JTG On If There Will Be A Black WWE Champion Anytime Soon, Why He Changed His Bret Hart Screensaver

JTG recently appeared on The RCWR Show, which airs Mondays at 11:15pm ET after WWE RAW on YouTube.com/TheRCWRshow and Tuesdays at 10pm ET on Spreaker.com. JTG talked about his new book, Damn! Why did I write this book?, which you can purchase at this link. The RCWR show sent us the highlights below, you can check out the full interview in the video above:

When the idea for writing his book came about:

"Well I use to tell stories a lot, you know. That's one thing about JTG, I love to tell stories but to actually put it one paper... I kept getting the same reaction from friends and family "Oh you need to put this on paper, you need to put this on paper." I give them the same reaction every time someone tells me the same thing "I'm not an author, I don't know anything about putting a book together." And you think about these obstacles, about getting a publisher and you know it's because? Like I didn't want to be burdened with all that and then I did some research and I discovered a new phenomenon right now was e-books. Read it on your phone. Everybody is on their phone everyday anyway. When you go out to the club everybody on their Instagram. So e-books right now is pretty big, so I decided to write an e-book and it's doing great, I'm getting a great response, loving the feedback, they want part two. I got to give the fans what they want. They want an audiobook. So I'm going to get on that too. So since I can't entertain the fans in the ring, I'm going to do it on the phone with e-books."

If any of those people mentioned in the book in a negative light have reached out to him, and if there have been any cease-and-desist from lawyers

"Oh no no no, probably not yet, but no. When I wrote the book, I knew I was going to get the heat. I have no problem getting heat. I have experience with that but I do not want any legal heat. So just to stay on the good side of the things, I left names out. I left a lot of hints. Fans, diehard wrestling fans are going to have fun decoding who the wrestlers are."

Signing with WWE at the young age of 21:

"I made a lot of rookie mistakes. I'll give you one story real quick, So how I avoided heat... So when I was up there every wrestler whether they want to admit it or not, their are a mark. They are fans deep down inside but they just have the courage to go after their dream. So I? I was still a fan and I had a Bret Hart screen saver on my phone, I'm a big Bret Hart fam as you can see if you read the book. And when I opened my phone in the locker room, my buddy, Shelton Benjamin, he saw that. He was like, "J what the hell you are doing?" I'm like, "what I do now? Like what?" He was like "What the hell is that on your phone?" I said it is a Bret Hart screen saver. He's like, "I understand you like Bret Hart but you can't have that here while you on the road. You can't be acting like a mark, you get heat for that." I was like damn but okay. And I changed it to like a Ferrari or something. Like you don't want to be caught being a mark. That's the derogatory term for die-hard fan."

Why he stuck with WWE:

"I was in love with wrestling, I was in love with the WWE. I had a great experience working there even with the bulls–t it was like I love that place. I had fun, I was able to travel the world and perform in front of millions of people. And that's what I really wanted to do from the bottom of my heart. But of course there's going to be bulls–t along that. You just can't have the perfect? it is not going to be perfect. But they also would dangle the carrot in front of me. The carrot was being a top guy. It wasn't about the money. It was just being able to be get in that big exposure being on RAW every single week. And being able to perform and being able to do your craft and share it with the world that was the carrot for me. I kept pushing for that because when you are at the bottom or in the middle and you're not on TV every week, you're not able to express yourself like you really want to. The carrot was being at WrestleMania, being that top guy getting all the great storylines, but that didn't come."

Kofi Kingston, Big E. Langston, Xavier Woods, Booker T, Bobby Lashley, Ron Simmons, Godfather, Papa Seango. Same guy right yeah? Mark Henry, Darren Young, Titus O'Neil, Ezekiel Jackson, Junkyard Dog, Dlo Brown, Shelton Benjamin, Ron Truth Killings, KoKo B Ware, Devon Hughes, Tony Atlas, the late Big Daddy V a.k.a Viscera, himself and Shad Gaspard. What stands out to you when he hears those names?

"All great memorable characters in the WWE? in the wrestling business. All great characters. And amongst them, amongst that list there are some who should be and who could be WWE champion. Not world champion. Let me get that correct. I don't want to be miss-quoted. Not world champion, WWE Champion."

If we will see a full-blown African-American male as the WWE Champion:

"I don't see that happening in the near future, no. You know to be real and to be very candid and keep it honest, African-American wrestlers, black wrestlers... They have to work twice as hard as white competitors. If you haven't noticed like let's say someone like Daniel Bryan. If it was a black wrestler on that same level, same charisma, same ring style... there is no way he will be WWE champion. He's got to work 10 times harder. We got to work ten times harder and we still don't even get to that level. And it is not just African-Americans. I don't want to take anything away from the Rock, he's African-American, he is black but he is not identified as black. There is a big difference. You have to be identified as black. Rock is more ambiguous, he's exotic. Mainstream Hollywood society doesn't identify him as black. Once you played Hercules and you have long flowing brunette hair, you're not identified as black."

If skin color affects a wrestler's push:

"I definitely think it affects it definitely. I do believe that there is a system in place in the WWE that only a black wrestler can only go so far. With the stereotype, now it is not as bad as it used to be in the early 90s or 80s with the stereotype. You know they toned it down a little bit. But still, there are still stereotypes there in place."

You can check out the full interview in the video above. You can purchase JTG's new book, Damn! Why did I write this book?, at this link.