Original subtitles

Jack is in the balcony 20 feet up. Jack can turn a ring into a riot scene quick.

No! Holy shit!

But that was his job.

He f***ed some people's lives up.

He had to do during a match.

Yikes. He always had some type of razor, taser, staple gun.

In a world where the lines of fiction and reality are blurred, no one pushed

boundaries further than Jerome Young.

A .K .A.

New Jack.

I'm not selling out to y 'all. If you don't like me, the hell with all of you.

The line in wrestling between cooperation and physical assault is

You can only go so far without your opponent knowing that it's coming.

But how far is too far?

You, man, you know what you did.

Period. And what happens when a wrestler lost in his character?

is set loose in a world that rewards extreme violence.

You want to talk that big boy shit to me?

I would dare you to come to my face and say that shit. I would dare you. I eat

your ass alive. I dare you.

Far beyond the world of elbow drops and headlocks lies the underground realm of

extreme hardcore wrestling, where fans' appetite for real -life brutality is

endless. When audiences thought they'd seen it all, New Jack took it to a whole

new level.

Many of his performances bordered on criminal, and some crossed that line.

In this episode, we'll pull back the curtain of wrestling's most provocative

controversial characters.

to reveal the man behind the monster and the legacy he has left in his wake.

Okay, so for someone who's totally not familiar, who is New Jack?

I could not sit here and swear in open court that anything that New Jack ever

told me about his background was true or false. I've heard he was a bounty

hunter. I've heard he had a number of justifiable homicides to his credit.

The way he talks, the way he walks, the way he carries himself. This brother is

real. Just imagine a badass, big African -American dude slinging drugs on one of

the hardest streets in, like, Harlem. You know what I'm saying? If you with

he will kill you. Maybe not kill you, kill you, but he will pick you up. He's

that tough, dude.

I went to a movie called New Jack City, just getting into wrestling there.

And when I heard the name New Jack, I started playing with it in my head.

Like hearing fans chant, New Jack, New Jack, New Jack, New Jack.

How did you come into wrestling? Like, who taught you the ropes?

Ray Candy.

Well, I got in the ring with him, and he was like, trust me, let me train you.

And then he told me something one day that f***ed my head up so bad.

You got to create something that you've never seen before.

I said, what kind of mind f*** is that?

You want to create a character?

Create something you've never seen before.

When I saw Jack come out, he just instantly picked up the energy in the

and people reacted to it.

I'm Jim Cornette, and in the mid-'90s, I ran a wrestling promotion in East

Tennessee called Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

Smoky Mountain Wrestling was looking to break into the Atlanta market, and we

needed a heel. When I saw New Jack, he could project that aura of menace.

So it was like just straight up.

And he had an intensity on his face. And then he gets the microphone and he

starts talking to the people. And this guy is talking a mile a minute and he's

getting people riled up.

If Eddie Murphy was a bad guy wrestler instead of a comedian,

it would be New Jack. He could talk nonstop and he could say these things in

entertaining way, but he would make you hate him.

Beyond his natural charisma, New Jack infuses his character with a piercing

level of real -world tension.

L .A. was hot at the time because of the Rodney King thing going on.

O .J. had just killed everybody in L .A.

South Central L .A. was on the map. And the whole gimmick, the Raider gear, the

gold chain, I took all of that and put it into my character.

The Smoky Mountain Wrestling audience was predominantly white, predominantly

redneck and hillbilly.

All you had to say was, New Jack.

Go out, piss some white people off, and the rest was up to him. And it was gold.

It was genius.

I'd like to send a shout out to my homeboy, O .J. Simpson.

Keep up the good work, baby.

Two less, we got to worry about.

You understand?

Keep up the good work.

I was like, I want these to believe what I'm doing.

I want them to believe what I'm saying is real.

To enhance New Jack's cutting edge character.

He is paired with the perfect enforcer, another Smoky Mountain recruit named

Mustafa Saeed. He didn't say much, but he looked like he would kill somebody.

And I said, a guy that can talk like this new Jack. I'm here, and I'm going

be here until I feel like I want to leave.

