WWE Hall of Famer Booker T recently spoke on his podcast, “the Hall of Fame,” about a variety of professional wrestling topics including Roman Reigns having 22 matches this year so far in WWE. In 2023, Reigns has defended his title 11 times, and some on social media have criticized the company for not taking the belt from him.
Booker said, “You know, people are gonna find something to complain about all the time. I think one of the biggest complaints was the guys work too much. One of the biggest complaints is they need a season. They need to have an off-season just like basketball. How many times have we heard that?”
“I think you and I can go back to the old days and just think how many times Hogan worked on television in a calendar year. It might have been less than that and nobody was bigger than Hogan.”
“Just think about this. Can you imagine a boxer boxing 22 times in a year or an MMA fighter fighting 22 times in a year? Twenty-two times is actually a lot. That’s just the way I look at it.”
“So I look at the pros and cons of it. If Roman wasn’t selling any tickets, you know, we could talk. If he wasn’t one of the hottest acts on television, you know, and the thing is, is it cooling off? Of course it’s cooling off. It’s been what now? Almost 4 years? I mean, come on. I mean, Larry Holmes had the World Heavyweight Championship for eight years. You don’t think it cooled off after, you know, some years and the people were like, ‘Man, I can’t wait to see this guy get beat.’ You don’t think that? So, I look at the pros and cons of situations like this.”
“The people that may have a beef with this have never done it. They’ve never done it and they don’t know. They obviously don’t understand the situations, you know, that’s going on behind the scenes, with Roman Reigns, with the WWE or this business.”
“If you said he’s only been on television 22 times, that would be one thing, but you just said he’s just worked 22 times. So my thing is, fans sometimes, they just want to see you. I just got a guy from New York who just called me a minute ago when we were in a break and asked me, ‘Hey Book, I’ve got a show going down in February. We want you to come down’ You think the fans want to see me work? They just want to see me. So a lot of times, you know, if you don’t start thinking with that mentality as a wrestler, you can find yourself bumping your way all the way out of the damn business.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
