Booker T spoke about his TNA exit on a recent episode of The Hall Of Fame with co-host Brad Gilmore and talked about how it was a matter of being treated with disrespect and zero to do with putting over former star Matt Morgan. Booker starts the story off by stating he was pitched the initial angle of working with Morgan on a flight back from Switzerland.
“When somebody wants you to do a job, they call you a couple days early,” Booker said before describing what TNA officials initially wanted him to do in a match with one of their star talents.
“We were going to interject Kurt Angle into this angle, ‘You’re working Matt Morgan, Kurt Angle comes out with the distraction, Matt hits you with the boot and the big gimmick, 1-2-3. Boom. We get Matt Morgan over.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m cool with that, no big deal.'”
Things changed however when it came to TV tapings and the producers decided to change the outcome on him, telling him that Matt was going to go over clean against him in about six minutes. Booker wasn’t a fan of that because he knew it was just a form of punishment for an earlier moment when he walked out.
“I looked at him [Booker thinks the producer may have been Pat Buck] and I go, ‘Okay, let me think about it for a second.’ And literally I thought about it for one second. And I go, ‘I thought about it. That’s not going to happen.'”
“I was hot, I was mad because I was willing to go out there and do it the way we had it laid out with Kurt coming out, it would have been perfectly fine. He would have gotten what he needed out of it, they would have they needed out of it,”
Gilmore notes that Booker didn’t have a problem with putting guys over and that was his big operative in TNA, but Booker knew the reasoning for the change wasn’t honest.
The two-time WWE Hall Of Famer says Terry Taylor spoke with him about the matter and Booker explained his stance. Terry came back with the news that they changed it back to the original plan with Kurt Angle doing the distraction. However, the bed was made in Booker’s eyes.
“Then I go, ‘After I thought about it, I can’t even do that now because you disrespected me. My last night is going to be at the PPV and then I’m going to go into the sunset and you guys can go on to wherever you guys gonna go.”
Booker made it clear that he and Matt always got along and noted that the two didn’t have heat because of this moment.
“Matt Morgan came to me actually and he goes, ‘Book, do I got heat? We got heat or anything?’ I go, ‘No, Matt!’ I said, ‘Man, this has nothing to do with you, man. I said any other circumstances this would have not have happened,’ I said, ‘but trust me this has nothing to do with you.’
“So Matt Morgan and I, we never had any friction, back and forth or anything like that, but I just thought the company definitely dropped the ball on that thing and tried to make me look bad at the same time and if you know anything about Booker T, it ain’t going down like that.”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can watch the full clip below:
