Much has been made of the legacy of Booker T. After starring for WCW, he was that rare star who went on to no lesser stardom in WWE. Moreover, he challenged for a world title at WrestleMania, won a King of the Ring tournament, and cumulatively captured six world titles. Most wrestling fans got their first look at Booker as half of the Harlem Heat tag team, though, where he was paired with his real life brother Stevie Ray. The latter star tends to go overlooked because, aside from accepting a tag team Hall of Fame induction, he never made the jump over to WWE. Nonetheless, he had a noteworthy career of his own, rooted in WCW.
Booker T & Stevie Ray: Harlem Heat
In the late 1980s into early 1990s, the men who would become known as Booker T and Stevie Ray were staples of wrestling in Texas. Earlier in their careers, the two were booked to feud with one another in the Western Wrestling Alliance, before falling into a more natural situation as tag team partners. Their national profile started with the Global Wrestling Federation, which aired via ESPN; there, the brother team was billed as The Ebony Experience.
Booker T and Stevie Ray would start building their legacy in earnest, though, in WCW, where they were ten-time Tag Team Champions and are generally regarded as one of the most iconic teams in company history. They were successful enough even to spark a spin-off. A reunion, after both men had been out on their own for two years, gave way to Ray turning heel to launch the Harlem Heat Inc. faction, and perhaps more memorably the Harlem Heat 2000 tag team between Ray and Big T (the former Ahmed Johnson). For all of Ray’s success on his own, there’s little question he’s best remembered for all of these efforts under the Harlem Heat brand.
Stevie Ray In The New World Order
In the summer of 1998, Stevie Ray joined the nWo Hollywood—the heel version of WCW’s most famous faction that was feuding with the nWo Wolfpac. Amidst a bloated roster of talents, Ray was an unlikely star to have stood out. Nonetheless, he did garner a spot representing the group in the 1998 War Games match, and even had a featured role, using a slapjack to incapacitate opponents and assist his higher profile partners, Hollywood Hogan and Bret Hart, on offense.
In the later stages of the original nWo run—after the black-and-white and red-and-black versions of the group had reunited, and then after the nWo Elite main eventers were made separate from the cluster of mid-card talent fans came to call “The B-Team,” Ray actually became the leader of the lower profile sub-faction. He did so by defeating an underwhelming field of other hopefuls—Brian Adams, Horace Hogan, and Vincent—in a four-man battle royal.
Stevie Ray The Broadcaster
“Straightshootin’” Stevie Ray rounded out his WCW career from the broadcast table as a color commentator. Though he wasn’t the most polished man for the job, he did respectably in the role alongside all-time great play-by-play man Tony Schiavone, the expert source of knowledge that was Mike Tenay, and other stalwarts. Ray offered a genuinely different voice from anyone WCW had featured in that role up to that point, including the credibility of being a recently featured in-ring performert, as well as the real-life brother of a main eventer
Ray would get lured from the announce team role for one more televised match—billed as career vs. title against new WCW Champion Scott Steiner. Big Poppa Pump won handily in a poorly received match. While the remaining broadcasters made a valiant effort to sell this one as a continuation of an epic rivalry between Harlem Heat and The Steiner Brothers, the match was limited by Steiner not being at his peak as an in-ring performer, and all the more so Ray appearing out of shape for this role.
Stevie Ray’s wrestling legacy may be seen a bit like Marty Jannetty’s. He was half of a famous tag team who watched his former partner become a world champion and main event fixture, while he largely treaded water on his own. Nonetheless, Ray does deserve some respect for sticking it out and remaining a major part of WCW in the nWo and later as a broadcaster. While he didn’t have the career Booker T did, he was an impressive physical specimen and skilled talker worthy of the WWE Hall of Fame induction he garnered in 2019.