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Booker T also has advice for Lio Rush: ‘Get your game right’

Considering we’ve already heard from him on Sasha Banks’ issues with WWE, and many people have already spoken on Lio Rush’s situation with the company, it’s not a shock to come across Booker T’s take on Rush being in hot water backstage due to his unwillingness to adhere to outdated locker room initiation protocol and/or his ego.

And the legend did just that last week on his The Hall of Fame radio show and podcast. Booker doesn’t seem to have personal experience with Lio the way Mark Henry did, or history with him as Velveteen Dream does. But he did have some advice for the young man, along with some tales of his own history with the dreaded “backstage heat” and how getting a big head did in some former co-workers.

“I’ve never got heat. Throughout my whole wrestling career — my whole 20-plus year tenure as a performer in the ring, I never got heat. And I never kissed up to anyone, but I never got heat. I worked with the best of them. I worked with the Edges of the world, the Stone Cold Steve Austins and the Jerichos of the world. I worked with all of them! The Undertakers! I worked with all of them, and I never got heat to the point where someone was saying, ‘We might need to do something about this guy.’ Yeah, I’ve never gotten that right there because it was never about me. It was always about the team. Sometimes, if you got to play the game, you play the game. You just gotta know how to play the game. It’s real. It’s real as it can possibly get.

And a guy like this [Lio Rush], has been in a good position, working with Bobby Lashley. It seems like he would be on top of the world in that position working on the pay-per-views and what not. But sometimes, I don’t know, you can start believing in your own press clippings. Sometimes, you can start thinking, ‘Hey, man. This is not a job.’ One thing about this WWE thing … You can call it what you want, but this their stuff man. It’s their show. If you learn how to work inside the — I wouldn’t even call them rules or anything like that — if you can learn how to work inside of ‘the game’ and know how to get in and stay in ‘the game,’ at the end of the day man, you make a lot of money, you take care of your family. I just don’t know when people stop thinking about the endgame is and start thinking about–

I remember back in WCW, man. And this is the truth. So many of those WCW guys that a lot of these guys today watched on television — a lot of those guys thought they were really, really big stars until the doors closed, and then they had to find work somewhere. A lot of those guys never, ever worked in a major company ever again. You know why? It wasn’t about them. That’s why. There are so many guys looking to take that spot that you have. Not that you can’t go somewhere else and make money. That’s not what it’s about. That’s not what I’m talking about right here. I’m talking about if you’re in a position to make as much money as you can — you have the opportunity to make as much money as you can — and if you’re not doing that, that’s another story. If you’re not happy, that’s another story. But if you’re in that position to do that and you’re worried about what someone else is doing, it just confuses me. I hope the brother [Lio Rush] can get the heat off of him because he’s very talented. He’s a great talker as well as a great worker. I mean cruiserweights, man. There’s money there for this guy to be making for a long time, and hopefully the heat can melt away, and Lio Rush can get back in the game because right now, he’s sitting on the sidelines. Lio! Get your game right, man... Get your game tight.”

Transcription via 411mania

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