WWE Hall of Famer Booker T owns and runs his own wrestling promotion and school called Reality of Wrestling based out of Houston, Texas. One of Booker T’s top students is female wrestler “The Renaissance Woman” Hyan, who is currently the promotions Diamonds Champion.
Hyan recently sat down and spoke to Bodyslam.net‘s Cassidy Haynes and Sean Hubbard and discussed a wide variety of pro wrestling topics, including what it is like to train under Booker T.
She shared a story about Booker ribbing her and testing her commitment to the business:
“Booker doesn’t just like to critique you. That’s not the only thing he does. He’ll like test you. Everything is like a test of Booker to see how you react to certain situations, because people quit, people give up, people let things get into their head, and he’s like if things are getting into your head at this level, you’re never going to make it to the next level, meaning WWE”.
“He’ll test you in certain things to see how you react. So, this was my test. I remember I was doing a match. I had been gone from Reality of Wrestling for a little bit and it was my first mach back. I remember I went the gym, I got dressed up, and I looked legitimately cute, cause I remember looking in the mirror, and I looked cute. So, I go to the building, and normally when we go to shows, everyone is dressed in work out clothes, because you’re gonna roll around a little bit, but I made the effort to wear something different, something nice. So, before the show starts Booker likes to call you in his office and tell you what he wants for the match, he’ll ask you what you’re gonna do, or pretty much just want to go over stuff with you”.
“So I get called into the office with Kylie Rae because we’re fighting together at the time and he’s like (Booker says) ‘You’re gonna do a run-in, what are you going to wear?’, and I said “I can just wear this”, and he says ‘So you’re gonna show up to my show looking like a bum?’. I was like “what?” and look at Kylie and I looked at him and was like “this has to be a joke right now”. I had no words and I thought he was joking for the longest time, I said “ok”, and he’s like (Booker T says) ‘You’re off the show’.
“A year and a half passes by and Kevin (Booker T’s right hand man/producer) comes up to me, we talk about that whole thing that happened, and says ‘You know you didn’t really look like a bum that day… That was a test by the way. That was Booker testing you to see if you would stay at the show. He just wanted to see if you really wanted to stay here (Reality of Wrestling)’. I figured that’s what it was at the time… he must be testing me on something, and then coming back, I said yup, he was testing me. I passed the test”.
“One thing he will do is, if you get blown up in the ring, he’ll call you ‘LAZY LEGS’, and that’s the worst thing Booker can call you is lazy legs, because you’ll legitimately be known to him as LAZY LEGS for an entire year”. When HWWeekly’s Sean Hubbard asked her is she has been called LAZY LEGS, she said laughingly and happily “never”.
Hyan is about to leave on a 3 month tour of Japan for the Marvelous promotion. You can check out the rest of Hyan’s interview on the Hubbard Wrestling Weekly podcast, which was co-hosted by Cassidy Haynes of Bodyslam.net by clicking the link here.
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(Please credit Bodyslam.net and Sean Hubbard for the transcription.)
