh, my God, I had no

idea this guy was so funny. And, like, it just opens up a whole new world for

you. Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Look, that

ain't me, bro. You know, I got to feel what I'm doing, man. I got to feel, man,

can you dig it?

Sucker!

Just because you know kung fu doesn't mean you know shampoo.

But that's... All about to change thanks to new Yakimoshi

Shampoo.

It won't make your hair look as good as mine, but you got to start somewhere.

Give me the script and let me make it what I want it to be, no matter what it

is. I don't care what it is.

Now, let's see if it's fresh.

Creative tells us, hey man, you and Booker are going to have this brawl in a

grocery store.

Okay, here's a blank canvas that Booker T and I are going to have an opportunity

to paint together.

Action.

We created magic.

I'm walking through the store, up an aisle, down an aisle. You're working off

instincts. I like shopping, Booker.

As if you were in the ring. You know you're trying to entertain people.

Booker with a shot to the jaw of Austin.

I'm action.

His reaction and his reactions were just off the chart gold.

You want to burn?

This is what wrestling is right here. The stuff that we do in the ring does

thing, but this is wrestling. By the time it was all said and done, it was

$10 ,000 worth of damage to that store. Price check on a jackass.

People still remember that line.

Price check on a jackass.

Booker T and I painted a Mona Lisa with a bunch of damn stuff that you'd find in

a grocery store.

Who at 6 '3 and 260 pounds can do like the Spinaroonie? You know,

the breakdancers move up on his shoulders, flip up and...

It starts with the hand, of course, and then you drop the one knee. All the

centrifugal force comes from the dreads. You know, once you shake the dreads, it

goes through the body all the way down to the legs, which gives you torque.

The Spinaroonian concept is not like that silly. Like, it's a cool way to get

and get to your feet, and it's just a charismatic moment.

But over time, the Spinaroonie kind of took on a life of its own.

Everybody had a Rooney. Most infamous night was trying to get the Undertaker

do the Takeroon.

I think it's time for the Undertaker Rooney!

If you know The Undertaker, he don't come out of character, ever.

I try to get him to do it. I tell the fans, get the fans hyped up.

Get up!

And Taker looks at me and he goes, I'm going to kill you.

All the named players on the card come out, and literally, we're 30 minutes

after we're off the air trying to get the Undertaker to do the Spinneroonie.

Everybody does the Spinneroonie. You want to see The Rock do the Rock -a

-roonie?

There ain't no way in hell you can do something like that.

This man, he does the worst Spinneroonie I ever seen in my life.

Out of all the wrestlers, I've got everyone to do it, except The

He's the only one still to this day.

Ain't a chance in hell I'm going to get out here and do the Spinneroonies.

So you might better send the Calvary.

My first son is 35 years old now.

We had somewhat of a rough life growing up.

And I thought it was due to me being on the road a lot, being on the road

wrestling, not being there.

When I got into the wrestling business, I went to stay with my sister.

When he'd get a weekend off, he would fly from Atlanta, and he'd come back to

Houston, and they'd spend time together.

Still trying to get a relationship with his son.

It was just a process.

I'm sure they had their ups and downs.

My son turned 16, 17 years old, and that's when it really got tough between

and I.

It was always just rocky.

My son ended up going down that same road that I did, you know, getting in

trouble, you know, even as an adult.

That's why he's not here right now. He's sitting in a jail cell, you know,

waiting to see exactly what's going to happen with his life, you know.

You know, he's still my son.

I'm still there for him.

It was totally different when I had my son because I was a kid myself, you

I was only 17 years old.

Not having that male presence in my life was a huge factor.

But I tried my best.

I tried to make sure I did the same thing that my mom did for me, and that

work my butt off. I tried to give my son an image that I wanted him to actually

be like, but I didn't have the tools.

to actually be able to teach him everything that he needed to know,

from an educational side.

He was so young, a young single parent without a wife, working hard, building

his career, a lot of time on the road.

But then when that second phase of his life came around, there was different

dynamics that played into the role of fatherhood.

