On April Fools’ Day, it was announced the WWF was going to divide the entire roster of performers between Flair’s Raw and Vince’s SD. In order for both brands to have a World title, the Big Gold World Heavyweight Championship was brought back as SD’s greatest prize, while the WWF Championship remained on Raw. Eventually, to have their own title parallel to the WWF Intercontinental Championship, SD would also bring back the decommissioned United States Championship.
A lottery was held to decide where each performer went. My name was selected to stay on Raw for the time being. I went on the road for a while, being slightly edged out by R.V.D. in a series of matches for his Intercontinental belt.
In the midst of my house show schedule against Rob, I performed on a Raw with WWF Hardcore Champion Bubba Ray Dudley. My bid for the win was disrupted by Goldust, Dustin Rhodes’ over-the-top, androgynous character, complete with a black-and-gold bodysuit and matching face paint. I was Bubba Bombed through a table, costing me the match.
On Raw in College Station, Texas, on April 15, I sought out Goldust and cut a promo on him for costing me my opportunity. Instead of getting into an altercation, he suggested that teaming up would be box office gold. Thus, the team of BookDust was born.
Goldie and I went back almost ten years to the early WCW days, when he wrestled as Dusty Rhodes’ son Dustin. I’d found him to be a really good guy with a great sense of humor. When we reunited, he’d already gone through a fairly successful run as Goldust with the WWF during the mid-nineties after leaving WCW.
Prichard and the creative guys thought the sharp contrast between the two of us might be an entertaining formula for TV, so they paired us as the oddest couple in the WWF. At the time, I was a little disappointed because it was apparent the company was steering me away from the major title picture. I went with the flow, but I craved a bigger, more substantial test, feeling that my physical and character capabilities were the strongest they’d been in my career.
I look back now and see how much good it did me to be pushed out of my comfort zone. Thankfully, I stayed focused on the positives and looked at working with someone like Goldie as another challenge that would heighten my comedic value and acting skills.
Right from the start, for the April 22 Raw in St. Louis, we shot a parody of Ebert & Roeper as we reviewed The Rock’s movie The Scorpion King. The production guys were cracking up the whole time, and so were we, which meant dozens of takes. The end result showcased what a great contrast Goldust and I were to one another, just in the way we talked about the movie.
Goldust in his breathy tone would say, “Note the felonious way in which our protagonist must engage in his goal, in his quest for salvation. The pathos we feel is only underscored by the magnanimous . . .”
“Yo, man, what the hell are you talking about? Just roll the damn footage!” I would yell.
After watching footage, I would argue that it was a great movie except for one problem. It didn’t have me in it. And if it did, it would have been over the top, a bigger smash then it was. Goldust thought that sounded delicious, to which I replied, “You’re damn right it sounds delicious!”
I then had them roll footage of me in The Rock’s place in The Scorpion King.
As the trailer played, fans watching Raw were treated to me busting onto the big screen, swinging a sword. “That’s right. You suckas better run! ’Cause it’s me, Booker T! Not only am I the Scorpion King, but I’m the five-time WCW Champion, and I got a sword too! Now can you dig that, suckas?”
It was a great skit, and both Goldust and I had a blast filming it.
Before Goldie and I really took off on our tag team comedy quest, though, some singles hurdles were set in front of me.
On May 1 in Cologne, Germany, a city I was very familiar with because of WCW, I stepped into another showdown with The Nature Boy. Times had changed since our first encounter in 1993, and the roles were reversed. Without a drop of nervous energy this time, I took charge and made Flair look as good as ever.
By that point, I knew all his tricks of the trade, and our match moved like clockwork. It was an absolute pleasure to guide Flair through the match and watch him entertain as only he could. It was a privilege to take a loss to him once again, just like the first time, with a figure-four submission in the middle of the ring.
After the show, Ric and I met up at a bar and talked about the WCW days and his passing the torch to me when I won the Big Gold from Jarrett in 2001. It was great to reminisce together.
From Cologne we headed to the Insurrextion 2002 PPV from Wembley Stadium in London. I won and lost the Hardcore title twice that night.
The rule of the WWF Hardcore Championship back then was that the champ was subject to being attacked and pinned for the belt at any time. I pinned Stevie Richards with the Book End. Hardcore Holly’s lookalike sidekick, Crash Holly, flew into the ring behind me for the roll-up and pin. I didn’t have the title for more than a hot minute before dropping it.
