Booker T was warned pretty early into his WWE run that taking a nap backstage could get him heat, but he wasn’t about to lose any sleep over it. Instead of following the unwritten rule, Booker deliberately tested it by telling Jim Ross exactly where he was going to sleep.
Speaking on the Hall of Fame podcast, Booker was discussing the long hours wrestlers could spend waiting around backstage before shows. He had his own way of dealing with that downtime — find somewhere comfortable and get some sleep.
“I would just find a corner and go to sleep, you know. But I remember — I always think about the first time when I got to WWE, and I was in the locker room and I was nodding off, you know, and I was catching a nap.”
That apparently wasn’t something everybody thought Booker should be doing in WWE. He recalled another wrestler approaching him backstage and nervously warning him that sleeping could quickly put him on the wrong side of people in the company.
“And this guy came in. He was so scared, and he goes, ‘Hey, Book, you know, hey man, I wouldn’t do that around here if I was you.’ And I go, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Taking a nap. That’s not cool. You can get a lot of heat.’ And I go, ‘Taking a nap?’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’”
Booker wasn’t exactly terrified by the warning. If anything, hearing how serious the other wrestler was about it made him want to find out whether this supposed rule was actually real.
“Okay. And he was scared. He was really frightened, to the point where I go, ‘Let me test this theory, because I’m going to take a nap or they’re going to have to fire me.’ Right?”
Booker didn’t quietly sneak away to see if anybody would notice either. Since Jim Ross was the person who signed his WWE contract, Booker decided to go straight to him and basically announce that he was about to break this supposed backstage rule.
“So, the person that signed my contract was JR — Jim Ross. I remember walking after this guy told me that. I left, I was walking out, and I passed Jim Ross and I said, ‘Hey, Jim.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, Book.’ I said, ‘If anybody’s looking for me, I’ll be in my car taking a nap.’”
Ross’ reaction wasn’t exactly the dressing-down Booker had been warned about. He simply acknowledged him and let Booker carry on.
“He goes, ‘All right.’ I kept walking. And he didn’t say nothing.”
That was pretty much all Booker needed to hear. As far as he was concerned, if one of the top people involved in bringing him to WWE didn’t care, he wasn’t going to worry about some mysterious backstage heat.
“So, I said, ‘I’m going to go to the top guy and test this theory, because if I can’t take a nap, somebody’s going to come and tell me why I can’t take a nap.’”
Booker also didn’t see sleeping as him being lazy backstage. He viewed it as part of getting himself physically ready to perform later that night.
“Because me taking a nap is me preparing for tonight. I’m getting ready.”
If WWE actually had a problem with that, Booker wanted somebody with authority to explain the logic to him. Apparently, that conversation never happened.
“And when someone could, you know, tell me why I can’t prepare and get ready for tonight — because I don’t practice. I don’t do a lot of stuff like that like a lot of those guys did — somebody got to tell me. Somebody got to explain it.”
In the end, Booker’s little experiment apparently settled the issue for good. He kept taking his naps, nobody came looking to punish him for it, and the supposed backstage rule never became a problem again.
“And no one ever explained it to me. And no one ever said anything to me about taking naps, you know, my whole career.”
Booker basically called WWE’s backstage bluff on day one and never heard another word about it. What another wrestler treated like a dangerous unwritten rule turned out to be something Booker ignored for the rest of his career without anybody stopping him.
What do you think about wrestlers potentially getting backstage heat in WWE just for sleeping before a show? Let us know in the comments below.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