And a guy that looks like Mustafa would be a great tag team. So he said, what's

your tag team name?

I said, well, actually, we don't have a name.

See, and he said, what about the gangsters?

What about the gangsters with that ass on their hands?

Just picture a hard -ass freaking movie in the hood somewhere, dude, and they're

the baddest ass dudes in the hood.

I'm the damn man. I've been a professional wrestler since 1989.

I'm the dude. I'm going to play you in a game of pool, and then when I lose, I'm

going to hit you over the head with a stank and drink your beer anyway.

That's me in a nutshell.

Yo, the gangsters had a lot of heat down there in white neighborhoods.

The gangsters were...

A group of young, angry black men telling every white person everything

every other black person wanted to say but couldn't.

You little Caucasian white devil, I told you that I would get you. The next time

that I get to put my hands around that little pink neck of yours, I'm going to

choke the life out of you. My name is D 'Lo Brown.

I'm a 26 -year pro.

God, I sound so old.

My role in the gangsters was I was their...

head of security.

In reality, I was the bump guy. You know, gangsters would lose no heat, but

could beat me and we can keep rolling.

Down goes D 'Lo Brown.

Hey, wait a minute. New Jack would just stir people up so much.

None of his stuff was written. And there are some times I stood there and I

listened. I was like, you wish I was like some more, some more.

Chicken bones sucking black folks.

Check those promos out. When Mustafa's standing there next to him going, dude,

that's what he was doing all day.

And you know what I'm saying?

Nothing but rednecks up here. That wasn't Mustafa being there for the

That was Mustafa.

Mustafa's crazy, bro.

The dude was rolling pencil shavings in one of those blunt things, and he wanted

me to smoke it with him. I'm like, no, dude, I'm good.

Was Mustafa smoking pencil shavings?

I plead the fifth.

You're a dick.

This is the new shit.

He had pencil shaving.

He had shit he had found growing on the side of the building doing bags.

I said, if you spoke this shit, it's going to come back and haunt you one

He's like, no, man, this is some good shit, man. I'm done right now. You're a

trap. So we sit in the hotel.

I hear the knock at the door. So I said, Jack, Mustafa downstairs fighting the

cops. So we dropped everything.

They had him handcuffed, face down.

He blowing snot on the floor.

And this is what Mustafa was saying.

The gangsters had embraced the idea that I'm going to go out there and I'm going

to be a minister to society.

One night we did a show.

I had been to the dentist and my mouth was sore to a point where I couldn't

hardly talk.

So I said, Mustafa, let's go to Walmart.

And I bought a white baby dog.

And I had a rope tied like a noose.

And I walked out to the ring. I got in the middle of the ring and held the baby

doll up.

And it was like, get the fuck out of here with that shit.

New Jack had everyone so mad at the gangsters, Hitler could have walked out

through the curtain and he'd have been a baby face.

I pissed people off.

And we got so much heat to the point where these, like, we gonna kill them

niggas. They didn't say niggers.

We gonna kill them niggers.

Unleashing their unfiltered vision of the times, the gangsters are quickly

becoming the hottest villains in the territory.

I wanted to get the gangsters right into the tag team title picture, so they

have to attack the champions, the Rock and Roll Express.

This is Ricky and Robert, the Rock and Roll Express. I mean, these been around

forever, and they done been there and done it.

Taking controversy to a new level, they decide to recreate the 1992 police

beating of Rodney King.

But in their version, the roles are reversed.

Ricky Morton is knocked to the floor. All of a sudden, the gangsters and their

posse, there's like three or four of them. Jack brought everybody he knew for

this one. And they circled Ricky Morton in the middle of the ring, and he's

bleeding, and he's looking at the fans in the front row, help me.

And they beat the bejesus out of him with these nightsticks.

So when we got done, all the white people went out in the back, and they

waiting on us to come out the door.

And they had bricks in their hands and sticks, so we got behind the cops. They

turned the lights on and escorted us out of town.

When I saw that, I knew we were doing our job.

The NAACP in Knoxville had called, and we don't think this was a good

representation. So Jack took that, and he said...

