...Who in their right mind would want to hire New Jack? ECW, thats who. But even thats a trick question, because ECW was never in its right mind. Frankly, were it not for ECW, it seems unlikely that Jerome New Jack Young would have had much of a career. I mean, the guy appears to have gotten into professional wrestling in order to find a legal means of maiming other people. In the movie Beyond The Mat, Young explains that before becoming a pro wrestler, he had worked as a bounty hunter - and that he even had four justifiable homicides to his name. It goes without saying, then, that he caught on with the ECW crowds BIG TIME. A generally sloppy worker, but a lot better than his detractors give him credit for, New Jack was a complete daredevil in the ring. Among his many stunts was a giant balcony dive onto the concrete floor below, a move that, in all reality, ought to have killed him. He is also notorious for an event that has gone down in wrestling history as The Mass Transit Incident. The incident occurred after Axl Rotten no-showed an ECW event, meaning that DVon Dudley would be facing The Gangstas (New Jack and Mustafa Saed) without a tag team partner. A young fan named Eric Kulas (who looked older than his 17 years, largely because he was really, really fat), lied about being a trained wrestler and Paul E (Paul Heyman, then the head honcho of ECW) agreed to let him join the match as DVons partner, more out of desperation than anything else. Taking the name Mass Transit, Kulas obviously thought he was about to embark on a glittering career as an ECW headliner...Except that he knew next-to-nothing about the business he was entering. Like a lot of so-called smart fans, Kulas thought he was an expert on the business, without any actual knowledge or experience to back it up. Pretty soon, (according to Young, anyway) Kulas was dictating spots and throwing his (considerable) weight around. In all probability, it wasnt an ego thing on Kulas part. He just knew nothing about veterans leading matches and rookies keeping their mouths shut (two of the first things that any true wrestling teacher will tell a guy). Then, Kulas made the final mistake of asking New Jack to help him get some colour (bleed). It was the equivalent of asking your pet cat to mind the goldfish for a while. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xu5dq_ecw-mass-transit-incident-full-matc_sport When I first saw the shaky, camcorder footage of the incident, the sound of the kids incessant, volcanic screams actually haunted me for a good long time. New Jack didnt just blade the kid; he carved him up like Christmas dinner. ...It wasnt fun to watch, it didnt get any angles over and it landed New Jack in a long court case (in which he was charged with assault and battery, amongst a plethora of other things) from which he ultimately walked away unscathed. To top that off, New Jack also tried to kill fellow wrestler Vic Grimes. Towards the end of ECW, New Jack and Grimes were wrestling on a scaffold placed some 20 feet above the arena. Grimes got cold feet about a planned fall from the scaffold (which is, frankly, quite understandable) and the resultant scuffle led to both men taking the fall and Grimes landing on top of New Jacks head. Jerome Young permanently lost the sight in his right eye and maintains that, after he hit the concrete, brain fluid was leaking from his nose (he had actually suffered brain damage as a result of the fall). So, later on, whilst working for XPW (Xtreme Pro Wrestling - a sadistically violent promotion that many ECW alumni worked for after the company folded), Jack decided to kill Grimes. Apparently, Grimes had bragged about being the one that hurt New Jack before leaving ECW and Jack, being the psychotic that he apparently is, never forgot about it. Amazingly, Grimes was monumentally stupid enough to agree to another scaffold match with New Jack and, as they once again reached the top of the structure, Jack legitimately assaulted Grimes with a taser, before hurling him some 40 feet to the ground below... Grimes fall was supposed to be broken by 12 tables stacked one on top of the other in the ring, but Jack ensured that Grimes only touched one of them. In the 2005 documentary Forever Hardcore, he remorselessly recounts that he was trying to miss the tables completely...And asserts that he was aiming for the turnbuckle, something that would surely have killed Grimes outright. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHbMl4N8Lnc One thing that all wrestlers do (or, at least, ought to do) is protect each others bodies as best as they can. Of course, its a rough sport and injuries can and do pile up (look at the recent career-threateners/enders suffered by Daniel Bryan, or British wrestler Lionheart). ...So, do we really need guys going out there and trying to murder each other on any given night? New Jack would never have been a star without ECW and he should be thankful for every penny he ever made from them (or anyone else, for that matter). The guy is a disgrace to the business, no doubt about it, but he had enough charisma and badass appeal to take bookings all over America after ECW folded.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
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Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
