Eric Bischoff has broken his silence on what happened backstage the moment Booker T dropped a racial slur during a live 1997 WCW promo. The entire locker room froze and immediately understood it was an unscripted mistake Booker regretted instantly.
Speaking on his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff revisited Booker’s Spring Stampede promo aimed at Hulk Hogan and admitted the entire moment brought everything to a dead stop.
Time kind of froze. Everything just stopped. I didn’t know how to react. I was shocked. Not angry shocked. I mean, I was literally just like everything in my brain stopped working,” Bischoff said.
According to Bischoff, nobody backstage believed Booker meant to say it. He said Booker knew immediately that he had messed up and regretted it after saying it.
Everybody knew it wasn’t intentional. He knew what he did was wrong the instant he said it, and he regretted it the instant he said it,” Bischoff said.
Bischoff Explains How WCW Viewed The Slip
Bischoff clarified that he was not attempting to excuse the slip. Bischoff feels it came from Booker falling into the kind of language people might use joking around off camera without thinking.
I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses for Booker here. Not that he needs me or anybody else to make an excuse,” Bischoff said.
When you grow up in a certain environment, when you’re hanging, talking with friends and people you hang out with and there’s no cameras on and you’re joking around or something, you’ll say things that you wouldn’t say on television.
Bischoff said he never sat down with Booker to ask what happened, but he believes Booker tried to be funny and the joke backfired.
I’m guessing it was just one of those almost subconscious attempts at humor that backfired instantly. I don’t know. But it was regrettable,” he said.
Bischoff said Booker T and Stevie Ray had built up so much respect in WCW that nobody saw the mistake as a reflection of who Booker was.
Booker and Stevie were both consummate professionals. Everybody knew it. They had a ton of respect from everybody associated with WCW as well as the fans,” Bischoff said. “Nobody took it as, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe he’d go there.’ It wasn’t that. It was a mistake.
The promo, delivered while Booker was part of Harlem Heat, has followed him for nearly three decades. Booker T is now a two-time WWE Hall of Famer who works as a commentator on the NXT brand, and he continues to comment on current wrestling topics through his Hall of Fame podcast.
