During his recent podcast, Booker T commented on AEW and compared it to WCW:
“Those guys (WCW) came in with contracts where they had creative control, they were paid more money than all of us guys that had been there all of those years. They jobbed every out, and had in their contracts where they couldn’t lose. I don’t think in return, we got what they got. I don’t know what’s going on with AEW or anything like that, but my thing is this: when AEW first started, I thought we were getting ready to see something new. I didn’t think we were getting ready to see a revamp of WCW, and I’m not knocking them or anything like that, but I thought we were getting ready to see The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, and a group of these young guys that – I don’t know – felt like they knew a whole lot more about the business than the older guys, create something that these old guys had never seen before in their life. And now, we’re seeing everything the old guys have seen for the last thirty years.”
“I believe in ‘respect your elders’, but my new slogan is ‘respect your young people’ because they’re the future, they are the ones that are going to do the big shows at 30-35 and hopefully they have that knowledge to be in that position. You invest in the young talent, you bring the young guys up, you give the young guys a rub, the ones that figure it out, they get it, the ones that don’t, we push them to the side and we keep on rolling.”
