BOOKER T WRESTLES WITH SUCCESS
BOOKER T SHOWS UP REPRESENTING HOUSTON’S PAST AND PRESENT. HIS L ARGE FRAME IS IN PART COVERED BY A WHITE ASTROS HOME J ERSEY, AS THE FAMED WRESTLER CONTINUES TO REVEL I N THE BASEBALL TEAM’S WORLD SERIES VICTORY. SMALLER, BUT STILL GRAND, I S THE GIANT R
“This ring is priceless, even though I never even got it appraised,” Booker says. “My son will get it, I put that in my will. Someday, he’ll get it. Until then, it won’t be removed.”
Booker sees parallels between his life and Boesch’s.
“Paul Boesch was a professional wrestler in the ’60s, I was a wrestler in the ’90s,” he says. “He was a promoter in the ’80s, I’m a promoter in the 2000s. I’m just trying to keep his legacy and dream alive. That’s what drives me.”
Like Boesch, Robert Booker Tio Huffman wasn’t born in Houston. But both men made their name in Houston, first as wrestlers and later as trainers, promoters and on-camera figures. At 52, Booker is only about a year into his retirement from wrestling, though he remains a WWE fixture, putting his distinctive growl to use as a commentator.
“I definitely had my time and I had my fun,” he says. “But it’s good to be on this side.”
He looks quite spry for a wrestler in his 50s. Booker counts himself as among the more fortunate of the sport. He’s had a knee “scoped out twice,” and once couldn’t walk for a month because of a bulging disc in his back. But even the times he was carted away from the ring on a gurney, Booker turned out OK.
And he’s been trying to pay back his good fortune. Booker maintains Houston roots thanks to Reality of Wrestling, which serves to identify, nurture and refine talent for young aspiring wrestlers, teaching them the ropes and also providing TV exposure and an audience. In this sense, Booker is paying back the lessons he learned in his 20s, when he attended an eight-week program run by Ivan Putski called the Western Wrestling Alliance.
“It didn’t last long, but I got my foot in the door,” he says. “They had a TV show called ‘Houston Wrestling Live,’ so eight weeks out of school, I was on the television.”
That was the beginning of Booker’s finding his lane in life. His father died when he was a baby, and his mother when he was a teen. The self-described “street kid” found himself on the wrong side of the law and stretched for an armed robbery in the late-’80s. Putski’s school and Boesch’s mentorship played a significant role in his course correction.
“In the beginning, for me, it was a hobby,” he says. “I didn’t do it thinking I’d be a star or famous. I did it because I loved going it. … To be able to escape and go to the other side of town, put on boots and trunks and act like a superhero. That all really started with Paul Boesch, watching him on a black-and-white TV.”
At first, Booker was still working a job six days a week while wrestling on weekends, a juggling act that proved more difficult when the wrestling gigs were overseas. His brand was already doing well in Japan, South Korea and the Virgin Islands, where fans mobbed him.
“I didn’t bank on anything until a check was in my hand,” he says. But eventually he quit his job and dedicated himself to wrestling.
From 1993 until 2001, he was a fixture on World Championship Wrestling. He got wider notice in 2001, when he joined the World Wrestling Federation, soon to become World Wrestling Entertainment. He left WWE in 2007 only to return in 2011, though he limited his wrestling during his second run spending increasing time with a microphone in hand.
That will be his role this weekend for the WWE’s 2017 Survivor Series Weekend, four days of wrestling events featuring top-tier talent as well as some potential rising stars.
He sees his Reality of Wrestling as a first step that could ultimately lead to the WWE’s NXT program, which showcases rising talent. And one doesn’t necessarily need to be 6’3” and 250 pounds like Booker to enter his world. He recalls one 16-year-old kid who showed up at one of Booker’s speaking gigs.
“He came to my school, but he was too skinny to do that,” Booker says. “But he became a writer, and now he’s an editor and producer. You never know where you’ll find yourself in this business.”