A recent episode of the Hall of Fame with Booker T & Brad Gilmore podcast had Booker T discuss a variety of wrestling related topics including his thoughts on Jordan Myles quitting WWE and CM Punk’s surprise appearance on WWE Backstage.
On the topic of Jordan Myles quitting WWE due to his claims of racism in the company, Booker T stated that while he will not judge Myles’ actions regarding the shirt controversy, he does feel that Myles is doing himself an injustice with his handling of the situation on social media.
“I don’t know if Jordan Myles has quit the company but on social media he says he quit the company. My thing is, I’m not gonna sit here and judge or anything like that. I’m not gonna sit here and say, ‘The guy should’ve did this’ or, ‘The guy should’ve did that’. I’m gonna lay out on that because I don’t want any backlash before someone’s saying, ‘Oh Booker said this’ and ‘Booker said that’.
“I’m just gonna say this: The situation to where… it all started with the t-shirt and now its gotten to this and I don’t know where it’s gonna go from here but I do know, some of the stuff he was saying as far as the company goes, I cannot… I’ve been on this earth for 54 years and if you think one person is something, call it that. If you think that person is something, call it that. But I cannot judge a group and say everybody is that and when you make a blanket statement like that, you do no justice for yourself or the culture…
Like I said, I say this because I’ve had a lot of years and a lot of experience and I do know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a white guy by the name of Bruce Gasarch who made this all happen for me as far as changing my life. That’s another story, and I easily could’ve judged everyone the same way after my situation — going to prison, being a kid who had never been in trouble before. First time being in the back of a police car, getting locked up and saying, ‘The system did me wrong. I hate everybody of that color.’ You know what I mean? And if I would’ve did that, I would’ve did myself an injustice more than anything and I think that’s the situation I wanna make clear here that the way he’s going about this, he’s doing himself an injustice and that’s my take on that and I’m gonna leave it at that.”
On the topic of CM Punk’s surprise appearance on this past Tuesday’s episode of WWE Backstage, Booker T stated he was not told beforehand about Punk appearing on the show and was genuinely surprised when it happened.
“Aye man, I don’t know what happened. I’m serious. I didn’t see CM Punk all day. I’m being for real. I didn’t know CM Punk was in the building. I didn’t know anything about this. We come to the last two minutes of the show and I know we’re getting ready to go off and all of a sudden we got this surprise for us. We’re gonna do something new which Renee said. I didn’t know what ‘new’ was because no one told me we were gonna do ‘new’. I was genuinely surprised that it was CM Punk because, if I saw CM Punk on the street, I thought it might be some fireworks or something like that but then he walked in, everything cooled off. I said, ‘He’s at the job!’ Everything is cool.”
Booker T also stated that following the show, he went out to dinner with Punk and had some small talk conversation.
“We went out to dinner and chopped it up. We both actually ordered the Sicilian Sea Bass with the fried rice. We just talked mainly about small talk. Nothing about business, stuff that’s going on in MMA, fighting. Even stuff that’s going on in the wrestling world but it was just small talk. It wasn’t anything about, ‘Hey, what do you think about your career?’ And it wasn’t anything like that… because I’d love to have him on the show and we talked about that and we’re definitely gonna get Punk on just to talk about it — his life and career, what he was, where he went and where he is now and where he plans to go because it’s still so much more left with CM Punk. CM Punk’s still a relatively young guy. I’m still doing this and people know I’ve been around for a long time so it is longevity in the business if you map it out right.”
Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com