Booker T: From Prison to Promise: Life Before the Squared Circle (20 page)

I thought he was kidding, but after I had sold all those tickets for him, he was really giving me ten bucks. I was beyond mad and temporarily lost my mind. I took the ten dollar bills, wadded them up, and threw them in his face. “You son of a bitch, who in the fuck do you think you are? You’re lucky I don’t put you through that wall. I’ll never work for you again, and I’ll make sure everyone in the business knows what a piece of shit you are.”

Tugboat stared and did not say a word.

I picked up my gear bag and walked out of there, leaving the money on the floor. I didn’t care how much of a veteran he was or who he knew in the business. There was no question my talent was worth far more than that. Tugboat was lucky I hadn’t felt like rearranging some teeth that night.

Though the experience with Tugboat left a sour taste in my mouth, it did not deter me from the goal of taking G.I. Bro all the way. Lash and I continued working smaller shows throughout Houston and concentrated on honing our craft until another opportunity presented itself.

Eventually we got booked into a show in Amarillo. We would make a hundred bucks working against a cowboy-themed tag team called the Young Guns. The drive from Houston to Amarillo is about six hours in clear weather. Of course, the Saturday morning we started driving we ran directly into an ice storm, and our road trip became a treacherous eighteen-hour ride in the Z. My Camaro had around 300 hp and was, of course, rear wheel drive. A car like that in those conditions was like a bicycle with flat tires on a frozen pond. We were all over the place, and I think we averaged twenty-five miles per hour at best.

On the way, we passed about three wrecks. One was so bad that the guy was trapped in his car in the ditch. When we pulled over to help, we saw he had a gruesome leg break. The sight made my stomach turn, and Lash and I tried to comfort the poor guy as much as possible.

Since no one else was around, we agreed to drive on and send help the second we came across a phone or a cop. A couple more miles down the highway, we spotted an officer, who took our report, called for an ambulance, and drove away toward the accident.

When we finally made it to the show we had a good match, but after eighteen hours in the Z the event seemed like an afterthought. Because of the storm and our exhaustion, the promoter was cool enough to let us sleep over at his place, which was great because that hundred-dollar envelope wouldn’t have even covered a motel room and food, let alone a gas tank refill.

Our resolve to make it to the appearance that night instead of turning around and going home yielded us one of the richest payoffs we would ever receive in the business. It just so happened that “General” Skandor Akbar, a once-famous wrestler who was now an influential manager and talent scout, had seen us. Word got back to us in the locker room that we’d impressed Akbar and he was on his way to talk with us.

Lash and I started getting dressed, talking about the General during his days as a great heel manager on the Dallas-based
World Class Championship Wrestling
TV show in the mid-eighties. WCCW had gone bankrupt by 1990 and had been redeveloped as the Global Wrestling Federation (GWF), where Akbar was currently working.

When we were almost packed up, the man himself walked in. He politely introduced himself and got straight to the point. “Why don’t you guys come work for me and do a couple shows down at the Sportatorium in Dallas?”

Was he serious? In less than twenty-four hours, I had gone from the counter at American Mini Storage to a death-defying ride through an ice storm to receiving an invitation from the legendary “General” Skandor Akbar to wrestle at the Sportatorium, the original home of WCCW.

I had only one question. “Where do we sign up?”

Akbar took our phone numbers and said he would be in touch with all the details.

That night in the darkness, Lash and I stayed up talking like kids at a slumber party. We were too busy planning our futures as rich and famous wrestlers to waste our time with mere sleep.

True to his word, Akbar soon gave Lash a call and invited him to Dallas to meet with GWF booker “Hot Stuff” Eddie Gilbert at the Sportatorium. Apparently, they were really impressed by Lash’s frame of six foot five and almost three hundred pounds and saw him as the priority on their list between the two of us.

Undaunted and wanting to see what it was all about, I was sure to be sitting shotgun when Lash started the 250-mile drive to Dallas. Although I had a feeling Lash was slightly annoyed that I was tagging along, there was no way I would miss out on the opportunity at hand.

“Come on, man,” I said, “we’re a package deal.”

He shook his head and smiled. “Okay, Junior, we’ll see.”

