Bruce Prichard Explains Triple H’s Infamous Racial Promo Against Booker T Leading to WrestleMania 19

– Bruce Prichard’s discussion about the infamous Triple H promo against Booker T leading into their WrestleMania 19 match was featured in the latest episode of his podcast. The promo, for those who don’t recall, was criticized for being racist after Triple H said that “somebody like you doesn’t get to be a world champion” and referenced Booker T’s “nappy hair” among other comments that people called out as playing into racial stereotypes:

“I think you’re a little bit confused about your role in life here. You’re going to get to go to WrestleMania, but the fact is, Booker … somebody like you doesn’t get to be a world champion. People like you don’t deserve it. That’s reserved for people like me. That’s where the confusion is. You’re not here to be a competitor. You’re here to be an entertainer. That’s what you do. You entertain people. Hell, you entertain me all the time. Go ahead, do a little dance for me. Go ahead. Give me one of those Spinaroonies. Entertain me. That’s your job. Don’t be embarrassed. You’re here to make people like me laugh. With your nappy hair and your ‘suckas.’ Hell, I was laughing all week long after you won that battle royal.”

Triple H later said at WrestleMania XIX press conference in response to a question by Michael Cole that the “people like you” comments were in reference to Booker’s past as a criminal, not in regard to his race.

You can see some highlights from Prichard’s discussion below:

On who wrote the promo: “I believe Brian Gewirtz wrote the promo. However, I think that when you take it out of context, and you go and look at the entire promotion of what that match was about and what the whole angle was about, it was about someone from WCW that had held that championship five times before thinking that they were worthy to headline a WWF WrestleMania. And that was the context. Again, when you isolate one promo, and a few lines out of one promo and the way it was delivered, it can be taken in a lot of ways. The way it was intended and the way it was written, and the way that the whole angle was laid out, was about Booker T being the standard bearer of WCW. Because at that time, Booker was the biggest star to come out of WCW. Five time World champion. And you really think that you can hang in the main event of a WrestleMania? That was a storyline, and people like to pick out this one promo and lines out of it, and say, ‘Okay, delivered how they were’ — and granted, how they were delivered, you can take a lot of ways. But they intent, and the way the angle was laid out, was exactly how I just laid it out to you.”

On the racial aspects of the promo such as the “nappy hair” line: “Oh, I don’t get behind the ‘nappy hair’ either. But you go backwards, Rock saying that was all okay. But again, you’re saying because a white man is saying it to a black man, that’s bad. And I’m saying it’s not good at all. I’m not going to defend it. I’m just telling you what the angle and what it was, and people like to pick out certain words, you want to pick out that one thing. But when you look at the overall scope of it, that was what the angle was about. Someone from WCW who had been a five-time champion not being worthy of being in the WWE. If [the nappy hair line] is the one thing you wanna pick on, and that’s what you wanna hang your hat on, that’s cool.”

On if the thing would have been better-received if Booker had won: “I think that it probably would have alleviated a lot of that if that had happened … First of all, the plan was always for Hunter to go over at WrestleMania. And that was always the plan from the initial get-go. But again, I love it when you sit there and you wanna book everything, and ‘Everything’s a happy ending.’ Then what? Then what do you do? And when you look at the whole picture and you try to book a card like WrestleMania, you’ve got to have your ebbs and flows. You’ve got to have your peaks and valleys. And Vince was adamant from the very start. There was one major title that was gonna change hands, in his eyes in that night and that was Brock. We were crowning one guy, one new babyface, and that was it and it was gonna be Brock’s night. And everybody knew that from the start. That was never, from time to time it was brought up, what if? No. ‘It’s all we’re gonna do. We’re crowning Brock that night.’ There was really no more debate beyond that. So it’s easy to sit back and say ‘Well, they should have done this.’ No! When you talk about the overall story, and you talk about the whole package and everything you have to do. And everyone else on the card, and all the other matches, and all the other stories, no. That would not have been the best thing to do.”

On whether that line should have been included since Booker was booked to lose: “Well, I didn’t include it and again, that goes back to delivery sometimes, and it goes back to, if you look at the totality — not one promo. If you look at the totality of the entire promotion [of the match]. And I think you will find that we didn’t focus on his ‘nappy hair.’ That’s one line of one promo. When you look at the totality of everything that we did in that promotion, you will see it was about WCW and WWF … Do I think he should have said that? I said that already, no. I thought it was bad. I don’t think he should have said that. I don’t think that was written for him. But I don’t know that he didn’t go to Booker and they said, ‘Hey yeah, go ahead and do that. I don’t know that. But I’m saying that I don’t think it was good, but I also know it wasn’t written that way. And I also know it wasn’t the intent and that also isn’t the way that the overall promotion was delivered.”

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