Houston Sports - Booker T

Booker T

Born: March 1, 1965

Sport: Wrestling (11-time WCW Tag-Team champion, 6-time World champion, 2006 King of the Ring, 2-time Hall of Fame inductee)

It's another full week on the sports calendar in America!  Baseball has officially reached the All Star break, the symbolic midway point of the season, and many amateurs have had their lives changed during the annual draft.  In MMA, celebrity fighter Conor McGregor made his long-anticipated return to the ring but only lasted a minute before an injury put a stop to the fight.  Basketball is being played, with the regular season in the WNBA going on while NBA squads compete in Summer League action.  And of course the World Cup is down to the final four nations that will vie for the title over the coming days.  But this week, I'm going to take a bit of a detour and visit a group of athletes that frequently get accused of having a fake sport but whose physical prowess is undeniable.  A while back we learned the story of one of Houston's wrestling legends, and this week I wanted to take a deeper dive into another larger-than-life figure: Booker T.

Booker T attended Yates High School in the early 80s

As the youngest of eight children, Booker Tio Huffman, Jr., was born in the town of Plain Dealing, Louisiana, to parents Rosa and Booker Huffman, Sr.  Tragically, Rosa lost her husband to a stroke while at his job at a local pool hall when young Booker was less than a year old so she relocated the family to the Houston neighborhood of South Park.  Close to the city's medical district, she was able to raise her children while working as nurse.  After a dozen years in Houston, Rosa suffered numerous injuries from a fall through the ceiling while attempting to replace a kitchen fan, and during a surgery to remove fluid from her spine she fell into a coma from which she would not recover.  When she died, the youngest of the Huffman children were raised by their older siblings, and Booker lived first with a sister while attending Hartman Junior High before moving in with his brother, Lash, at the age of 17.  Living in the Third Ward neighborhood, Huffman wasn't supposed to attend Yates High School, but he used a fake address to get in because he wanted to attend the famous school which had a dominant football program at the time.  Booker, however, was a band kid and played the trombone, baritone, and tuba in the band before becoming the drum major.  Being next to the Texas Southern University campus, his next dream after graduation was to attend and play there, but it never happened.  Instead, while still just 17 in 1982, Huffman became a father with the birth of his son, Brandon. 

Life can be tough for a single father without a high school diploma, as Booker Huffman soon discovered.  While music had provided an activity that provided focus and helped keep him away from negative influences on the street, he didn't have it after leaving school.  Huffman worked in fast food for a time, but didn't get along with his manager while working for Wendy's and came up with the idea of holding up the restaurant.  In 1987, he joined two accomplices to carry out armed robberies at numerous Wendy's locations, and at the age of 22 he was arrested, charged, and sentenced to 5 years in prison.  Huffman served 19 months of his term at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville before completing his GED and being released on parole.  Determined to stay straight, he picked up a job at an American Mini Storage facility, earned custody of his son, and for the first time looked at the potential that wrestling could provide.  It was Lash, his brother with whom he had lived, that first proposed the idea, and after receiving a loan from his employer to help cover the costs of training, Huffman began competing as part of the Western Wrestling Alliance under the name G.I. Bro.  The circuit didn't last long, but the Huffman brothers kept working at honing their craft, improving both the techniques and showmanship required, and were eventually spotted and recruited by a former wrestler named Skandor Akbar who had become a manager with the Global Wrestling Federation.  The brothers, by this point known as Booker T and Stevie Ray, competed as a tag team named The Ebony Experience and together claimed their first title at the GWF Tag Team Championship on July 31, 1992.  After holding the tag team championship three times, the pair left GWF together in 1993 to sign with World Championship Wrestling.

