In the fictional WWE storylines, being the world champion means you are the best wrestler. But in real life, it means you are the best performer. The decision of who gets to be the titleholder simply comes from a team of creative writers with the final call going to WWE owner Vince McMahon himself: Who do we want to be the face of our company? Who do we think is good enough?

In its 62 year history, WWE has never chosen a black wrestler to hold its world championship.

That’s not Rusev’s fault, of course. He just showed up a few months ago, and the black wrestlers he’s effortlessly demolished during his short tenure are just a small fraction of all the talented black wrestlers who’ve never been entrusted to hold WWE’s most important big shiny belt. Rusev is just the flavor of the moment until proven otherwise, a guy in which WWE officials see potential, so they’re having him beat the rogues gallery of jobbers in order to bolster his credentials. Fans who jokingly ask why Rusev is beating up all the black dudes are missing the more pressing question: Why are so many of the black dudes jobbers?

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Born Booker Tio Huffman Jr., the wrestler Booker T grew up in a rough neighborhood in Houston. He was the youngest of eight children raised by a single mother. Like many stories that begin this way, Booker fell into trouble. At the age of 22, Huffman and a friend robbed a Wendy’s where they worked, leading to Huffman being convicted of aggravated robbery and sentenced to five years in prison. Following his release, Huffman ended up a single parent himself, working in a storage company and looking for a way to provide a better life for his son.

He found it in the form of professional wrestling. His first character was a military gimmick named G.I. Bro. He quickly hooked up with Stevie Ray to form the Ebony Express. In 1993, the team signed with WCW, WWE’s biggest rival throughout the ‘90s, and changed their name to Harlem Heat, with Huffman eventually taking the name Booker T, a name he would hold the remainder of his career.

The difference between WCW and WWE was always a philosophical one. WCW’s roots were in the southern variety of wrestling, a slower paced, more technical style. WWE, then called the WWF, was based up north and leaned more to that region’s style of wrestling, based around colorful characters, a whole lot of pomp, and power moves. Conventional wisdom dictates that racial bias would be more often encountered in southern wrestling, but the opposite is the case.

Booker T once came close to winning the big one. In the buildup to Wrestlemania 19 in 2003, Raw’s world championship was safely in the hands of Triple H, a performer named Paul Levesque who was playing a “franchise” character, a cocky bad guy who everyone is supposed to hate because he always wins. Triple H’s first character was named Hunter Hearst Helmsley, a New England blueblood. The franchise character was based on sports teams like the New York Yankees and the New England Patriots, teams that have been so good for so long that people are eager for someone to come along and dethrone them. Nothing more accurately describes Triple H in 2003. People were tired of him winning. They wanted an underdog, and that underdog was Booker T.