Some Negroes down in Knoxville call themselves the NAACP or something or

another. They don't like me. I say it once and I say it again. The hell with

them homegrown monkeys.

Right. So from that point on, we started putting up a disclaimer.

The views of the gangsters are not necessarily those of Smoky Mountain

or this station.

You thought we maybe we was.

Cotton pickers? Wrong!

Maybe you thought you had some homegrown negros? Wrong!

Would you say that that period with Smoky Mountain was that fun?

No. To have somebody calling you a nigger,

I ain't goddamn used to that shit.

I said, I can't get used to it, and I ain't gonna try to get used to it. The

gangsters were literally a microcosm of what was going on in society at that

time. And you drop us in the middle of... The South, the N -word was really

thrown around like you would say hello.

It was uncomfortable.

But if they didn't say that, then we weren't touching that nerve.

It's a pretty strange concept, yes.

I want someone to hurl racial slurs at me.

I had this little boy come up to me one day.

He said, can I shake your hand? I stuck my hand out, and he rubbed my arm and

looked at his hand.

I said, why'd you rub my arm and then look at your hand?

He said, I'm sorry. My dad told me you rub a black person's arm, it'll rub up

you and you'll turn black.

I was like, you little shit.

As their provocative routine runs its course, the gangsters jump at a sudden

offer from a larger wrestling outfit, ECW.

ECW was extreme championship wrestling. It was the brainchild of Paul Heyman

that it would be the 1990s wrestling answer to the grunge music movement.

It would be gritty and violent, and they'd blur a lot of lines.

They were edgier, whether it be sexual content or violence or blood or what

you. The stuff that you would see in one arena show was like, it was a whole

hardcore night.

I had been talking to Paul Heyman and ECW. I had never heard of ECW.

They invited me to come up there, and I told Cornette. I said, well, Paulie

offered me a deal that he offered me a lot of goddamn money. And he was pissed

about it. I hated that they left on bad terms with me and me with them, but they

couldn't have gone any farther in Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Everything about ECW

was not only more violent, but also it was more real to the point where the

started the trend of really hitting each other with stuff and hurting each

other. ECW was filled with wrestlers that would go too far already and New

had to be the guy that went farther than anybody.

I'm like, welcome home.

You know what I'm saying?

In June 1995, the gangsters leave the hostile crowds of Smoky Mountain and

the eclectic crew of Philadelphia's wildly popular ECW.

When we got the ECW, we fit right in.

New Jack is on a mission here tonight in Atlanta.

And it was just like, we love this shit.

You got to understand, dude, we're clicking hard, and we know that we're

the hottest thing on the planet by like 96, 97.

I was sent to meet New Jack at the hotel when he first came up from Smoky

Mountain. So I was the first ECW guy he met. He got out of the car, and I'm

like, all right, I liked him. He had swagger. He was like, don't.

with me, which was cool by me, you know what I mean? I'm like, oh, this guy's

going to fit right in. Our locker room was one big family. It's Tommy Dreamers,

RVD, Tad, that booze, you know, Blue Jack.

Heading up this locker room of misfits is promoter Paul Heyman.

Paul Heyman was the mad scientist.

Dude, he was everything.

He was the writer. He was Steven Spielberg of all of it, you know what I

That dude is like super brilliant.

All our careers were jumping, you know what I'm saying?

I think New Jack got in that environment, and he always had to be the

extreme guy in any situation, but there were no limits up there.

I come out with the weapons, diving on shit, fighting out in the

audience, going through chairs and tables and knocking down chairs and

was like blood and guts every goddamn night.

I truly feel that the reason why Jack was so violent, so extreme, because the

way he grew up, his childhood, his upbringing, I think that plays a part in

he is. I mean, it has to.

My childhood was... I had a daddy that was an alcoholic. He hated my mom.

One night, she came home from work. When she walked in the door, he pulled out a

knife and he stabbed her five times. Yeah, bro.

In front of the whole family, he didn't give up.

He stabbed her.

A few months later, she was like, I'm leaving.

She picked me up, tried to put me in the car.

He shot her in the back of the leg.

