Booker T and The Undertaker were on two different sides of the fence when the NWO was at its peak popularity. Booker was paid by the same company cutting checks for the NWO, but perhaps shockingly, never joined the faction.Meanwhile, TheUndertaker was Tombstoning and chokeslamming on the other channel for WWE. But regardless of where they worked, the NWO left its footprint across the entire wrestling landscape. The two WWE Hall of Famers recently sat down on 'Taker's "Six Feet Under" podcast to trade thoughts on the NWO's impact on the industry as a whole.
"It almost killed every babyface in the company,"Booker said, referring to wrestling's traditional hero-villain dynamic. "It almost ruined wrestling. ... NWOcould've killed the business. It really could have."
'Taker said that from his side of things, the NWO forced WWE to completely shift the demographic they were targeting.
"When the NWO started and all that, it wasn't a kid thing," 'Taker said. "It's not comical or it's not [for kids], which is where we were still at. ... there were a bunch of silly characters that were still trying to sell merch. And these guys were selling a story that's like, 'Oh, I feel that.'"
In past interviews, Booker has further detailed why he believed the NWO was dangerous for traditional wrestling constructs. But before the NWO could do any lasting damage, the storyline imploded on itself, meandering in too many confusing directions and adding too many wrestlers to count. WWE Hall of Famer Kevin Nash, NWO's founding member, said he would've done things differently.During an interview Nash conducted while stoned for Vice's docuseries "Who Killed WCW?," he blamed Turner executives, not the NWO, for WCW's demise.
