Source: canoe.ca
Sunday, June 18, 2000
Ask most wrestlers why they get into the business and you'd
get a variety of answers. Some do it because of family heritage. Some do it because
athletic competition is their forte. Others because it's a route to fame and fortune. For
WCW superstar Booker T, it was matter of survival. A single father working at a storage
company in Houston, Texas, Booker Huffman was looking to make a better life for himself
and his young son.
"I wouldn't say it was hard raising my son. It was just about making a change and
knowing what I HAD to do not what I WANTED to do. I am the youngest of eight kids and my
mother was a single parent too. So, the only way I could look at it was, if my mother had
EIGHT, man, what kind of father would I be if I can't take time out to look over the ONE
that I have?," Booker told SLAM! Wrestling.
Working at American Mini-Storage paid the bills and Booker was happy with the job he was
doing, sitting behind a computer each day and renting U-Haul trucks and storage room to
customers. But, Booker wasn't thinking of the present. It was his family's future that
worried him. Stevie Ray, Booker's brother, presented him with an answer to his problems.
Ray knew that former WWF wrestler -- Ivan "Polish Power" Putski was opening a
wrestling school as a part of his Western Wrestling Alliance federation. Ray suggested
that he and Booker check it out.
"I'd never played sports or anything like that. I'd played as far as going over to
the park playing football with the fellas and stuff like that. But, I was always an
athletic person," said Booker who focused on the arts in high school, choosing to be
a drum major rather than a linebacker. Booker found great enjoyment and personal
satisfaction in entertaining people and expressing himself in the arts. Termed by many as
"athletic theatre", pro-wrestling appealed to the performer in Booker. He wanted
very much to at least give it a shot. The problem was that as a single parent, money was
pretty tight. There wasn't enough money to spend on costly wrestling lessons.
"It was $3,000 to go to the school. At the time, I was
just working a regular job and raising my son as a single-parent. I was just trying to
make everything work. It just so happened that the guy who I worked for at the American
Mini-Storage wanted to see me succeed. So, he put the money up for me. He was a damn good
boss," said an appreciative Booker.
The wrestling ring oddly felt like home the first time Booker stepped into it. Though he
can't explain it, it was as if he had been meant to wrestle his whole life but just never
knew it. Scott Casey, one of Putski's trainers, took a personal interest in Booker. Casey
saw his potential and began working closely with him not on suplexes or clotheslines but
on what is referred to as "ring psychology", the art of working a wrestling
match properly so that the crowd becomes personally involved in the exhibition they are
seeing. Booker's background in drama and dance began paying off. He excelled quickly and
eight weeks later, he wrestled his first match on television as a part of Putski's Western
Wrestling Alliance Live! program.
"I was G.I. Bro at the time. I was fresh on the scene and I started making waves
within the first month or so I got into the business. It was crazy you know because I got
a lot of feedback as far as magazines, people calling me, people wanting me to do their
shows. I was like, 'Man! This could turn into something.' At the time, I really didn't
look at it as a career or anything like that," he reflected.
The timing with the G.I. Bro character couldn't have been better. The Gulf War was on and
Sgt. Slaughter was on his way out. Booker thought that he could step into the spot
Slaughter had left behind portraying a black American hero that children would find
interesting. Having a son of his own and being a wrestling fan as a child, Booker
understood the need to set a good example, to break down the barriers and portray a black
hero in a sport that has promoted negative racial stereotypes throughout its history.
"That's been my prime motivation and my prime objective since Day One of getting into
the wrestling business. Growing up, I watched wrestling but it wasn't something I had to
go out and see on a regular basis due to the fact that every wrestler that I looked at in
the sport who was black was always stereotyped in one way or another. They always could
dance. They always had hard heads like a coconut. You know, something like that. I have
worked to break that stereotype. That's why when you see me come to a wrestling venue or
an event, I am always going to be dressed better than anyone else because I don't just
represent myself, I represent a whole race of people who are watching these shows,"
Booker explained.
Even in the early days of his career, Booker took his cues from great sports icons and
great men he idolized like Jackie Robinson. Men who made a difference and changed ignorant
attitudes. "Sooner or later, someone has to take a stand. Me, personally? I am doing
whatever I can do to make it so that the guy after me who's comes through won't have to go
out there and be a 'Boogaloo Brown'. He can just be 'Jim Brown'. He doesn't have to go out
there with grease on his hair so people could look at him like a stupid person."
Booker's plans with G.I. Bro were altered with one trip to Amarillo, Texas. Putski's
federation had folded. The promise of a hundred dollars to work an indie show drew Booker
and Stevie Ray deep into Terry Funk's neck of the woods. There they bumped into manager,
promoter and some time wrestler, Skandar Akbar. Booker, as G.I. Bro, wrestled Stevie Ray
(The Super Collider) and Akbar hired them on the spot for his Global Wrestling Federation
(GWF) promotion in Dallas. Akbar sent the word out and wrestling legend "Hot
Stuff" Eddie Gilbert, who was booking the territory at the time, started working on
ideas for Booker and Stevie Ray as a new tag team.
"Gilbert wanted to show an intelligent black tag team on television and push them to
the moon. That was his idea. That was his dream for us. What happened was he had the whole
thing lined up for us and the day we came in for our tryout, he got fired. So, it kinda
put us in the back again. So, the big angle turned into a tryout in just about one
minute," Booker laughed remembering the strange turn of events.
Like Akbar, the bookers liked what they saw and Stevie Ray and Booker T were transformed
into The Ebony Experience. Fans warmed up to the team immediately. Used to seeing an
old-style of mat wrestling, crowds were excited about the new approach the hard-hitting,
high-flying, Huffman brothers brought to the federation.