This is what I grew up around.

And I'm like, you wonder why sometimes I flip the fuck out?

New Jack's outlet for violence has taken him to new heights in ECW.

But on November 23, 1996, a chance encounter with a novice wrestler is

send shockwaves through the entire wrestling world.

Can you tell me a story of the mass transit incident?

I didn't know it was coming.

He was 17. He thought he was 21.

And he had a little person with him.

Listen, New Jack, I'm not going to lie, he was intimidating.

That's because he was always...

Presenting the image that he was sinister.

Hi, my name is Tiny the Terrible.

I was just basically one of those midget wrestlers that wanted to be considered

not really as a midget wrestler, just as a wrestler that was just sure.

Tell us who we're watching here. Jerry Springer,

Twin Terrors.

Over 52 million people viewed this episode.

Jerry's the one that gave me the first opportunity to really speak.

On a nation level like that.

Did people recognize you out there? Oh, yeah.

What was that like? Oh, great, man. You know, that's how I got most of the pussy

I got.

I'm used to having good -looking women.

That's true. I'm not going to sit here.

Look, ego, too.

Because I've been on TV, you know.

New Jack was like, if you went out of a script, he would make you pay for it.

If you're going to cut somebody all the fuck up on their first match, I don't

think the fuck And that's basically what happened with an Eric Kulas

type situation.

Teenage wrestler Eric Kulas calls himself Math Transit.

Dressed in a bus driver gimmick, his matches with Tiny and his brother

the attention of ECW.

He's seen the tape of Eric Kulas and my brother wrestling.

Paul Heyman couldn't believe that a big guy could work with midges, because

that's, like, unheard of.

The three are asked to appear in an upcoming match in Revere, Massachusetts.

The best wrestling is not be able to discern the line between fiction and

reality. That was one of the big appeals of ACW.

I'm Stu Kaplan. I'm John Donovan. And we were doing security for the show. I was

upstairs. I had a walkie -talkie, and someone came on talkie and said, There

some guys here for the show.

I saw Eric Kulas come in. I didn't know who he was. I had no idea who he was.

And I knew everybody.

And they went into the back of the locker room. And that was literally the

time I saw Eric until he came out for the match.

No one knows that Eric has lied about his age.

Claiming to be 21, in reality, he's a 17 -year -old minor.

Axel Rotten didn't show up for the show. He had a family emergency.

So he was like...

He gets a tryout.

They decided to cut us out. Eric, like, just cut us off and just went for self.

This untrained teenager who claimed to be a professional wrestler and had

probably wrestled a few local shows shows up. They needed somebody for New

to beat up. So they said, okay.

That was their first mistake.

So Paulie was like, Jack, y 'all go for, like, seven minutes. Whatever you want

to do, just fat kid, just do it.

I said, Paulie.

What I'm going to do to him, people are going to be talking about this 10 years

from now.

Boy, it's been 20 years and we still talking about it.

By the end of 1996, New Jack has taken his controversial career to dangerous

heights in the violent world of ECW.

Now, a last -minute change has landed him in the ring.

with novice wrestler Eric Kuloth.

You know, we're on the grounds now of the Wonderland Dog Track where the ECW

famous gangster Eric Kuloth incident happened.

And we got here early. We got here probably two or three hours before the

But there were still people here. And, you know, ECW, ECW.

And, I mean, I can feel it. I'm getting goosebumps now because that's what you

got. So the untrained teenager that's maybe had three local matches in his

is now going to wrestle New Jack.

I saw Eric coming out, and I'm like, wow, that was the guy that, with his

father, he must have gotten on the show.

Eric Kuloth is paired up with D -Von Dudley, replacing Axl Rotten in their

team match with the gangsters.

Mass Transit, this big teenager, went up to New Jack and told him he wanted to

get some offense in. He came up to me, and he was like, can I do this?

Back, drop you out of the ring, push you to a table.

And I said, no.

That's... One of the most disrespectful things that you could do as a wrestler

to come to a vet and tell him what you want to do.

So that's what pissed Jack off.

All right, now it all makes sense why Jack was like, I'm going to cut this.