He was stable.

He was more established.

In his career, he married a wonderful woman.

Booker and I were married February 5, 2005.

It was a beautiful ceremony in my hometown of Gary, Indiana.

I only had, I think, three months to plan the wedding because of our

Most women want to have a year to plan and find the perfect dress and all that.

I didn't have time for any of that. It was definitely a whirlwind and then

back to work the following week.

I was going to quit the company right after we got married.

I didn't want to be away from Charmelle. I didn't want to be on the road all the

time. He was considering cutting back on his work, and all of a sudden they

decided to bring me in, to bring me back.

So, babe, I don't know how you felt the first time you saw action figures,

because I know you've had action figures before, but this was my very first one.

Yeah. This is amazing. How many husbands and wives do you think have this?

He's always called me his queen.

So we kind of just transitioned that into wrestling. The true life stories

for the best work, right?

So it kind of just easily flowed into King Booker and Queen Sharmell.

Must be good. Must be nice to be the king.

It was just entertaining. It was something that people had never seen

and then they had never seen Booker T in that light before. He was always

rugged, raw, you know, tough. And now he's coming out and just like prancing

around, elegant and classy and pompous.

Contradictory on every level. I thought it was brilliant.

It was such an awesome, awesome time in my career. So much fun.

Man, this fool's crazy.

He really is crazy.

He would just open up the cape and he'd have his scepter and he'd just twirl

around and look so very majestic.

All of the little things that he did really made that character amazing.

This guy's walking around like he's royalty, holding his pinky up in the

I think he was just making it up as he goes.

As I ponder.

He started speaking in a bad British accent. It's become a much, much better

place since I, King Booker, has become ruler of it. It was almost like Kevin

Costner in Robin Hood. Like he would float in and out of the accent.

If you got him too angry, then his British accent went right back to the

It's going to be in a steel cage.

Oh, hell no.

Hell no. Oh, hell no. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

People would actually treat me like a king as well.

I don't think I paid for a meal the whole year I was King Booker anywhere.

This is Booker Teeth reaching that nirvana of character development. The

culmination of all of Booker Teeth's years in wrestling, all of that sort of

to him finding...

this perfect character that was undeniable. I mean, to the point where

to give him the championship. And he became champion as King Booker, and it

as memorable as anything he's ever done in wrestling. The poor kid from Houston,

Texas has risen to the top of the world.

Booker!

Give me some, baby.

Watch out now. Man.

We know that we're the one person we can count on when all else fails, and we

really hold that dear.

For us, it's been a team effort since day one.

Us pulling together and now having twins, a boy and a girl eight years old.

never imagined in a million years that her and I would have kids running

It's pretty, pretty special.

Good day at school today?

Yeah. I've been practicing all day long.

Yeah, baby.

Sharmell and I, we tried to have kids for three years.

Things just didn't work out, and then, you know, instead of with one, you know,

God blessed us with two.

I've watched them grow over the last eight years and not be on the road

wrestling on a weekly basis in a different town.

That part right there, I think, has been more special than anything.

Okay, don't eat it all at one time.

So how much did Tessa say?

Seven. Seven dollars, and how much did... Seven dollars and seven dollars,

$15. In some aspects, our kids are polar opposites.

But they're both extremely talented and so very, very smart.

Booker is an amazing dad. He's so playful with the kids.

Come on!

Finish him!

Yes! Oh, no.

My son Kendrick is now really, really into wrestling.

I got him now, baby. A lot of times I catch just spontaneous moments between

two of them. Hey, come on.

I'm very fortunate for the way our kids are growing up and we're just afforded

this family that Booker unfortunately didn't have when he was growing up.

Of course, Booker cooks really well.

He can cook better than me. That's the only time I'll admit that.

So I'll tell you what I can do. I can turn the oven on for the French fries.

I get anxiety maybe three days before I have to leave on a one -day trip.

I literally, I'll be sitting here and I go, man, I can't wait to get back.

And I haven't even left yet.