Within seconds, I scissor kicked Richards and took my belt back. Suddenly I was a two-time Hardcore Champion.
The comedy went even further as Tommy Dreamer and Justin Credible wanted some, so I gave them a solid beat-down before Jazz, a new WWF Diva, gave me a surprise low blow to the groin, allowing Stevie to recover and put me through a table.
That was the first time I won and lost a championship twice in one match, and thankfully it was the last. The Hardcore playground was not my scene at all.
As eventful as that European tour was, the most memorable moments happened on the way home. A plane ride from London to Newark International in New Jersey takes a little over seven hours, but this flight felt like it lasted an eternity. We were on our private WWF charter, and I was trying to relax and maybe get some sleep. Hall was near me, fast asleep after having a few too many. He’d been a wreck during the tour, and management took notice.
Sometime in the middle of the flight, I started hearing a commotion coming from the front and took my earphones off to see what was going on. It was Brock and Curt trying to take each other down in the middle of the aisle with everybody standing up, watching.
Lesnar and Hennig weren’t fighting. They were just tussling like little kids, but in such cramped confines, I kept thinking, These two might throw the plane off-balance or something! We’re going to be in a tragic news story.
The bedlam spread in all directions. Flair was prancing around the aisles wearing only a robe, laughing.
But even funnier was what happened to the sleeping Michael Hayes. When he eventually woke up as we landed in Newark, he found his famous mullet had been lopped off. He stormed off the plane in the freezing temperatures, yelling and screaming. “Somebody tell me who did this! Nobody messes with a Freebird! Let’s go. Now!”
Jerry Brisco strolled over and said, “Michael, shut up. You’re not going to do anything.”
Hayes was fuming, and the rest of us were trying to keep the laughter in, hiding our faces or looking down.
I’d never gotten involved. There are guys who can and guys who can’t get away with that kind of behavior. For me, the best philosophy was to never find out which of those types of guys I was.
It turns out I’d just observed situations that would result in a couple of terminations from the company. The next day, the WWF released Curt Hennig. Scott Hall was let go not long after for his continued personal issues, which had surfaced during the tour.
For me, it was back to work in another humorous vignette. The film crew followed me into a 7-11, where I looked for a Booker T cup for a Slurpee. Since they didn’t have one, I assumed they were sold out, then turned around as Goldust caught me by surprise and started begging me to join him as a team. I declined.
Later that night, I joined Eddie Guerrero against R.V.D. and Jeff Hardy, but thanks to Goldie getting involved and clumsily messing it all up, we took the loss.
In the remainder of the month, I was forced into the nWo, consisting of Nash, Show, and X-Pac. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me because I thought they were gearing me up for a run with Goldie in the tag division. To resolve the confusion, they incorporated Goldie by having him follow me around, trying to join the nWo, which they did not allow.
On the road for house shows, which usually never related to the story lines on TV, I was wrestling and scoring victories over Matt Hardy in some strong matches.
On May 18, twelve days after the company publicly announced its name change to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), we received sad news about one of our veterans. “The British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-nine while on vacation with his girlfriend. He left behind a son, Harry, now a professional wrestler himself. While I was never close to Davey Boy during his time in WCW, he was always friendly.
Unfortunately, within the next few years the wrestling world would experience more tragic losses.
However, one thing was certain. Knowing where I’d come from gave me all the motivation I needed to make sure I didn’t end up down the same road.
On June 3 in Dallas, The Heartbreak Kid (HBK) Shawn Michaels made his return to the WWE on Raw and joined the nWo. That night I beat William Regal in a KOTR qualifying match in just over three minutes by smashing him upside the head with his European title belt when the ref wasn’t paying attention.
On Raw on June 10, during his first in-ring promo on the mic, with all the members of the nWo, HBK said the group was losing focus. He then sucker punched me out with the microphone. While I was down, he said he didn’t like my kind and complained I’d been showboating too much with the Spinarooni. They left the ring as I was still lying on the mat, which meant the merciful end of my tenure in the nWo.
Also that night, there was a big showdown between Flair and Vince as they agreed to a no-holds-barred match for 100 percent ownership of the WWE to finally settle the seemingly endless quagmire over who had more control over the company. Flair naturally assumed he had the upper hand, being a former World Heavyweight Champion and a master ring general, but he didn’t count on the ace Vince had up his sleeve: Brock Lesnar.
