Booker T on Reality of Wrestling's Las Vegas Debut, Wanting WWE's Montez Ford to Portray Him in a Movie
Reality of Wrestling, the Texas-based pro wrestling promotion founded and run by WWE Hall of Famer Booker T, will be making its Las Vegas debut on Nov. 19 with the One Night in Vegas event. The show, headlined by the likes of Will Allday and Danny LimeLight and featuring appearances from Booker, The Boogeyman and Disco Inferno, will be held inside the MGM Grand Conference Center Premier Ballroom. Fans around the world can watch the show live via Reality of Wrestling's YouTube Channel.
To hype up the show, Booker sat down with ComicBook for an interview this week. He started things off by telling fans what they can expect.
"They're going to be in store for a great show, first and foremost," Booker said. "That's what Reality of Wrestling is all about. Reality of Wrestling, let's just talk about that for a second. It's a reality show, man. My show is about a bunch of young talented guys and girls trying to live out that ultimate dream, man. The American dream, live this life the way you want to live it because you only get one chance at this thing as far as I know. For me, it's been great. I've had a great 30-year career and now, giving young guys and young girls the opportunity that I've had that same experience. Go around the world. My first trip out of Texas, first trip on an airplane, I was going to Japan. How sick is that for a young kid?
"So for me, Reality of Wrestling has been a work in progress for the last 17 years and this is the culmination of it," he added. "Getting my guys to this point to where now, they can go out and be able to headline a show in Las Vegas. And nobody really knows them, our Reality of Wrestling nation (does), but now the world is going to get a chance to see my young talent and how good they really are. And that's what this thing is really all about, as well as so many more young guys and girls out there that are looking to be a part of something and Reality of Wrestling may be that start.
Is the goal for this to be the first of a lot of shows around the country?
We're a Texas-based company. We want to always be Texas-based company. We want Texas to be our territory, but we are in 50 markets now. And we got TV in Vegas now, so we say, "Wherever our TV touches, we want to try to (go). If we can, we want to try to make our way there in some way, shape, form." And this right here, it's not going to be the biggest show as far as attendance or anything like that. But we're going to have some of the rowdiest fans in Vegas pushing this thing to the next level, but the world is going to get a chance to see it. Subscribe to (YouTube) channel guys, you're going to get a chance to see this thing for free. And that's what's really, really cool about it, just to see the building blocks of what Reality of Wrestling has been putting together for like I say so many years, the foundation of trying to build great homegrown talent. Guys that are birthed from Reality of Wrestling.
And that's what's really cool about this, because headlining the card Cam Cole, Will Allday, as well as Danny LimeLight is going to get thrown in their triple threat action main event. But Cam Cole and Will Allday, those guys started at Reality of Wrestling Fantasy Camp. They had never been in the wrestling ring before, just two young kids and now they find themselves in the main event in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, headlining a show like this. So that right there, that's got to be pretty cool for a young kid to be experiencing. And I'm just fortunate to be able to make it happen for them.
Do you have any favorite memories of being in Las Vegas during your in-ring days?
It's crazy, man. I got a chance to meet Joe Jackson and his wife there at the MGM Grand. I remember my brother and I back in the day, we were just sitting in the MGM Grand one day, and my brother has always been a big Frankie Valli fan. And he goes, "Man, I wonder what Frankie Valli is right now?" And I'm like, "Man, what kind of question is that?" And we look to our left and Frankie Valli is sitting right next to us. It's crazy. But we go up and we introduce ourselves and he invites us to his show in Vegas. And we brought Sherri Martel and he sang Sherry for her that night, which was so cool, man. But wrestling in Vegas has always been highlight moment. Like you say, we just came off of SummerSlam, 50,000 people showed up for that show right there.
One of your wrestlers who has actually caught the national attention here fairly recently is Rok-C. Have you had the chance to talk to her since the Ring of Honor news broke last week?
I haven't talked to her since that, but she put out something on Twitter and she was... It is so true what she was saying, she said, from what I taught her with her time at Reality of Wrestling, I could trust her to be okay, no matter what. This is just a hiccup, just a bump in the road. Man, she's talented, man. It's like when WCW closed, people ask me, "Man, what are you going to do?" I said, "Man, I'm going to WWF. It's that simple. I'm not thinking about [it]. I'm talent." Rok-C man, she is talent. That's why she's the youngest Reality of Wrestling champion at 16. That's why she's the first ROH Women's World champion at 19. Man, her destiny man, is solid. So all she got to do is just stay in shape and keep her head on straight, and she's going to be okay.
