2015 Reading Challenge Book 039 Booker T From Prison to Promise

TITLE-Booker T From Prison to Promise

AUTHOR-Booker T Huffman & Andrew William Wright

FORMAT-Ebook

FIRST TIME READING-Yes

COST-$3

Caught this on sale a year or so back.But it has sat on a flash drive forgotten until last week.I was looking for something to read digitally.

I first saw Booker T wrestle when Harlem Heat showed up on the various WCW syndicated shows. Over the years I have tracked down a decent amount of his matches from Global. And had heard about his stint in prison. I even got to meet Booker T back in the early 2000s.We had went to a PPV in Houston. Ended up hanging around after the show and saw Booker T heading to his car. He was really nice. Signing stuff and thanking us for coming to the show.  It sucks I lost my autograph in a move.

Booker starts the novel with his birth and goes pretty much chronologically through his life.He ended up losing both his parents when he was very young. Got abandoned by the older brothers and sisters that had said they would help raise him and his little sister. Then ended up living in their parents house with no power,water,heat and very little food. Thankfully Booker got sorta of adopted by a family.

He was doing pretty good. But ended up as part of  a group that was robbing Wendy's fast food places all over the Houston area. They get caught and Booker is set to prison. He gets out on good behaviour after a bit over a year. After some minor stumbles,Booker ends up working for a storage rental place. Where through complete chance,his boss is a huge wrestling fan. This man ends up giving Booker the $1000 he needs to start at Ivan Putski's wrestling school.

So we got Booker and his brother,the future Stevie Ray,being trained by Ivan Putski and Scott Casey.With Casey really doing most of the training.Booker tells lots of funny stories about his run ins with older vets during this time. The story about Killer Tim Brooks was the best.

Then once again a chance meeting with someone gets Booker a shot in the Global Wrestling Fed.Back then Global had a show on ESPN. So while they only ran a tiny area,they had nationwide TV.Booker and Stevie Ray become a tag team. That according to Booker gets lots of racist catcalls during their early matches. But they quickly got the crowd behind them.Everything is going good.When Booker and Stevie get a call from Sid Vicious. He wants to bring them in WCW. Of course they want to go. And the book ends with them speeding off out of the Sportatorium parking lot on their way to Atlanta.

Going into this book I was most interested in reading about Booker's days on the various Texas indies. And what he had done to get sent to prison.So with the book just covering that era I was entertained. I would have liked to hear some about his early years in WCW. Booker does hint that there is going to be a second book. I really hope it happens.

Booker T From Prison to Promise gets a 3.95 outta 5