LA Knight is set to challenge Roman Reigns for the World Heavyweight Championship at Money in the Bank on October 10 in New Orleans, but Booker T isn’t ready to assume he’s a lock to walk away with the belt.
On the Hall of Fame podcast with Brad Gilmore, Booker drew a comparison to Curt “Mr. Perfect” Hennig, another wildly talented performer who never captured a world title in WWE.
Gilmore added Scott Hall and Roddy Piper to that same list of legends who never got there. Booker’s point was simple: not every great wrestler ends up as champion, and he pushed back on what he sees as a modern expectation that everyone eventually gets their turn at the top.
Booker said:
Did they win the title? That’s just the way it works. Everybody’s not going to be the champion. Everybody’s not going to have that. And that’s why I get caught up, you know, where we are in this world today where everybody wants a turn.
Booker said he never cared about winning titles and he just wanted to be the best wrestler in the locker room. He was candid that titles were never his personal motivation and said he genuinely wouldn’t have cared if he’d made great money over his 36-year career without ever winning gold.
I always say, if they paid me a million dollars a year and I won no titles, I wouldn’t give a damn. Because I would have taken that money and I would have invested it and invested it and invested it over this last 36 years.
So for me, being the champion, it’s been great, but I never thought I was going to win the World Heavyweight Championship. I never dreamed about winning the World Heavyweight Championship, but I always wanted to be the best wrestler in the locker room, which propelled me to that position, and then it happened for me.
Whether Knight breaks through against Reigns at Money in the Bank remains to be seen, but Booker’s comments make clear he sees Knight’s talent as undeniable regardless of how the title picture shakes out.
