Booker T spoke on his Hall of Fame podcast this week to explain why he believes that a wrestler appearing on AEW Dark is a demotion.

“Hell yeah, it’s a demotion. I know that’s going to get picked up, but hell yeah it’s a demotion. Damnit, I’m not working on Dark. For me, working on Dark, which is a show that is only on the internet should be for the young guys coming up. I didn’t come from the big how, no pun intended, which I am talking about WWE, I didn’t come from WWE to come to AEW to work Dark. I don’t even know what Dark is, I don’t know who’s on it, I don’t know when it’s aired or anything like that. So, for me to be on Dark, it would make me feel a certain way, me personally.”

Booker compared it to working a show like Velocity or WWE Superstars.

“If you’re so focused on winning and losing, being in the main event, being the guy, you’re going to miss out on a whole lot that’s going on. I say for me, I loved being in different positions at different times. It gave you a different reason to work. So many different reasons to work in those positions. Mid-card guy, I’m cool, opening the show, I’m cool, main event, I’m cool. The only thing I wasn’t cool with was working Velocity, or Superstars, and I never had to work any of them shows. That’s when you should start getting worried, the syndicated shows, Heat, Velocity, Main Event, stuff like that. I never worked one of those shows.”

“If Vince came to me and said, ‘hey Book, I need you to work the Velocity show, we need to bump the ratings on that show, we need some star power on it, do you think you can do it?’ What do you think I am going to say? I am going to say, ‘yeah.’ But my boss, he respected me enough not to put me on those shows. He respected me enough as far as to keep my star power at a certain position. He kept me working around the main event guys. If I wasn’t with the main event guys I was doing something.”