He wanted me to cut him.

He had already pissed me off at the time, so I was like, I'm good with it.

cut the shit out of you. I ain't trying to kill him, but I want him to go close

to death.

Not only did the kid want to get some offense in, but he wanted to have a

match, so he wanted to bleed.

There are a number of ways to do it.

There's the hard way, which is basically when you agree with your opponent that

he's going to punch you in the eyebrow or the cheek or in some place to bust

open. There's also the easy way. You take a common razor blade, something you

find around the house, and you trim it in a fashion that you can wrap it in

tape, and then you can keep it.

On your wrist, in your mouth, in the waistband of your tights. In wrestling,

was a common gimmick. The blade was never intended to be an exacto knife.

I had been getting high all day.

I mean, so I was high.

So we told Devon, we said, we're going to put you out of the ring and don't get

back in.

You know, D -Von didn't get touched, didn't get hit.

Everything was mostly focused around Eric.

And it was mostly Nujak giving it to Eric.

I started beating on him.

I was beating him with everything.

So when it came time for us to get color, I had a surgical scaffold.

What about the lawn?

And I had it taped to a stick.

So I stuck him in the forehead a couple of times and did nothing happen.

See, I just sliced him.

And blood was keeping out.

I'm sure you saw it.

And I beat the shot of the kid.

His father was there in the audience.

Mustafa picked him up and slammed him.

He was bleeding everywhere.

The referee didn't even come to the goddamn ring.

I'm standing there.

And I can see over my shoulder.

They need paramedics. But New Jack was firing up the crowd.

At that point,

I'm like, OK, let's just get him out. I knew we were part of history.

A defiant middle finger from Eric seems to suggest he's OK.

But everyone at ringside can see that's not the case, especially his family.

His father trying to get in the back, but I'm not going to let him get into

locker room or near New Jack. Did Eric's father say stuff to you? He was just

calling me a nigger. He was like, nigger, you stabbed my son, you goddamn

nigger. You know, we was off camera then, and all bets was off.

I'd have killed an old man.

I went backstage with him, but I was like, was it worth it?

He said, damn, man, they fucked me up.

I was the next match.

So I bled like a stuck pig that night because I was trying to take a little

of the heat off of New Jack.

We got in an argument in the car.

Eric's father was like, where are you guys going? I said, oh, you're giving us

ride back. Oh, no, I ain't. I'm not giving you the ride back.

I said, see, guess the fuck you are, or we're going to be fighting again up in

this. And, you know, he got in the van, went to the hospital.

I remember him taking this bandage off in the car, pulling his hair up.

And just looking at it in the mirror.

Eric received 50 stitches for his injuries and says he never wants to get

ring again.

I have no feeling from here to here.

I have like an indention in my head from where all the nerves died. It changed

him. He was depressed and all that other shit.

The underground world of hardcore wrestling is exposed to unprecedented

attention as New Jack is charged with assault and battery.

So he took me to trial, told my attorney. I said, are they offering me a

He said, right now they want you to do five years.

I was like, no.

He said, Jack, I think I can beat this case.

The brutalization of teenage wrestler Eric Kuloth has created a media frenzy

exposed the shocking world of hardcore wrestling.

Now, a court will decide if New Jack must answer for the assault with prison

time. Did you do any of this? You don't want to give your side?

Hold on a little, Corbett.

Now, understand something.

It was a six -jury panel.

One 80 -year -old black guy and five white women.

He was knowing now.

I was like, that's my savior. I'm going to stay awake.

You're my savior.

You know?

What was your sort of role in the trial?

explaining how Eric knew what he was doing.

If he can wrestle with us, he can wrestle with a big guy.

It's our view that he knew exactly what was going to happen. He was prepared to

go into the ring. He knew about the props.

Because, I mean, at that time, Kulas wasn't on my side. We weren't friends.

The only person that really wanted me in this was New Jack.

And I said, Jack, it's up to you.

This is what I want. I want to work in WWE.

New Jack promised me, if I get off time, I swear I will take care of you. They

had Paulie on the stand.

