Video games have become commonplace in wrestling today partially thanks to the popularity of Xavier Woods and UpUpDownDown.
But before Xavier turned backstage video games into one of the most popular channels on YouTube, Booker T was using his championship perk to play games in WCW.
"When I won the WCW World Title, everyone in WCW who won the World Title would get their own locker room. When I won the World Title they said, 'Book, you get your own locker room.' I couldn't do that, I wanted to dress with the boys. I said, 'What you can do is get my a 55 inch TV to take on the road so I can play my Playstation.' They got me a 55 inch TV, set it up in the locker room, and I would play video games," Booker said on his Hall of Fame podcast.
Things were a bit different when Booker got to WWE though.
"When I got to WWE, I was playing Madden one day, D'Lo Brown sits down and we're into it. Michael Hayes walks by and goes, 'Hey, you guys are playing video games, huh?' 'Yeah, we're playing Madden.' 'Alright,' and he walks off. D'Lo looks at me and turns white. He sets the controller down and goes, 'Man, I gotta go' and he gets up and walks away. There was a rule back in the day, 'no video game playing,' guys couldn't play video games. They had to be on the job, studying, working on their craft," he recalled.
Xavier seemingly heard the same complaints when he brought video games to WWE and fired back by noting that reading, playing cards, and checking phones were also "taking time away from the craft," which led to video games being more accepted in the locker room.
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