Former WCW Star Reveals Potential Riches If Company Hadn’t Closed Down

WWE

22 years since WCW closed its doors in 2001, the legacy of the company still lives on, as seen by WWE’s new World Heavyweight Championship design as well as the newly announced Nitro-inspired AEW Collision, some aspects of WCW are still being paid homage to to this day.

While WCW’s influence remains, the company of course does not, being bought out by Vince McMahon in 2001.

While many of WCW’s talents ended up landing in WWE and having decent success, one who perhaps wishes he could have remained in Ted Turner’s company was Booker T.

Despite Booker being one of WCW’s most successful alumni in WWE, he recently revealed that as far as monetary reasons were concerned, his next WCW contract would have had him make major money, making WCW’s demise hard to swallow.

Revealing on his Hall of Fame podcast, Booker stated:

“I had an agent in WCW. In the beginning, he handled all of my contracts until I went singles. I handled my biggest contract, I negotiated my biggest contract. it was well above all the money that my agent had ever negotiated for me, sometimes twice as much, maybe three times.

“The way I did it was, I remember being asked how much was it going to take to keep me in WCW. I go, ‘How much am I worth?’ They came back with a number well above what I was thinking of. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ I was like, Wow, they think of me that much. I can tell it, it was $750,000.

“My next contract, it was $1.3 million. If the company wouldn’t have folded, my next contract was $1.3 million.

“It was a great time back then, Eric Bischoff was making us all rich. He said he was going to do that. He said, ‘Book, I’m going to make you rich.’ His goal was to make all wrestlers to be paid like NFL players. I give him a lot of credit for that.”

Despite missing out on his massive payday Booker would carve out a Hall of Fame level career in WWE in its own right, something that would be recognised with separate inductions for both his own career as well as in the Harlem Heat alongside his brother Stevie Ray.

Booker now serves as a frequent analyst on WWE Premium Live Events as well as a full-time commentator on the NXT brand alongside Vic Joseph.

Here are full results from the May 16 episode of WWE NXT:

Cora Jade def. Fallon Henley in the NXT Women’s Championship tournament

Brutus & Julius Creed def. The Dyad

At a restaurant, Tony D’Angelo was taken away by police for “questioning”

Noam Dar hosted Supernova Sessions with guest Dragon Lee, which set up Dar defending the NXT Heritage Cup against Lee at NXT Battleground

Dijak kidnapped Ilja Dragunov and tortured him

Carmelo Hayes & Trick Williams def. Charlie Dempsey & Drew Gulak

Kiana James def. Thea Hail

Wes Lee and Joe Gacy set up an NXT North American Title match for Battleground, before Tyler Bate came out and added himself to make it a three-way – Lee and Bate were both attacked together backstage by Gacy’s teammates The Dyad earlier in the show

Roxanne Perez def. Jacy Jayne in the NXT Women’s Championship tournament

Carmelo Hayes and Bron Breakker brawled and the show went off the air with both men down in the ring

Transcript courtesy of Fightful

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• WCW
• Booker T
• wwe

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