The DA asked him, what did Mr. Kulas call Jerome Young?

Paulie was like, he called him the N -word.

The DA said, for the record, say it.

Paulie looked at me, he said, Jack, I'm sorry.

He said, he called him a nigger.

The old juror, the black dude.

He stood up, he was like, and the white woman was like, I was laughing so hard.

I sit down, I was like, oh, dude.

He was working.

I mean, he was working the shit out of the guy there. The judge, the DA, the

jurors. He did what he don't do best, he worked. That's what he did, he was

working. When the jury learns Eric lied about his age and experience, the

balance shifts in New Jack's favor.

They deliberated for that day.

Came ready the next day.

They found me not guilty.

And I ended up working for WWE. I ended up doing promos and shit with Shane, Big

Show, and Triple H. Yeah, Stephanie McMahon's introducing me and my partner

the Twin Towers to go against The Rock.

What was it like for you to walk out to the crowd like that? Oh, great, dude.

There's me. There's my partner that can do the eyebrow.

And this was fresh after Eric Kuloth.

So it was like, New Jack, I don't know what the hell he did, but there was my

spot right there.

Do you remember how Eric Kulas passed away? I didn't even know really until,

like, years later. I forgot how it went.

But people say, yo, you know, Eric died after failing in criminal court.

Eric's family tries to sue New Jack in a civil suit for damages caused by the

incident. But in 2002, he dies from complications resulting from gastric

surgery. And then what was your reaction to learning that he passed away?

Hey, well, my fault.

I heard about it. I'm like, oh, well.

I have to indict New Jack for this because he went too far.

But also the image of ECW allowed guys to go way too far and think that.

nothing would happen.

The mass transit incident has set a dangerous precedent, and it's New Jack

has opened the door to a lawless new era.

New Jack started trying to go farther and farther, not only with the blood and

the edginess of the content, but also the spectacular bumps and falls.

I was the only one that probably started coke in the locker room.

I mean, it was like a boost.

You know what I mean? It was like, if I get high, I can go get high.

and I was snowing every night.

Once you've jumped off a 10 -foot balcony, what's next? Jump off a 15

balcony, and then a 20 -foot balcony.

And at some point, there's no way that this can end well, even if you do it

right. Yeah, you have any favorite dives?

Well, the one that people always talk about, me and Big Grimes.

Imagine Humpty Dumpty with arms and legs as a professional wrestler. That's kind

of how he was shaped. You know what I'm saying?

You couldn't hurt the guy. Vic Grimes wanted to be run over with cars. He

to be hit with things. He thought that was what wrestling was.

In the year 2000, Vic Grimes is booked to wrestle New Jack in a match featuring

a dangerous climax.

We climbed up on top of the scaffold.

It was shaking.

Vic was like, I can't do it. It's too high.

And we're on pay -per -view.

There's no time for error.

I said, Vic, let's go on three.

He said, Jack, I can't do it. I said, Hugh, we're going on three.

I said, one, two, three, and I pulled him.

He did this flip, and his back landed up against the side of my head, and I

cracked my skull.

I never recovered from that.

I broke my leg.

I lost my sight in my right eye to this day.

I get headaches every day.

I have insomnia because I cracked my skull.

Vic, this is all your fault, you dumb.

That's one of Jack's rules. Don't say you're going to do something and get up

there and chicken out. Jack's the kind of guy that if you break those rules,

well, then he'll probably break you.

A year after the horrific fall

that cracked open his skull, New Jack agreed to a rematch with Vic Grimes with

even higher stake.

What Grimes doesn't know is that New Jack is out for revenge.

Before the match, I went to a pawn shop and bought a stun gun.

Yeah, I was there with New Jack.

He told me he was going to do it before it happened.

What did he want to have happen? He told me he was going to chase him.

In the locker room, he came up to me. I was ready to kill him.

He said, I'm sorry.

I said, you didn't even call me.

I stayed at home for almost a year. You didn't even call me to see how the f***

I was doing.

This is the highest elevation of any match in the history of our sport.

Well, I mean, I was high.

You know what I mean? I was high.

So I just tased it.

