During a recent appearance on the “That 90s Wrestling Podcast”, WWE Hall of Famer Stevie Ray commented on the 2001 segment in WWE that featured Booker T and Stone Cold Steve Austin facing off in a grocery store, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the Austin/Booker T grocery store segment: “Let’s go back to my brother, you come in, Stone Cold Steve Austin jumps on him and drop him with the belt, the WCW belt, and everyone thought, ‘this is great, this is how it’s going to be.’ Nah, brother, they’re setting you up, it is what it is, they’re getting him ready for the Thanksgiving dinner. He doesn’t know, but you’re the one that going to get cooked. You come in as the champion, big bad Booker T, his whole career he’s been a big bad guy. Now, all of a sudden you’re in a grocery store, running from Steve Austin. Ain’t nobody in my family ever ran from a man in his life. Ain’t no punk in me, ain’t no b*tch in me. There ain’t no b—h in none of my brothers or my uncles or nobody. I ain’t never ran from one man in my life and never will. Especially some daisy duke, bald-headed, bad knee, guy that beats up women. You kidding me? You kidding me? I’d slap Steve Austin’s teeth out of his mouth, ain’t no punk like that don’t ever fight a man. Now on TV, I got to run from him, I’m scared of him. Nah, miss me with that. But that’s the way they work, and this is what I told everybody was going to happen.”
On Booker T eventually finding success in WWE: “He succeeded, but he had to go through a lot of stuff. But it didn’t surprise me, but WWE have got to put their own spin on everything. People always ask me, ‘why didn’t you go?’ Because I know how they are, and I don’t want to be a part of that. You come in as the WCW World Champion, and then they start making a mockery of your name. You don’t bring somebody into your company and put them at the same level as the people you’ve got stuff invested in, you don’t do that. Because you’ve money invested in these guys. You’ve got to realize that, there ain’t no money invested in those WCW guys. Hell, we were doing good before, and we will do well without them. But what we will do is use them, to push my product and my guys. That’s just business, it ain’t personal.”
On warning WCW stars before they went to WWE: “I told people what was going to happen to the WCW guys when they went there. Nobody believed me, and I said, ‘the guys that did good there, they went there before the company closed.’ Nobody believed me. I said, ‘you guys watch wrestling, I study wrestling. You guys watch television, I study television, you guys watch politics, I study politics. You guys watch this, I study it.’ It is everything, you’ve just got to figure it. Something is telling a story, you’ve just got to figure it, just keep watching and figure it out. Try to see where it’s going. It’s just like a movie, or a book that you’re reading, it’s giving you little tidbits, it’s up to you to pick them up. If you’re just watching, you never got none of it. That’s the entertainment world. So why would I, as a businessman, take these guys and make them big stars, when I’ve already got big stars?”
