Booker T On How He Remembers Benoit, Kofi Downplays Heat With Orton, Impact Rating Rises

How Booker T separates Benoit’s crime from fonder memories: Booker T discussed how he separates the heinous crimes of deceased wrestler Chris Benoit from his fonder memories, during a recent interview with Inside Wrestling magazine. “I separate them because I have to,” said the SmackDown General Manager. “You can’t put the two together. I think of the Chris I knew on the road and in Japan, eating the frickin’ noodles, traveling and working together for years. I can’t put those two people together because I really think the two were different people at the time. We’ll never know what happened, and that’s the thing: We don’t know. The brain is a fragile machine, because you can live with a person for 30 years and then they kill you one day.” The former World Heavyweight Champion murdered his wife and son before committing suicide in 2007. Analysis of his brain determined that he had degradation comparable to an Alzheimer’s patient due to years of untreated concussions sustained in the ring. ________________________________________________________________________________ Kingston says Orton was just in character: Kofi Kingston suggested Randy Orton was just in-character when he infamously screamed “stupid” during a triple-threat match also involving John Cena in 2010. “Everyone knows Randy kinda has an attitude,” the Intercontinental Champion told Smacktalk Radio Live on Thursday. “What everyone doesn’t remember is that we were in a heated rivalry so a lot of what you saw was him being his character and him kinda playing to that. I thought it was real funny when I started reading these things like ‘Randy Orton doesn’t like Kofi’, which I think is fine because it added to what we were doing at the time, it made people more interested in what we were doing … it is what it is….” The incident occurred on an episode of Raw, and it’s alleged that Kofi was supposed to have positioned himself for a punt kick but forced Orton to do an RKO instead: During the interview Kofi was also asked about the status of his former AirBoom partner Evan Bourne: “Evan is doing alright, he has been doing some rehab for his ankle. For those who don’t know, he got into a pretty bad motorcycle accident and pretty much broke almost every bone in his foot…but he’s doing great and he has a real positive attitude…he’ll be back before we know it and doing what he does best and that’s fly around the ring and do all types of superhero/action figure-esque video game type moves…he should be back hopefully soon, not sure the exact timetable on it but yeah he’s doing great” Bourne has been out since March after already taking time off with a 60 day Wellness Suspension. ________________________________________________________________________________ Impact’s highest rating since September: This week’s edition of TNA Impact Wrestling on Spike TV, drew the show’s highest number since mid-September. The post Turning Point episode scored a 1.07 rating with 1.353 million viewers.