New Jack
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| Jerome Young | |
|---|---|
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| Statistics | |
| Ring name(s) | New Jack |
| Billed height | 6 ft 0 in (183 cm) |
| Billed weight | 240 lb (109 kg) |
| Born | January 3, 1963 Atlanta, Georgia |
| Trained by | Ray Candy |
| Debut | 1992 |
| Retired | May 24, 2008 |
Jerome Young (born January 3, 1963) is an American professional wrestler, better known by his stage name New Jack.
He is known for his willingness to take dangerous bumps and his stiff hardcore wrestling style, often taking unneeded risks and "shooting" on opponents. He is also known for having his theme song ("Natural Born Killaz" by Ice Cube and Dr. Dre) play throughout his matches in ECW. The inspiration for his ring name came from the movie New Jack City.
Young has two children.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Career
Young claims he was a bounty hunter before he became a professional wrestler. He also claims to have committed four justifiable homicides in the line of duty. The only available evidence to these claims was stated by himself in interviews.
Young trained under Ray Candy and debuted in 1993 in the Memphis, Tennessee-based United States Wrestling Association (USWA), where he adopted the name New Jack. He went on to form a tag team, The Gangstas, with Mustafa Saed in Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW). The Gangstas took part in several controversial angles, on one occasion using affirmative action to enable them to win matches with a two count pinfall as opposed to the conventional three count. They engaged in a long feud with the Rock 'N Roll Express (Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson). During their stint, the NAACP would picket outside the performance venues because of the "Gangsta" gimmick, claiming that no racial violence had occurred in the Tennessee area for years, and they didn't want the reputation of gangsters to be put into the Tennessee area.
[edit] Extreme Championship Wrestling
In 1995, The Gangstas left SMW and joined the Philadelphia-based Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) promotion. They won the ECW Tag Team Championships twice before Saed left the company in 1997. New Jack then formed The Gangstanators, a new tag team with former Eliminator John Kronus, going on to win a third ECW Tag Team Championship.New Jack began dragging in a garbage can full of weapons and throwing it into the ring as a sort of ultra-violent grab bag. He graduated from broken glass scattered on the mat to forks to bats wrapped in barbed wire to a staple gun.Over the years, all the encounters with razors and barbed wire have left a thick mass of scar tissue on New Jack's forehead. The deepest scar is from a pizza cutter that an opponent ran over his head. The next night, Jack says, he stuck that opponent with a shard of metal.Jack isn't the biggest wrestler, but he is astonishingly fast and powerful in the ring. Many wrestlers are afraid to face him.But the fans love him. He is the epitome of absolute brutality and true athletic talent mixed with a charismatic ability to communicate with his public, both in person and on TV.
[edit] The Mass Transit Incident
New Jack was involved in the Mass Transit Incident on November 23, 1996 in Revere, Massachusetts. The Gangstas were scheduled to face D-Von Dudley and Axl Rotten. For whatever reason, Axl Rotten could not make it to the show (In the 2005 documentary Forever Hardcore, New Jack said he thinks something happened with Axl's grandmother, which forced Axl to not make it). Rotten was replaced with "Mass Transit" Eric Kulas, an untrained seventeen-year-old who convinced booker Paul Heyman that he was nineteen and had been trained by the veteran Killer Kowalski. Kulas was hospitalized as a result, eventually receiving fifty stitches. New Jack was charged with aggravated assault stemming from the incident, but was acquitted. Kulas subsequently sued New Jack and ECW for damages in July 1998, but lost the case. Kulas died on May 12, 2002 at the age of 22 due to complications from gastric bypass surgery.
[edit] August 1998-1999
New Jack throughout the late-1990s was in a bitter feud with Da Baldies and their leader The Spanish Angel over the unofficial title of "King of the Streets". The two battled back and forth over the matter in bloody street fights. One of ECW television's most gruesome moments is when in the course of a match, Angel used New Jack's staple gun (which he often wore around his neck with a chain) against him, stapling him in the eye. Referees called off the match, and New Jack disappeared from the air for several months. New Jack returned by the end of 1999 with his eye seemingly recovered, now sporting a scythe around his neck, claiming that he's "upgraded" the staple gun. The first match he had against Angel since his return was a successful one, as he continued his feud against Da Baldies.
