Booker T gave a candid assessment of the recent triple threat match involving Tiffany Stratton, Jade Cargill, and Nia Jax. He emphasized that there were major coordination issues, saying, “You could tell there was a lot of miscommunication in the match.”
He compared it to his own work with women’s matches in Reality of Wrestling, where the priority is “trying to put the girls in the best position to be comfortable in the ring.” In his view, each competitor had unique challenges: Tiffany Stratton as an NIL talent still developing, Jade Cargill as someone “pretty much just fresh off her AEW run” where she “probably didn’t learn a whole lot,” and Nia Jax as the experienced wrestler who might feel the need to lead.
Booker suggested this mix led to problems: “It could have been a plethora of things, but you can tell there was a lot of miscommunication.” He also underlined that in wrestling, the flow to the ending is crucial: “The only thing they’re going to remember is the finish… that didn’t happen in this match.”
Ultimately, he didn’t shy away from calling it out: “Was it a botch? Heck yeah, it was a botch. A miscommunication. A screw up. Whatever term you want to put on it. That can happen on live television.”
(Source: Hall of Fame)
Booker is such a stooge, man..
The old saying goes, a botched count typically falls on the wrestler being pinned. Jax lost where she was, and just snowballed. This also falls on who trained the ref. And who ever trained the ref clearly did a bad job.
The ref, after stopping the count, should have slide her hands under Nia’s shoulders, as if to confirm that Nia had possibly lifted on. This buys Nia time to recover. After the hand slide, the ref waits a heart beat, and then begins the count again. This is the signal to Nia that this isn’t the finish, and she needs to kick out.