Booker T recounts a comedic story about why video games were once banned from the backstage area.
In today's landscape of WWE, the majority of the wrestlers on the roster connect with one another by way of the virtual world. Former 5-time WWE Tag Team Champion Xavier Woods' UpUpDownDown YouTube gaming channel brings together the stars from RAW, SmackDown and NXT on-which they chat about wrestling and compete against one another in various games.
WWE Hall Of Famer Booker T was a gamer in his own right and he shared that detail about himself on the first edition of his 'Hall Of Fame' podcast that featured former IWGP Intercontinental Champion Chris Jericho. Booker T brought up how he was an original backstage gamer and talked about WCW wanting to give him his own locker room but instead he wanted his own portable gaming station. He then dove into bringing that tradition over to WWE and it not going so smoothly.
“Hey man, I was the first video gamer. When I won the Heavyweight Championship in WCW, they wanted to give me my own locker room and I go, ‘Nah, nah man. I don’t want my own locker room. I don’t wanna be like some prima donna or anything like that.’ I said, ‘Just give me a 50-inch television and just bring it to every house show and every TV and set it up.” Booker T and Chris Jericho laughed. “Bro, and what was crazy, they did it." He continued, "Before we get to [talk about] AEW, I got to WWE. I got my whole little portable system with me right, so I brought it with me and I’m in the locker room. I got it all set up for some Madden football. I’m thinking the boys over there are gonna be kind of like they were in WCW. So I’m setting it up, I got my team all set up and D’Lo Brown comes up and he goes, ‘Man you playing some Madden?’ I go, ‘Yeah man. You wanna play?’ He goes, ‘Yeah man, I’ll play around with you’. So we sit down and we commence the round and I’m kicking his ass." Booker laughs, "Next thing you know, Michael Hayes walks by and he goes, ‘You guys playing video games huh?’ And I go, ‘Yeah, yeah. We’re just playing some Madden’ and he goes, ‘Okay’, and he walks off, and D’Lo looks at me and you know, D’Lo’s a light skinned brother but he turned white, and he goes, ‘Man, I gotta go.’ I was like man, what the hell just happened? From that point on; a note went out -- no more video games. No one can play video games. I’m like, ‘These guys are crazy here man’.”
Xavier Woods' UpUpDownDown YouTube channel broke the Guinness World Record for the Most Subscribed-to Celebrity Gaming Channel and to catch some of the latest videos on the channel, click here.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit The Hall Of Fame podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
