Having both been mainstays of WWE’s commentary teams for the better part of the past decade, it’s long been obvious that Booker T and Corey Graves haven’t always seen eye to eye.
But while the two former wrestlers-turned-announcers previously cleared the air during a podcast episode in 2018, it appears they once again have what those in the industry call “heat” with each other.
During the latest episode of the Hall of Fame with Booker T & Brad Gilmore podcast, the two-time WWE Hall of Famer expressed his disdain for people putting “their lives on Twitter.” This led to a natural opening for Gilmore to ask for Booker T’s thoughts about Graves, who recently made headlines for a post on X in which he expressed frustration over his demotion from WWE SmackDown to WWE NXT.
“How is your relationship with Cory? Y’all good? Y’all cool?” Gilmore asked.
“Oh, no, we’re not cool,” Booker T — whose real name is Booker T. Huffman Jr. — replied. “Not cool at all.”
After Booker T confirmed, “I didn’t like the tweet,” Gilmore asked if he had addressed it with Graves, who he now calls NXT with, alongside Vic Joseph. The five-time world champion said he hadn’t, but didn’t rule out such a confrontation taking place in the future.
“I didn’t tell him I didn’t like it, but I’m sure there perhaps will come a time when I might say it,” Booker T said. “My thing is, it wasn’t my business. He wasn’t talking to me, wasn’t talking about me. So, so therefore that’s out of my pay grade. You know what I mean? So I let the bosses handle that stuff. But my thing is, man, stay off Twitter. Stay off Twitter, especially after you’ve been drinking.”
The 59-year-old followed up by saying he wasn’t accusing Graves of drinking before the post, but was rather just stating, “if you drinking, the last place you wanna be is, is on Twitter.”
While Graves’ post led many to question whether it was a work (storyline) or a shoot (real), all indications in the time since have pointed to the latter. After missing the episode of NXT that followed his post, Graves was back on the air a week later, expressing a newfound enthusiasm for his role on WWE’s quasi-development brand, which airs a weekly two-hour show on The CW.
“I am right where I want to be, where passion is everything,” an overly enthusiastic Graves said after Joseph reintroduced him. “Only the hungry survive and pro wrestling never stopped being cool. Let’s light the fuse.”
As for his relationship with Booker T, it doesn’t appear that the two are seeing eye to eye, although that would hardly be a first in the world of pro wrestling. For now, everything on the NXT broadcast team appears to finally be settled — although that obviously could change if the former Harlem Heat tag team member ever opts to have the conversation with Graves that he alluded to.