Every time. Because I do love being a dad. I do love being at home.

That's what's cool about, you know, this stage of life. And I can honestly say,

you know, it's the best stage.

I do want the memories.

that my son and my daughter have of their dad is something that's going to

catapult them throughout life.

They're going to know exactly what it means to be a dad.

They're going to know exactly what it means to be a mom.

And that right there, at the end of the day, you know, we've done our job.

Let's bring in now our two -time WWE Hall of Famer, our good friend, of

Booker T to the panel. Let's see those rings, baby.

Right there, right there.

Look at all that gold.

Congratulations, sir, last night, part of Harlem. If you know Booker, I've

seen the guy in a bad mood.

That felt good right there.

Sports entertainment is in his blood.

Coming to the final chapter of WrestleMania.

To see the guy that I first met in the 90s and to know Booker now, his legacy

just continues to grow because he's one of the guys that wants to give back,

that is giving back.

And I understand exactly what you're talking about. It will eat you all week

thinking about that. I swear.

I appreciate the words of wisdom.

Holla. Stay up.

I love the

business.

The business have given me.

It starts right here. I had a dream back in 2005.

I said, one day I'm going to open up my own wrestling school.

I'm going to teach kids the proper way.

Good job, Kelly. Good job. We come here Monday through Friday.

The gym's open from normally around 6 p .m. It goes to the last man leaves.

Bang! All right, it's got to be that big.

That's the thinking part, guys.

We're trying to think.

Storytelling. This is my livelihood.

This is what I do.

This is my trade.

My knowledge. It's never going to go away.

It did.

Bang! I love doing that spot right there.

Almost more than any spot that I ever did in professional wrestling. I swear

God. Pop the crowd to where they go. Wow.

That was awesome. Add a little bit more on it. It means something.

Think about the guy in the cheap seats.

I want my youngsters to be able to create their own stories. Hey, bro. I

be with you, brother. Hey, man.

That's what it all started out as, and then it manifested into us having our

wrestling promotion.

It's really exciting to have a huge crowd tonight, and all of our hard work

know is going to pay off. We're going to have a great show. Did you hear that

crowd behind us?

They're getting ready to have some fun.

They're our fans coming to see our own homegrown talent. They are the stars of

the show.

We got something here and we can take this thing to the next level.

And we're on our way.

He had all the odds against him. If you were to pick out the kid that was going

to end up dead by the time he was 30, you would probably pick Booker T.

He grew up, he experienced life, good, bad, ugly.

Book did what it took.

He never went and said, well, here's a shortcut over here I can take.

And the rewards matched the hard work that he put in.

He is a real -life success story.

You ain't never coming back. You going down with a one, two, three, because I

got all my people standing behind me 110%. Help!

People thought that he couldn't do something because of either his race or

he was from or how he looked or the fact that he didn't have a formal education.

That's what drove him.

Booker is just a survivor.

And when you see Booker T, you take people at face value and you believe in

redemption story.

Those kids who told me I wasn't going to be anything, and I look back on them

now, and I say, how do you like me now? Guys, all of you are going to get a

chance for me to do that. Don't let anyone stop you.

Statistically, he wasn't supposed to be on that stage at Madison Square Garden

and being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

That made it all the more special because he made it. He made it.

I always ask God, you know, why me?

I always ask God, you know, why me?

Thirty years later, it's really, really hard to explain.

The safest place that I could ever be was in the middle of the ring, painting

Picasso.

I always want to perform at the highest level, and I want to be remembered,

making people feel a certain way when they watch me.

And if you guys, the fans, are enjoying it and having a good time, we're doing

something right.

That's what it's always been about with me.

I just

want to say, it's on like a big pot of neck

bone, baby.

I'm going to put you in the pot like I do the neck bone. I'm going to stand up,

and it's going to be on, daddy. We're going to turn the thing up to 1 ,000

degrees, and we're going to burn everybody.

Five times, five times, five times, five times, five times, WCW champion.

Now, can you dig that?

The God.