When the bell rang, those two went at in a vicious, clawing, slapping, punching free-for-all in and out of the ring, with Flair bodyslamming Vince out onto the concrete. Predictably, Flair got busted open and bled into his face and bleached hair but kept on the offensive in one of the most action-packed matches I’d seen all year.
All the boys in the back were huddled around the monitors for this one.
Finally, Flair locked in the figure four, and Vince writhed as if his legs were in a car compactor.
Arn Anderson, who was working with the company as an agent, was in the ring screaming for Vince to submit, but then Brock Lesnar hopped into the ring. Arn dove out as if a grenade had been thrown in there. Brock broke the hold and delivered a devastating F5 finisher to Flair, so Vince stole the victory and regained full control of the WWE.
The next week in Oakland, to get revenge on those nWo clowns for the microphone cheap shot, I jumped into the ring during X-Pac’s KOTR qualifier and Book Ended him to the canvas, helping R.V.D. score the victory. When it was time for my own KOTR follow-up match after having already beaten Regal, it was against the beast Brock Lesnar in my first-ever matchup with The Next Big Thing.
But beforehand, in a total shoot in front of the world, Vince walked out and announced Stone Cold had walked away from the company as of the previous week.
Apparently Austin hadn’t been happy for a while, beginning around WrestleMania, about the creative direction of his character. He and the company had come to an impasse, and he’d simply gone home. Just like that, The Texas Rattlesnake was gone from the WWE.
McMahon sincerely thanked him for helping build the company to where it was and ceremoniously cracked a beer in his honor, took a drink, and left it in the ring.
I thought of the great TV we’d done together not long before, which was instrumental in helping me establish the new WWE version of Booker T, and I wondered if I’d ever see Austin with us again.
When it was time for my match, Nash, HBK, Show, and X-Pac walked down to the announcers’ table. Nash and Shawn provided guest commentary while Show and Pac stood around ringside to intimidate me. In the ring, my hands were more than full with Brock the monster. The match lasted only about three and a half minutes, with me on the receiving end of his clothesline, overhead belly-to-belly suplex, and over-the-shoulder powerslam.
Brock was adapting perfectly to the ring. Backstage he was a humble guy who was eager to learn. He was easy to admire, and I knew Vince would catapult him to the limits of the WWE as yet another bankable megastar.
When Goldust came down and confronted Lesnar’s manager, Paul Heyman, I took the upper hand on Brock with a thrust kick, Houston Sidekick, scissor kick, and the Spinarooni. I corkscrewed up to my feet to find X-Pac on the apron antagonizing me. When I went to nail him, Brock got me from behind, hoisted me onto his shoulders, and swung me around for the F5 and the win.
As soon as it was over, the entire nWo ran in. Show gave both Goldust and me chokeslams, concluding our night’s work.
Our beat-down at the hands of the nWo set up a series of tag matches on the road, with Goldie and me taking on Big Show and X-Pac, defeating them every time.
At the Philly Raw on July 8, we faced them again in a huge Ten-Man Tag Team Match with the combined efforts of Nash, Pac, Show, Benoit, and Guerrero, taking on Goldie, R.V.D., Bubba Ray, Spike Dudley, and me. HBK, who was at ringside, got into the mix and gave me his Sweet Chin Music superkick, allowing Show to throttle me with a chokeslam and the pin.
When R.V.D. chased HBK out of the ring and up the ramp to the Jumbotron area, Brock appeared, clotheslined R.V.D., and then picked him up and dropped him onto the ramp with a devastating F5.
The most notable aspect of the event wasn’t the beginning or the conclusion to the match. It was Kevin Nash’s nasty mishap.
At one point, Nash ran up and tagged me with a big boot to the face, but when he ran across to attack Bubba in our corner, Nash took an awkward step and tore his right quadriceps right off the tendon. He fell like a fifty-foot pine tree, yelling in excruciating pain.
While I was down, I saw Nash neutralized in our corner. It was pretty ugly. He was holding his right leg, making me flash back to Sid when his left leg collapsed sideways.
Nash was gone for months after that, undergoing surgery and rehabilitation.
With Nash out of the picture and not a single original member of the dwindling stable, Vince personally disbanded the nWo on the July 15 Raw, saying it was the end of an era. He also announced he’d be hiring two new General Managers to be in charge of the Raw and SD brands.
