Former WWE World Heavyweight WCW Champion Booker T had some words for former AEW Champion Swerve Strickland, whom Booker thinks “got played” in an interview with Vlad TV.
Booker T has broken barriers in his four-decade-long career. Even if he wasn’t the first Black WCW World Champion, which is an accolade that belongs to Ron Simmons, The Booker Man has been a celebrated main-event title holder since he won his first world heavyweight title in 2000.
He’s been a trend-setter for much of the modern talent in WWE and elsewhere, and he knows it. But not everyone respects his seniority or is grateful for his wisdom. Recently, Booker took issue with comments by AEW star Swerve Strickland directed at him and the way WWE treats Black wrestlers.
“That’s not what happened when Vince [McMahon] said the n-word in front of you. That’s not being treated fair, my opinion,” he said during his Vlad TV appearance. “To that statement, it’s not even what I’m saying; I’m saying what people are saying. I’m saying what your audience is saying. So it’s not just me just talking out of my ass out of nowhere.”
The strong criticism led to a response from the WWE Hall-of-Famer on his YouTube channel and, apparently, in a face-to-face confrontation.
Booker T fires back at AEW star Swerve Strickland and his recent criticism
“I’ve been the first one saying it, any brother getting his bag, I’m all in 100%,” Booker T said on his “Hall of Fame” podcast. “I told Swerve Strickland to his face how disappointed I am in him as a young brother because all I did for Swerve Strickland was put him over and put him on a pedestal as being one of the best out there, that he deserves to be the AEW Champion.”
“I’m upset because more importantly, I’m disappointed in Swerve Strickland because what I told him — I’ll repeat it just like I repeated it to him, you got played. You got played, bro. You got played; you let that man [VladTV] play you and pit you against me and me against you.”
Booker also remarked on the doors he opened for Strickland, saying, “I don’t know if these guys think racism stopped in 1990 when I got in the business, but it didn’t. You may not hear about a lot of racial issues with Booker T because I handled racial issues handfirst [sic]. I opened doors, I broke down barriers for people like Swerve Strickland. Swerve Strickland would perhaps not even be here if it wasn’t for me.”
As Shane Strickland, Swerve carved out a niche on the indies where he won gold in MLW. WWE took notice and signed him in 2019. Giving him the name Isaiah “Swerve” Scott, they added him to NXT and the Cruiserweight division. He made a bigger splash as the leader of Hit Row and as a North American Champion.
He was released from WWE in 2021. Then he would make the jump to AEW later that year, where he won the top title. Hit Row was also released and later brought back to fill out the Smackdown roster. Without Swerve, however, the act quickly flopped.
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