In the most recent installment of his “Hall of Fame” podcast, Booker T delved into Mark Henry’s assertion that there isn’t a war between AEW and WWE, sharing his perspective on the matter. Expressing his disagreement with Mark Henry’s statement, Booker T said,
“You know, Mark Henry said there’s no WWE-AEW war. I don’t know what this dude’s been smoking. Okay. It’s a war. It’s a war. If there wasn’t a war, every time a big [rating] number goes down, they wouldn’t be comparing it to WWE. And I get 80,000 plus, you know — that’s a lot, man. Wembley Stadium, that’s a big show. And the thing is, that’s great for AEW. It really is, it’s really great for AEW. And the thing is, how long they have been promoting this thing now? I mean, they’ve had time to sell 80,000 tickets as well. So it’s great for them. And the thing is that is somewhat of a war, because [being] touchy about being called second tier just last week. One would think that it’s a war.”
Addressing Mark Henry’s view that fans are the real winners in this scenario, Booker T acknowledged the benefits of competition for the audience. He said,
“And the thing is, there’s nothing wrong with it being a war. One thing Mark Henry said also is that it’s not a war, the fans are winning. In a war, yeah the fans do win. Because guys got to go out there and they’ve got to run fast. You can’t run at that normal pace that you had been running before when you were just on the track practicing. When you are in competition man, you got to, you got to pick up speed. And that’s what everybody is doing. So for me, being in a war is not a bad thing.”
Further discussing the recent ratings of AEW Rampage and WWE SmackDown, Booker T stated,
“The Smackdown rating came out this week, and it was down from last week. This week they drew 2,097,000. And then Rampage numbers came out also on the same night. And they did… 398,000. And the thing is, I think that those numbers should be a lot higher. That’s what I’m thinking more than anything. But 398,000 on the same night as Smackdown. That’s not that great of a number. And it seems like one should be perhaps concerned if there’s war. If there’s not a war, there’s no problem. But I do think it’s a war. And the war, it’s not going to happen overseas. It’s going to happen right here in the States.”