As a trainer, what do you feel when you see someone like her or someone like Danny LimeLight really take the national scene by storm?
I talk to my guys all the time, I say, "When you get a moment, it is going to be there for just that, a moment. And it's going to be gone just like that. You got to do what? You got to seize the moment." And that's what I try to teach my guys more importantly than anything. Everything in wrestling is going to be a test and you got to think about everything in that form, and then you got to figure out how to pass the test.
So that's what guys like LimeLight, that's what girls like Rok-C, guys like Will Allday. One of my guys, he's not even out there right now, but he's one of the greatest wrestlers you'd never seen before, his name's Rex Andrews. So I'm going to tell you, man, we got so many guys and so many girls that just willing to go out there and put themselves at the front of the line, because that's where they want to be at. They don't want to be hanging at the back, they want to be at the front because that's where the money is, that's where the championships are. So that's what we teach at Reality of Wrestling.
You've talked recently about Xavier Woods and how him winning King of the Ring is kind of a sink or swim opportunity. As somebody who took the King of the Ring and made it their own and elevated their character in an entirely new direction, what does Xavier need to do to take that crown and make it his own?
Well, I think he's trying to do that. I think he's trying to do everything he can to make his role a little bit different than mine or anyone else's. But I must say, it's hard. I just happened to have all the right pieces in place for my reign to be successful as it was. Of course, I played my role. And I tell my students this, "If you play your role, you play your role, you play your role. At the end of the show, we'll have a great show. Just don't do more than yours."
And I think that's what happened with myself, and then Sharmell, and then Finlay, and then Regal, and I think we had Hornswoggle in there for a second. So it was just a whole array of things that came together at one time. And it really worked differently than it had ever been seen before. But there again, it didn't happen by the slip of a banana peel or anything like that, it didn't happen by osmosis. I put a lot of thought process into my reign, and Xavier's going to have to do the same thing. The one piece of the puzzle that I really think that he's missing that was so big for me, was he has no queen.
That's a good point. But he also doesn't have the accent. Do you ever break that out from time to time?
Every now and then, I think about the accent I go and relive some King Booker. I was just looking at some King Booker stuff just yesterday, when I beat the hell out of Batista, when I won the world title for Rey Mysterio, it was a great time in my career to be able to morph into a character. Because I think that's what wrestling is, wrestling is to be embellished. When we start thinking about wrestling like MMA, or boxing, or any other sport, I think we lose the reality of what wrestling really is, entertainment. Going out and making people feel a certain way, being able to escape for a moment. And I think even with my guys in Vegas on the 19th of this month, man, we're going to be out there trying to suspend the imagination of the crowd.
We're getting a lot more of these wrestling movies and shows now. The Rock's got Young Rock, GLOW was a big hit on Netflix. We got Heels going on over on Starz and it's probably only a matter of time before somebody tries to make a show or movie about WCW. If that happens, who plays Harlem Heat?
That's really a hard question. I know Montez Ford, man, he's definitely me.
I don't know who my brother is right off the head, but Montez Ford, he's definitely it. He's always been a guy who's represented Harlem Heat. Their debut may not have noticed it, but he had the flame zone and it was all representing Harlem Heat. So yeah man, I would give Montez Ford the right to go out and play Booker T. He's got to work on his legs a little bit.
Now, I just want to see him hit a Harlem Hangover!
Hey bro, I'm going to tell you right now if anybody can do it, I'm sure he can, man. He's ultra-talented, he's mega-talented, he can go out there and pretty much do anything. And the thing is, he's still young too. People don't realize how young these guys really are out there. I was seasoned. Just saying, for instance, when I was King Booker, I was 40. I had been around for a while to hold my craft and it takes really a long time to hone the craft, but you got to be thinking about it at the same time. It's not something that you can... It's like great actors. They want to find that ultimate role and that playing that ultimate role. And for me, that's what it was about. And every role was different, but I would always take it and say, "Man, let's see how far we can push this." Let's see how far we can make the fans feel a certain way by watching something like "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Booker T in the grocery store. So it's very simple, but everything is art and it is what we make it.