I tased the shit out of it.

Tag, tag. I can't feel my legs.

You ain't going to need them.

Bums away.

Killed him. I wanted him to hit the floor. I just didn't throw him hard

I was trying to throw his ass to the floor.

So we don't piss Jack off, because a fight's never over until Jack says it's

over. I can't believe he didn't, like, die. It's the luck of fools that this

was not at least paralyzed.

And I don't think Jack was particularly broken up about it.

I climbed down off of the... When he was laying in the ring, I told him, I said,

never even...

Could you have got him for attempted murder?

I don't know.

I mean, I think throwing some off a scaffolding kind of is right on that

Incredibly, Grimes' worst injury is a dislocated ankle.

Once again, New Jack has pushed hardcore beyond its limits.

But the demand for this kind of extreme action is only getting more intense.

And now he's having to compete against the new generation of hardcore

willing to give and receive disturbing levels of punishment.

So it became a one -upsmanship, and can you top this, and got into a position

where you had to go further and further to keep that position, and then it

became his calling card.

Do you think there was ever a match where you think you went too far?

Well, I could name a few, but I would say probably Gypsy Joe.

Oh, Lord.

Hold on.

I looked at how old he was, but then I forgot when we got in the ring.

In 2003, New Jack faces off against 72 -year -old journeyman Gypsy Joe, who

promotes himself as a man impervious to pain.

The problem is no one's bothered to tell New Jack.

The promoter was thinking, oh, this is going to be the today's hardcore icon

the old pro from yesteryear that everybody knows is tougher than a $2

So the night of the show, Joe comes up.

He said, just listen to me, kid. I can teach you a lot. I said, you talking to

me?

We didn't talk no more.

I went to the ring.

Joe comes to the ring.

And Gypsy Joe, as per his gimmick, wasn't selling New Jack stuff because

really have to hit Joe to make him go down and register because he's so tough.

So then I got to listen to these fans.

Go home, nigger.

There and then I was pissed I started beating Joe like it owe me money. I'll

beat the shit out of Outside the ring. I got a bat They had bought I wrapped

around Hit him in the head or three times

Jack just said this old man.

I threw a war chairs on him and they got louder go on there Nigga, and dude, the

more they said it, the more pissed off I got.

And I beat the shit out of a 100 -year -old man, which the match never should

have happened in the first place.

With New Jack's escalating violence comes a higher level of risk, and not

for those willing to take him on.

Was New Jack, you think, a liability for promoters? I think some people look at

him as a liability, but yeah, some promoters would, yeah, absolutely.

New Jack never made it to the WWE because they were never going to touch

because he was too controversial.

They were afraid of lawsuits.

They were afraid of bad publicity. They were afraid he was going to hurt

somebody. With the mainstream appeal of hardcore now in decline, New Jack has

resigned to working for much smaller outfits in the independent circuit, some

whom can barely muster a crowd.

Despite this, New Jack isn't slowing down, and he crosses the line again.

In 2004.

I've had many trials in my life.

Yet I keep trying to do what's right.

We bonded really, really well. I'm an MWW independent recording artist now. I

was a wrestler slash promoter.

When he hit Florida and he had to come through Jacksonville.

He was staying at my house.

Jack is comical. If you really ever get to know him, he's just a comedian and a

great cook.

Any examples of, like, one of the things he would cook? Spaghetti.

But he enjoys making sure that everybody's happy. Out of the fire.

Wow. That's one of mine. The federation that I used to own and promote was

Thunder Wrestling Federation.

Thunder had started gaining some momentum.

And Jack had been there a couple of times.

New Jack's opponent is William Jason Lane, wrestling under the name Hunter

That night, Red had asked me if he could wrestle Jack.

When you wrestle an icon, it kind of moves you a little bit. It's on your

resume. And I said, well, Red, that's a whole different ballgame.

Hunter Red comes up, and he's like, what you want to do?

I said, dude, we'll go in the back and talk about this. He said, well, we can

talk about it now.

I said, no, we're going to back and talk about it.

So I laid it out.

I said, well, this is what we're going to do.

