Sting’s mystery partner for Genesis is Booker T. TNA began talks with him in the summer, at the same time they were trying to get a deal with Chris Jericho. They wanted to get both in for the start of the two-hour Impact shows but Jericho opted for WWE instead. Booker had made up his mind to leave WWE in July but after resolving some issues with John Laurinaitis he was persuaded to stick around a while longer. WWE still hadn’t reached an agreement with him for a new deal though, with TNA still confident that he was going to sign with them in August. One of Booker’s biggest problems was being moved from Smackdown to Raw. Speaking on Between the Ropes, he said “My time on Smackdown, it was a great run. It was beautiful, just pushing for whoever was the champion over there. We really didn’t care who was the champion. There were no politics, no hassles. Then going back over to Raw, it was like a dark cloud coming over. I just knew it wasn’t the place where I wanted to be. There are a whole lot of politics. You have to deal with a lot of garbage. I just knew, for my mental state, it wasn’t going to be a good place.” He also pushed for his SummerSlam match to be against Jerry Lawler rather than Triple H but of course that idea was turned down. Booker wasn’t pleased that the match itself was so short and one-sided, because of Triple H just coming back from injury and wanting to be dominant in spite of possible ring rust or poor conditioning. By the time Booker was suspended during the Signature Pharmacy scandal, which he maintains was an unjust and unwarranted decision by WWE, he had reached the end of his patience and quit. The WWE schedule was also a factor, since he didn’t want to “wake up at 50 years old one day pushing a walker.” At present, TNA are not going to reveal him until Genesis itself – although some are pushing for him to make some sort of appearance on the pre-PPV edition of Impact.
Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 06 November 2007 (subscribe here)
