Booker T has looked back on his first reign as world champion in WCW and on his worries about how he would be perceived.
The veteran star, after years of striving to reach the top of WCW, got the opportunity to hold the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Bash at the Beach in 2000. The ever-confident Booker T, though, was apprehensive about how he would be received and accepted by fans as a Black wrestler.
“I was damn worried because I was wondering, was the fans going to accept a black man in that role. I was wondering after Ron Simmons — how many years after Ron Simmons had done it? It was quite some time, and then boom, I come along and I get put in that spot. And I remember Ron’s time as champion. He really didn’t get the push that I thought he should have gotten as far as being the guy in that position. He wasn’t built as a world champion all the time as far as in those main event spots. You know, guys like Ric Flair and those guys still would have those spots, and I go, ‘What’s going to happen to me if that actually happens?'” said Booker T on his “Hall of Fame” show.
The WWE Hall of Famer admitted he had self-belief but said talent alone wasn’t enough to thrive in WCW at the time, and that backstage politics and who a wrestler knew also played a role.
“I believed in myself 100% as far as how talented I was, and I wanted to go out there and prove how talented I was in the middle of that ring. But sometimes in the older days, that just didn’t matter how talented you were. If you weren’t a part of the good old boy system, the good old boy clique, your time was limited.”
After his first world title win in July 2000, he had two more title reigns later in the year, and regained it again the following year, becoming the last to hold the championship before WCW’s sale to WWE.
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