During the latest edition of his Hall Of Fame Podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Booker T commented on babyface wrestlers not getting the reaction that was initially hoped for.
Booker thinks that the negative reactions drawn by John Cena and Roman Reigns were not pure dislike, but merely the fans wanting the wrestlers in a different spot: “For John Cena, everybody sang, ‘Cena sucks,’ and then you had the ones that liked him going, ‘let’s go, Cena,’ then, ‘Cena sucks.’ That worked for me. The Roman Reigns thing. People didn’t like Roman, they really didn’t want to get behind him. For what reasons? I don’t know because Roman at that point and still now is one of the best workers on the roster. Bottom line, no doubt one of the best wrestlers of this era. So them not liking him, I think that’s the wrong term, ‘not liking him’. I think perhaps fans wanted to see him in a different role. And them trying to motivate the company to move that person into that role. I think the fans these days, man they can hijack a whole show, they can make you want to do it the way they want it to be done.”
Cody Rhodes’ situation is different, but Booker T thinks that because of the heat he gets Rhodes is in a prime position in AEW: “I think a guy like Cody is in a prime position to actually be able to go out there and do what I talk about all the time, and that’s the art of going out there and doing nothing and making the people go crazy. If he can do that for the next five years, man he can make a boatload of money and be very, very happy at the end of the day.”
Booker and Cody had a feud for the Intercontinental Championship exactly ten years ago, in which the then promising talent Rhodes was able to retain his title in what turned out to be Booker T’s last singles match in a WWE pay-per-view at TLC.
H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
