Legendary tag team Harlem Heat became 10-time champions during an incredible run in World Championship Wrestling, and the duo of real-life brothers – Booker T and Stevie Ray – will be immortalized in the WWE Hall of Fame on the eve of WrestleMania 35 this April. Harlem Heat joins a Hall of Fame class that includes D-Generation X, The Honky Tonk Man and Torrie Wilson.

Booker and Lash Huffman, who would go on to become wrestling superstars Booker T and Stevie Ray, grew up as wrestling fans watching stars like Cowboy Bill Watts with their grandparents. They got their start in professional wrestling in 1989 – but according to Stevie Ray, they never envisioned working together as a team.

“Me and my brother had no inclination of ever being a tag team. That was somebody else’s idea.”

It turned out to be a great idea. They flourished as partners in the Global Wrestling Federation, and won their first tag team titles in 1992 as “The Ebony Experience.” The GWF was regularly aired on ESPN at the time, and it didn’t take long for the call to come in from WCW.

“My motto was if we were good enough, some dude’s going to see us on television and they were going to call us, and we were going to get a big break,” Booker T said. “18 months into the Global Wrestling Federation, we got a call from Sid Vicious…. But like I tell my students that I have now at my wrestling school, I tell them they have to be the best where they are before they can be the best anywhere else. That’s what happened for us.”

Harlem Heat was born and the team transitioned to new roles as heels in WCW. With “Sister” Sherri serving as the team’s manager, Harlem Heat captured their first WCW Tag Team Championship in 1994, and the duo went on to have more title reigns than any other team in company history.

Booker T – who is now a two-time Hall of Famer, after being inducted as an individual in 2013 – and Stevie Ray reflected on their journey in professional wrestling in exclusive interviews with For The Win. The WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony will air on the WWE Network on Saturday, April 6th, at 8:00 p.m. ET.

FTW: Take me back to the moment you got the call that Harlem Heat is going into the Hall of Fame

Stevie Ray: I was speechless for a couple of seconds. The last thing I was thinking about was the Hall of Fame.

…. I’m going to be honest with you, I hadn’t really thought about it. You know, I get the fans hitting me all the time with different things about Harlem Heat needs to be in the Hall of Fame, so on and so forth. But you never know, so I never gave it very much thought.

Booker T: It was surprising, actually, I guess because one reason, my brother and I, we never actually wrestled in the WWE. My brother took a step aside at that point in time because he had a daughter, and he wanted to see her grow up and see her go to college. He got a chance to do that. But our career in WCW was awesome.

My brother and I were together for eight and a half years in WCW and together another two years prior in the Global Wrestling Federation. So we had a career as a tag team, and to be recognized as one of the great tag teams of all time…. [there were] a lot of great tag teams that we competed against back in the day, like the Steiners, the Nasty Boys and the Road Warriors, Sting and Lex Luger, Public Enemy – so many guys we got a chance to grapple with back then, and to be recognized, it’s pretty awesome.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wrtT6uEe5w

FTW: How did you break into the business together?

Booker T: It’s kind of crazy. My brother and I, we used to watch wrestling – actually, he used to take me down to the Sam Houston Coliseum, we used to watch those guys down there. Meng and Haku, they used to sneak us in the back and let us hang out with those guys. That was before we were even wrestlers or anything, so it was really, really cool.

I was always following my brother. I always followed my brother since I was a kid. I always wanted to be like my brother, I always looked up to him. Getting into wrestling was my brother’s idea, something he wanted to do. He was going to try out down in Dallas and I just rode along with him. Hot Stuff Eddie Gilbert, he saw me, he says “who’s this guy?” He goes “That’s my brother.” [Eddie says] “well we’re looking for a tag team!” That’s how it all began. In 1990 we went to Ivan Putski’s wrestling school, and that was the beginning of it.

Stevie Ray: We found out that Ivan Putski was opening a wrestling school and I was like ‘OK, I’m going to try it out.’ I never thought about getting into the business or anything like that to be honest, I just wanted to try out being a professional wrestler. I never thought about everything else, the aftermath of it, I just wanted to see if I could do it.

FTW: Where did the Harlem Heat gimmick come from?

Booker T: My brother and I, we actually came up with the Harlem part. I think Dusty Rhodes had a lot to do with the Heat.

Because my brother and I, we always loved those old movies back in the day, with Richard Roundtree, ‘Cotton Comes to Harlem.’ Can you dig it, sucka? That’s where a lot of that stuff comes from. As well as, my brother and I, we were from Houston, and most times when people think of Houston, they think you got a big Cowboy hat on and whatnot. Harlem Heat and Harlem was tough, so it fit. We found the music and everything just worked out.

FTW: Who were some of the people in the locker room who were influential in your career?

Booker T: So many guys back in the day who pushed for us. Arn Anderson, he was one of the guys who were always telling us… he told me one day, he said ‘you’re like a son to me.’ So he was always pushing for me to be one of the guys. Dusty Rhodes, I remember Dusty told me one time, my brother and I went out and worked and came back, Dusty said “they won’t put you on first no more.”

We’ve had so many mentors, guys that were instrumental in our careers. I even look back to the Global Wrestling Federation, guys like Maniac Mike Davis, who was a guy that was always making calls for us to get to the next level. He was like “you guys are going to make it.” Guys like Manny Fernandez, who gave me that sense that you’ve got to go out there and do it yourself sometimes. That’s what you do. You can’t wait on someone else to go out there and do it.

Stevie Ray: I would say, firstly, Sid Vicious. And guys like Jody Hamilton, Paul Orndorff, and Arn Anderson.

FTW: What was the dynamic like working with a family member? Were you harder on each other? Was it any different than working with anyone else in the business?

Booker T: I think it’s the same, actually. We know we’re brothers, you know? We know we’re a team. We know we’ve got to do this thing together. We know we’ve got each other’s backs.

That’s one thing I always had – a security blanket. My brother was always there to watch my back. He was always there to make sure I didn’t have anything hanging over my head and I could go out there and push myself to the limit… But the dynamic of squabbling, having disagreements, stuff like that, of course. That’s always going to happen.

https://youtu.be/7LTyTWULmWI

FTW: What do you consider to be the best moment of your career as a team?

Stevie Ray: The best moment was probably back in GWF. That would be being a babyface and bringing joy to people that hadn’t really had heroes to root for, especially African-American heroes in that section of the country – which is smack-dab in the middle of Dallas, Texas – for a long time. I think I got my biggest kick out of that.

FTW: When WWE fans are reminiscing about Harlem Heat in 20 years, what do you hope they’ll remember you for?

Booker T: It would just be keep passing it on more than anything. Young guys right now, the Usos, those two guys came out of my school. Authors of Pain, right now, two guys wrecking shop. You’ve got Street Profits out there representing Harlem Heat. That’s what it’s about. If they look back and say “Harlem Heat was badass,” that’s the only thing that really matters, as well as we were good people.

FTW: If you could go back and give yourself some advice at the start of your career, what would you say?

Stevie Ray: What would I tell myself? Nothing. Learn things as you go.

Booker T: I wouldn’t tell us anything, man. We had a dream. We had a blueprint, though, a gameplan. We didn’t slip on a banana peel and find ourselves in this position. Trust me, it didn’t happen that way.

But I would tell the young guys these days, look at the state of the business. The party, it’s real, it only lasts for so long. Make sure you prepare for what’s next, because it’s going to come very, very quick. Relish that, then move on to what comes next, because life moves in seasons.