Booker T On Why He’s Not Surprised About Sting’s Successful AEW Run

On the latest episode of the Hall of Fame podcast, Booker T talked about Sting’s impact on AEW, his pairing with Darby Allin, and retirement match at Revolution. You can check out some highlights below:

On whether he’s surprised about Sting’s successful AEW run with Darby Allin: “Not at all. I mean, Steve’s humble dude, man. Sting’s a humble man. You’re not gonna find too many guys who have a lot of bad things to say about Sting. Humble as humble can be, and I’m sure he’s feeling a certain way about his last run, and to be honest I don’t think it could have been done without Darby. Darby, he literally was the guy that was going out there doing a lot of the work, but still represented Sting at the same time. Still putting Sting on a pedestal and looking at him like he’s the ultimate mentor. Like ‘Man, I couldn’t have found a better place to land in this business than to be Steve’s right hand man. I mean, come on. Can you imagine that as a young kid watching Sting do his thing. Next thing you know, you tag team with this guy… So I get that 100% Man. So big ups for Sting man, he’s getting ready to call it a day ride off into the sunset. And one thing about it, he did it his way. He did it on his own terms. He didn’t let anybody tell him he couldn’t do it, when so many people told him he couldn’t. So, big props. Just big props.”

On whether fans will play for AEW PPV events every other month at a $60 price point: “Man, it’s hard to say. Tt’s hard to say. The pack, and the blueprint and the package that WWE has, has proven to be very, very lucrative. It’s a success, going away from the PPVs and getting that $60 once a month or whatever, nine times a year. Even when WWE went to the Network and was charging what, $10 a month, which was a great deal. It still proves that this model now, as far as being under that Peacock brand and being able to sell it from that perspective, it’s a much more lucrative deal.

“But I do think for AEW, I think I think that’s the route they have to go right now. Because they don’t have the ability to be able to sell their product from that perspective. So they’re gonna have to do PPVs. And I think they can sell it.I don’t know what their buyrates have been, as far as you know, the PPV goes. But I would imagine, I could be wrong, but I would imagine that they haven’t been losing money on the pay-per-views.”

On whether AEW is profitable: “Zero profit. Just because it’s so many contracts, you know. Having to produce that show live. Man, that right there, that’s where a lot of the money goes out. The taped shows, you save so much more money on taping shows. But of course, they want to try to do it and they want to do it big. So they’re going this route. So, in the beginning, they are losing tons of money I would imagine. I’m not in there working with the books or anything like that, but I can imagine having a small company like Reality of Wrestling and how much money I lost over my first few years trying to start up a wrestling company. I lost — I spent millions, I really did. I spent millions and tried to create something.”

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