Booker T Discusses Making His Grocery Store Fight With Steve Austin Work Despite It Being ‘Disaster on Paper’

– During the live Q&A at Starrcast for his Hall of Fame radio show, Booker T looked back on his famous grocery store fight with Steve Austin as an example of good comedy in wrestling. Booker was asked what he thought of The Revival’s feud with The Usos that is seeing the heel team on the end of humiliations and said the writers need to do better work with it, then looked back at the Austin brawl as a contrast.

The Austin/Booker T grocery store brawl took place back in 2001 on Smackdown, and saw the two feuding following WWE Invasion. Austin attacked Booker in the store as revenge for being cost a match for the Undisputed WWF Championship at WWE Vengeance. You can see the segment below, as well as highlights from Booker T’s comments:

On The Revival’s comedy stuff right now: “It’s professional wrestling, you know. Just like I said earlier, when a guy got a spit punch and you buy that, you gotta be able to let your brain go and say, ‘It’s professional wrestling.’ Some rules can be bent, some rules can be broken. It has that feel to it, so you know, I don’t know what they’re doing with those guys right now as far as the comedy thing. But me personally, I see money in the Revival. I see money in the tag team division. I feel like the writers need to start writing a whole lot better. Even if it’s comedy, even if it’s, you know, ‘Ha ha,’ it’s gotta be written from a perspective toward a fan’s actually getting it and actually liking it.”

On his segment with Austin: “Just like ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin and Booker T in a grocery store, having a fist fight. It was a disaster on paper. On paper, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin and Booker T fighting in a grocery store is a slap on my career. It’s definitely a black eye on my career if not done properly. But Stone Cold, we did it properly. We ad-libbed that whole thing, we didn’t have any written notes or anything. We just went out and had fun. I cried at the end of it. [laughs] It wasn’t about me. It was about trying to create a moment here. If I have to cry at the end of it to get that, that’s what we gonna do! So it’s as fun as we make it. That’s what wrestling truly is. Those moments. And hopefully the Revival and the Usos will be able to find their way out of it somehow, just like I did.”

On if they did a walk-through of the store before they shot it: “We did, we did … none of that stuff was — everything Steve did, he did it on his own. ‘Price check on a jackass.’ That son of a b***h. I still wanted to kill him for that one right there, but that was a great line. We walked through it, but we didn’t actually talk about it, how we was gonna do it or anything like that. We didn’t have you know, ten cameras and a lighting crew and all of that stuff. We didn’t have ten producers telling us, ‘Hey guys, make sure you do this, make sure you do that.’ It was one take. ‘Action, go!’ And we went frickin’ through that place and you know. I think the one and only spot we had set up was the milk spot where I locked him, I blasted his a** and thought I got him. You know, with the big kick. Locked him in the big freezer area and he came out with the milk and continued the a**-whupping. But that was the only thing that we had planned. it was just like, ‘We go this way and I follow.'”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit the Hall of Fame podcast with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.