Once in the WCW circuit, Booker Huffman and his brother were given the names Kole and Kane, and competed as the tandem known as the Harlem Heat.  At first they were billed as heels, the bad guys of the match, but quickly won over fans anyway.  Harlem Heat aligned themselves with a manager named Sister Sherri and changed their names back to Booker T and Stevie Ray, and over the course of the following two years won and lost the tag team title numerous times.  Off the mat, Huffman was married in 1996 and even introduced his new bride, Levestia Huffman, to fans during a televised event.  She would eventually play parts in his career, becoming a player in feuds with other wrestlers, but the couple eventually got divorced in 2001.  In 1997 the brothers fired their manager and turned face, becoming the good guys and igniting feuds with a number of their former allies.  Shortly thereafter, Stevie Ray took a five-month hiatus to recover from an ankle injury so Booker T took the opportunity to enter singles competition.  He quickly rose through the ranks and by June of 1998 he became the first African American wrestler to win the WCW World Television Championship.  Between his time as a solo fighter and while recovering from his own injury, Booker T watched Stevie Ray join the nWo (New World Order) that competed against WCW fighters for a period of time, due largely to unsettled legal disputes around the group between WCW and their primary competition, the World Wrestling Federation.  By mid-1999, Harlem Heat got back together as Booker T convinced his brother to abandon nWo but a year later the tandem had a dispute over a third member, a female bodybuilder named Midnight.  Stevie turned against his partners and announced the formation of a larger group to be called Harlem Heat, Inc. which included the tandem of Stevie Ray and Big T.  A match between Booker T and Big T over rights to their name ended with the deposed younger brother now simply being known as Booker.  Huffman then joined a new team called The New Blood and adopted his former G.I. Bro persona.  Returning to singles action, he was chosen to perform in an impromptu heavyweight title match to fill the vacancy left when Hulk Hogan was fired live on the 2000 Bash at the Beach event.  When Huffman, by that point once again donning the Booker T name, defeated challenger Jeff Jarrett he became just the second African American to carry the WCW World Heavyweight Title.  In early 2001 the WWF purchased the WCW and signed many of their stars to contracts.  Booker T was the final reigning WCW Heavyweight Champion when the organization ceased to exist, and held the record as the most decorated competitor in its history with a total of 23 titles.

Booker T had cemented his status as a headline star by June 2001 when he arrived on the scene to compete in the WWF, and he was immediately set up as a heel across from some of the biggest names in the new combined circuit, including Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock.  After being recruited by nWo, which was now part of WWF as well, he was soon kicked out of the group and turned face once again.  Booker T and a new partner named Goldust made one of the most memorably comedic tag teams for most of the 2002 season, eventually winning the World Tag Team Championship in December.  The eventually split up to again pursue singles action, but had each other's backs during ensuing feuds.  Booker T managed to claim the Intercontinental Championship in 2003 but was soon sidelined once again with a back injury.  Upon his return, he was part of the Raw lineup and claimed the tag team title with a new partner, Rob Van Dam, but he was soon "traded" to the SmackDown roster of the newly-renamed WWE.  Resenting the move, Booker T once again turned heel as a bad guy to start a feud with The Undertaker.  After failing to defeat either him or John Cena, Booker T once again turned face and became a good guy while also marrying Sharmell Sullivan in 2005.  Queen Sharmell, as she eventually became known, was an active wrestler who became involved in all of Booker T's storylines and, off the mat, the couple would eventually had twin children together.  In 2006, the King of the Ring tournament ended with Booker T winning the title and taking on the name King Booker.  Dressing in royal attire and creating his own royal court, Booker soon won the heavyweight title and proclaimed himself "King of the World".  He returned to Raw for a showdown with former rival Triple H, stealing his entrance music and video montage as his own, but was unable to defeat him.  It turned out to be Booker's final WWE event as he was thought to be linked with a pharmacy that was distributing performance enhancing drugs, which was against WWE's Wellness Policy.  Booker was to be suspended but he instead requested that he and Sharmell be released from their contracts.  The couple soon signed with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, and competed for that organization from 2007-2009 before fighting in Mexico and Puerto Rico through 2010.  In 2011, Huffman returned to WWE to compete in the Royal Rumble and then became a color commentator for numerous matches, although he was periodically drawn into action during various feuds.  Vince McMahon announced that Booker T would become the General Manager of SmackDown in 2012, officially marking his retirement, and one year later he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame by his brother, Stevie Ray.  He soon returned to the commentator's table where he has spent the majority of his time since leaving regular competition, and in 2019 he was once again inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, this time alongside his brother as a member of Harlem Heat.  Huffman announced that he would run in the 2019 Houston mayoral election, but ultimately decided to withdraw his name from consideration.  He has been an active radio and podcast voice, with collaborations on two local sports stations and a stream that ultimately got picked up for national broadcast on ESPN Radio.  The Huffman brothers created a wrestling school and promotion brand known as Reality of Wrestling in 2005, which still operates locally to help advance unsigned wrestling talent.

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