When we walked into the Sportatorium, I was in awe. The place was old, rickety, and smelled like stale beer and popcorn. It had all the charm of a hundred-year-old Texas honky-tonk and was the site of thousands of historic matches and the launching pad for dozens of legendary wrestlers, such as Kerry Von Erich, Scott “Bam Bam” Bigelow, “Ravishing” Rick Rude, and a young Mark Calaway, who later gained famed as The Undertaker.

Akbar walked out and greeted us, then led us to a back office, where Eddie Gilbert sat at a desk. We introduced ourselves and sat down while Eddie started up a conversation with Lash.

Eddie kept glancing at me quizzically, then finally said, “Who’s this guy? Is he a worker too?”

“Yes,” Lash said.

“What’s your name?”

When I told him I was Booker T, he lit right up. “Wait, what? I know who you are. You’re the workers from Houston with the bad attitudes.”

I looked at Lash and immediately realized what Eddie was talking about. Tugboat had been trying to blackball us, throwing the Huffman brothers under the bus and talking about us to everyone within earshot. We quickly explained the debacle of the ten-dollar payout, which made Akbar and Eddie burst out laughing.

“Yeah,” the General said, “that’s Tugboat all right.”

Eddie said, “We’ve been looking for a clean-cut baby face team, and you guys fit the bill. We haven’t had black wrestlers in the GWF yet, and I want to give you guys a chance to break some ground.”

It sounded great to us.

Eddie rubbed his chin, trying to come up with gimmick names for us. He looked at Lash and said, “Stevie Ray. You’re going to be Stevie Ray, in honor of my favorite blues guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan.”

Then he looked at me. “Booker T? That’s fucking great. I couldn’t come up with a better name than that if I tried.”

He went on to describe his vision for the team he called The Ebony Experience. We would come out wearing suits and sunglasses and be a take-no-shit duo that commanded respect with a confident, slick presentation.

What was there to say no to?

Akbar then told us we would make a hundred dollars each per appearance for five ESPN tapings and promos announcing our eventual arrivals.

Lash and I were over the top with excitement. We could not believe how cool and genuine Eddie came off. He explained that the crowd at the Sportatorium would likely be extremely racist. They weren’t used to big “uppity niggers” coming in and throwing their white boys around, but he said, “You watch—they’ll side with you in time.”

Akbar and Eddie congratulated us and told us to get ready for a bright future and that they had big plans for us already set in motion. It was far beyond anything Lash and I had expected.

Just before we left, we were told to be at the Sportatorium in two weeks with matching black suits and not to be late.

Lash and I ran out of there as if we’d just won the lottery and drove all the way to Houston on top of the world. Two weeks later, we were on the road to Dallas again with visions of finally making the big time.

As we walked in the back entrance, Akbar came up to us with a grave look on his face.

“Hey, General,” Lash said. “Today’s the day, huh? Where’s Eddie? We want to go over our material and make sure everything’s tight.”

Akbar looked at the floor and then at us. “Eddie got fired, guys. He’s no longer around, but I took his place and I’m going to take care of you as much as I can.”

My heart sank. Eddie was the booker who had arranged all the matches and produced the promos—practically the entire show. I began to imagine everything falling apart and us driving home empty-handed.

To Akbar’s credit, he immediately stepped up and said, “We don’t know what Eddie had planned for you, but you’re still getting your shot. We want to see what you guys can do as a team, okay?”

We thanked him and tried to calm ourselves while changing into our suits.

“Don’t worry,” Lash said. “We’ve got this. We’re going to blow them away.”

A short while later, Akbar came into the dressing room to tell us a little bit about our opponents for the night. “They’re called Brute Force, and they’re two big, thuggish white bruisers with bleached spiked hair, kind of like The Nasty Boys. They’re a little sloppy in the ring, so be careful.”

We were up for anything.

When our match was called, I looked at Lash and slapped him on the back. “Let’s do this.”

Then out we went. As ready as we thought we were, nothing could have prepared us for what happened next.

Lash and I walked through the curtain into the Sportatorium to a deafening chorus of racist jeers. “Fuck you, niggers. Get the fuck out of here.”