Meanwhile, still feeling the effects of Show’s repeated chokeslams over the weeks, I was ready to give Show an old-fashioned whuppin’. I was in the middle of cutting a promo about Show backstage when former WCW head Eric Bischoff walked into the frame.
“Tell me I didn’t just see that,” I exclaimed.
Vince went on to name Bischoff General Manager in charge of Raw, with Vince’s daughter Stephanie being placed in charge of SD.
I thought I’d seen everything. Eric in the WWE was the unlikeliest of scenarios. A lot of guys in the company, such as Flair and JR, had issues with the guy. It was going to be interesting to see how everyone would receive Bischoff and how he would handle being on-air talent instead of the boss. One thing’s for sure: Vince must’ve enjoyed negotiations to bring him into the WWE. I wonder if he remembered Vince Sr.’s words from decades before: Now he’s my asshole.
When my match with Big Show started, I tried to be as aggressive as possible with the seven footer. I clotheslined him over the top rope, but from there it was a massacre. I jumped out and grabbed a chair, looking to do some damage, but he dumped low as I swung into the post. Show grabbed the chair and came at me in a fury, smashing all over my body before picking me up for yet another chokeslam and leveling me through the commentary table. I was out for the count but took the DQ win.
I loved working with Paul Wight, who’d come such a long way since those early days as The Giant in WCW. His character performance had been enhanced tremendously, which was the WWE formula. But most of all, he’d matured into a fun, laid-back guy who was easily one of my favorites backstage.
At Vengeance 2002 in the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, it was time for a final confrontation with Show. We went at it hard, and Show really put me over to solidify our story in the remaining chapter of our feud. When it was time, I gave him the low blow to double him over before springing off my ropes with extra height to scissor kick him to the mat. The match called for an extraordinary finish, so I went up for the Houston Hangover, a rare move at that point in my career. I flipped over for the leg drop from the top for a clean victory.
After the singles feud was over, The Undertaker and I teamed up for a series of Raw house shows throughout Texas and Florida against Show and Brock Lesnar, with us Texans claiming victory each time. Working with The Undertaker was always a unique privilege, and the crowds were hot for the odd but explosive pairing of his size and legendary presence with my speed and athleticism.
By August 12 at Raw in Seattle, Goldust was at it again, adamantly trying to join up with me as a tag team partner, only it seemed more like he was looking for a life partner. Backstage, he suggested to Bischoff we should get a shot at the WWE Tag Team Championships at SummerSlam after I beat Lance Storm that night. Bischoff agreed. In the match, Goldie punched Storm in the face behind the ref’s back. I took advantage with the scissor kick, and our stage was set for a shot at the belts on August 25 in Long Island.
SummerSlam was my opportunity to claim my second WWE tag title, only this time it would be us together once again as BookDust. It was a funny angle, and they kept it rolling with Goldie’s persistent comedy routines. We wouldn’t take the titles that night, however. I was pinned by Christian after my old partner Test climbed in and hit me with a boot to the face before taking off through the crowd.
Goldie and I continued with matches, usually exiting pulverized, and we enjoyed ourselves the entire time.
At Unforgiven 2002 on September 22 in Los Angeles, Bischoff pitted Christian, Lance Storm, Test, and William Regal against Goldie, Kane, Bubba Ray, and me in one of the most action-packed matches I’d ever been involved with. Every single guy hit his finisher in spectacular fashion, with Kane getting the pin on Storm after a huge chokeslam. It was a hell of an opener to the PPV, and we knew the tone was set after we brought the house down.
Also that night, Bischoff took a Stinkface from Rikishi, allowing Goldie and me to have some fun the next night on Raw in Anaheim.
We put together another Ebert & Roeper parody bit analyzing Bischoff taking Rikishi’s Stinkface. When Goldie and I went to the locker room to show it to the boys, one of Bischoff’s stooges, Rico Constantino, peeked in, scolded us for having some laughs at the GM’s expense, and said he was going to rat us out. Later in the show, Bischoff was in the ring and screamed for me to come down. While in there, Bischoff asked me if I thought his eating a Stinkface was amusing.
“Damn skippy, hippie!”
He brought out his enforcement tag team of Rosey and Jamal, known as 3-Minute Warning, to take me out, with Goldust failing to make the save. In a match shortly after, I got my hands on that little weasel Rico Constantino, who’d ratted us out, and squashed him in record time.