[edit] The Danbury Fall
On March 12, 2000, New Jack (legitimately) suffered brain damage and was permanently blinded in his right eye, when he and his opponent, Vic Grimes, fell off a 15-foot-tall scaffold[2], missed the tables that were supposed to absorb the force of their fall and landed on the concrete floor (with Grimes landing on New Jack's head) at Living Dangerously 2000. In a rematch between the two in Xtreme Pro Wrestling (XPW), New Jack threw Grimes from a scaffold, with Grimes plummeting forty feet into the ring. The stunt did not work out as planned, as Grimes did not go through all twelve tables that were intended to break his fall and ended up dislocating his ankle on a rope. In the 2005 documentary Forever Hardcore, New Jack claimed that he had intentionally thrown Grimes too hard in the hopes that he would hit the ring post and for Grimes to be injured or killed. Also in the interview, he said that the Living Dangerously accident was his own fault for prematurely pulling Grimes down from the scaffold. Jack has said that Grimes had been going around telling the locker room that he hurt New Jack, until Jack replied by saying "I hurt me." The footage of the second incident has been widely spread around the Internet as "legitimate footage" of Owen Hart's fall to his death, but obviously this isn't true.
[edit] Independent circuit
After ECW declared bankruptcy in April 2001, New Jack began wrestling on the independent circuit. In 2002, he wrestled for XPW, and in 2003, he made multiple appearances with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and also Combat Zone Wrestling, competing in Cage of Death V. New Jack appeared at the ECW reunion show, Hardcore Homecoming, on June 10, 2005, as well as competing on the "Extreme Reunion" tour from September 15-16.
In 2006, New Jack reached an agreement with MTV to participate in their Wrestling Society X television series. He appeared in the Battle Royal to determine contenders for the WSX Championship, directing his focus on fellow ex-ECW alumni Chris Hamrick.
New Jack made his most recent appearance in Portland, Oregon, on October 29, 2007, for Dr. Pain's Clinic Wrestling.
At the XPW show on May 24th, 2008, New Jack officially reunited with Mustafa. He also announced his retirement from wrestling.
New Jack now owns his own wrestling promotion 2xfw based in Cincinnati Ohio.
[edit] In wrestling
- Finishing and signature moves
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- Death Valley driver
- Suicide Splash (Diving splash from a highly elevated position, usually while crashing onto an opponent through a table)
- 187 (Diving elbow drop while holding a steel chair underneath his arm)
- Diving headbutt
- Guitar shot
- Airplane spin
- Various weapon shots
- Nicknames
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- The Original Gangsta
[edit] Championships and accomplishments
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- ECW World Tag Team Championship (3 times) - with Mustafa Saed (2) and John Kronus (1)
- North Georgia Wrestling Association
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- NGWA Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
- NGWA Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Mustafa Saed
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- SMW Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Mustafa Saed
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- USWA World Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Home Boy
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- PWI ranked him # 386 of the 500 best singles wrestlers of the PWI Years in 2003.
[edit] Other media
In the video game ECW Anarchy Rulz, New Jack's theme song was specially made by Bootsy Collins with unique lyrics, unlike every other character's theme, which consisted of sound-alikes of their real themes. The real theme ("Natural Born Killaz"), like everyone else's, could not be featured; copyright issues from their record labels wouldn't allow it. New Jack was featured in the 1999 wrestling documentary Beyond the Mat. In addition, he appeared in the television series Early Edition on May 6, 2000 as a biker in the episode "Mel Schwartz, Bounty Hunter". He was also featured in the video game Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes the Neighborhood.
New Jack is referenced in the Weezer song "El Scorcho". The line "watchin' Grunge legdrop New Jack through a press table" was derived from a caption for a photograph of New Jack fighting wrestler Johnny Grunge that was published in Pro Wrestling Illustrated.
Recently New Jack took part in a shoot interview with The Iron Sheik and The Honky Tonk Man where the subject was Chris Benoit's murder-suicide. New Jack commented that nothing could excuse what Benoit had done and all people on WWE and elsewhere who were making excuses for him were hypocrites. He also thought it was ironic how ECW was seen as violent and dangerous wrestling when he was working there and still only one person died under New Jacks time with the company whereas WWE was "Averaging three a year." He also has a DVD documentary called New Jack Hardcore: The Documentary.
[edit] References
- ^ [Stated in the August 1999 issue of WOW Magazine Pg. 92]
- ^ The Danbury Fall.
[edit] External links
- Official website (Expired)