Eddie had not been kidding. It felt as if we had traveled forty or fifty years back in time. Even little old ladies and children were right at the forefront taking part in the good old hillbilly hate-fest. It was unbelievable.

The match was all right but definitely not one of our best performances. The antics of the crowd affected me mentally far more than I had anticipated. My mind kept going blank while I dodged cups of tobacco spit and half-eaten corndogs.

Still, that event managed to produce one memory worth holding on to. One of the Brute Force guys was really giving me the business in a corner with elbows and kicks to the gut. When he went to whip me across the ring to the opposite corner, I reversed it midway and threw him into the turnbuckles instead. With a sudden burst, he instantly came charging back out and clotheslined me onto the mat. That’s when it happened.

As soon as my head thumped against the canvas, something just clicked inside of me and without even thinking, I stuck my legs straight into the air and gave myself a little sideways push using my hands. Kicking around to the left, I quickly spun myself on my back in a full counterclockwise circle. The momentum and weight of my legs allowed me to slightly pull myself up and into a kneeling position. The move was basically a short breakdancing backspin I had done during routines with The Remote Controls. I’d only done it here and there during training sessions back in the WWA and didn’t consider it to be anything special.

When it just sort of happened in the match, what struck me most was the smattering of applause and cheers I heard. I thought,
Did I really just get some respect for doing that? I’ll be damned.
It was sparse, but I instantly heard it, mostly because it was about the only break in the deluge of racial slurs.

It was a small moment, one I am sure not many caught, but it made my confidence soar all the same. I knew from that point forward that if there was a time during a match when I needed to connect with the audience a little, this was an ace up my sleeve. It was a nice asset. The move, which announcer Mark Madden later dubbed the Spin-A-Roonie, would become one of my most recognized character trademarks.

Aside from the debut of the Spin-A-Roonie, our first match as The Ebony Experience by no means reinvented the wheel of tag team wrestling. The racist crowd had definitely thrown us a little off balance, and Brute Force was not exactly a stellar team to work with. However, overall, I thought we displayed enough athleticism and charisma to show the General how much potential we possessed.

I was right.

Akbar greeted us at the curtain. “You were fantastic. You have jobs here at the Sportatorium with GWF every Friday night. And don’t worry about the crowd. They’ll be on your side before you realize it.”

It was the news Lash and I had been waiting to hear since day one at the WWA training school.

Now keep in mind, I was still very much employed by Bruce Gasarch at American Mini Storage. My schedule now was Sunday through Friday, when I still worked my usual twelve-hour shifts. On Fridays, Bruce would let me leave at around two in the afternoon to make the shows on time. Saturdays were really the only day I could see Brandon and catch up on my sleep.

Working at American was becoming even more amusing since I had become somewhat of a local celebrity. My face was on the local playbills for upcoming shows, which Bruce happily plastered all over the front doors and inside the office. I could rest assured that even if one of the customers didn’t make the connection between the face on the poster and the guy renting them a U-Haul, Bruce would quickly point it out.

“This is Booker T,” he’d say, putting an arm around my shoulders. “He’s going to be a big star.”

I wanted to hide, but eventually I learned to go with it, flash smiles, and answer all the questions as entertainingly as possible.

By the summer of 1992, Lash and I had been wrestling almost three years and were enthralled by the power of entertaining people. In the months since our debut at the Sportatorium, the tide had turned in our favor. The once bigoted audience had gone from hating us to considering us their favorite team on the GWF roster, just as Akbar had said in the beginning. Not only had we won over the old fans, but we were drawing more and more people to the shows each week. What had begun as three hundred people soon multiplied to upwards of three thousand, due in part to the word on the street about this team called The Ebony Experience.

As Lash and I stood behind the curtain waiting for our music to hit and the lights to go down, all we could hear was a collective, “Ebony, Ebony …” It was pure magic.

Eventually we went on to win the GWF Tag Team Championships in front of our entire family during an ESPN taping. It felt as if we had reached the pinnacle of the business. In some ways, we had. After just two years spent battling it out in the trenches of the independent scene, the two Huffman boys had made good. And yet we were just getting started.