And in the middle of me talking, he got up, he said, all right, whatever,

whatever.

I'm looking around like, what the?

Who put him up to this?

I said, I will see you in the ring.

Whatever we do, whatever.

Something was troubling with the actual reality of wrestling, New Jack.

I think it kind of set in.

Once again, I was just going cold.

Once again, I was high as a moon, drinking vodka, like I'm doing now.

And I had a claw, a Wolverine claw.

It had these three blades on it.

One of the blades that broke off, I had it in my pocket.

When the match began,

Red picked New Jack up and sat him in a corner.

And he punched me.

My nose is big enough. I don't need nobody to help me get bigger.

Then he punched me again.

In the nose.

It looks like this guy is really hitting Jack hard. And Jack, yeah, the way Jack

moves across his ring, now he's hooking him and he's talking to him.

I said, you trying to handle me?

I said, you really trying to handle me?

Uh -oh.

Jack's reaching in his pocket for something.

He's cutting him.

What the? Oh, my.

He's stabbing his mother.

Run.

Oh, shit.

Ew.

It's never good when you open a wrestling video with a shot of a stage

empty bandstand.

Oh, good Lord.

What is there, 30 people there?

So the guy comes in the ring, they lock up. Okay, already he's pissing New Jack

off. And he pulled a knife out of his pants and is now apparently stabbing

guy who's trying to get away? What the f*** is going on here?

But is he actually stabbing this guy?

Look at that woman with her hand over her mouth and a kid, a 10 -year -old kid

is sitting there going, this is a first in 125 years of wrestling history.

Yeah, this is not something that does the public image of professional

a world of good.

The line in wrestling between cooperation and felonious assault is

those lines that's blurred. But I always looked at it this way.

If two guys agree to something beforehand, and everything that happens

in those parameters, they are working together. If something happens that is

egregiously outside those parameters, such as just take a knife and just

a guy's face, that's crossed the line from cooperation to felonious assault.

I stuck him like nine times.

On the news, they said 16.

I said, no, it was nine.

I counted, it was nine.

For the second time in his career, New Jack's violence in the ring lands him in

trouble with the law, and the evidence against him is impossible to ignore.

The guy that called the cops, he said there'd been a stabbing at the Ramada

There's a black guy with camouflage on, stabbing a white guy.

So that's how they treated it.

The cops came in, gun draw.

Get on the floor!

I remember the police officer asking Jack, why do you hate white people?

And I just looked at him.

But I thought that was really inappropriate.

They put Red on a stretcher and Jack left in a police car.

New Jack is charged with aggravated battery and faces up to 15 years in a

Florida prison.

They took me to jail.

Hunter Red comes to jail.

I'm like, why are you here?

He said, I got an idea.

I'll drop the charges.

You take me on the road and we can make an angle out of this.

Hunter Red is looking for New Jack.

He's out for revenge.

He said, we can do the whole Florida circuit.

I said, well, you got to drop the charges first.

I sat in jail for three weeks.

He went and dropped the charges.

I went home, put my shit in storage, and I left Florida.

That was the last time I talked to him.

I mean, it was on the news, and my mom saw it. She was like, oh, my God, I

believe you up there, and you stabbed somebody in the ring. You should be

ashamed of yourself. I'm like, bitch, it was a...

So what the f***? Leave me alone.

You know what I mean? Because me and my mom, we never got along.

She didn't back me when I was wrestling.

Only, b***h, I got action figures and Toys R Us.

How many of your friends' sons got action figures and Toys R Us?

My dad died when I was five.

He died when I was five.

But I remember the f*** of s*** he did before he died.

And I'm like, you wonder why sometimes I flip the f*** out?

Because of me.

I was raised in a family that was retarded.

So I'm like, if I show up for a show and I go out there and do my thing, be

grateful that I ain't attacking your ass. You know what I mean?

The thing with Jack is he was too much into his gimmick. He carried that

wherever the fuck he was at. There wasn't no Jerome Young.

It was just New Jack. New Jack can't benefit from any of this reputation he's

got anymore because he's...

pretty much his active career is over with. So I think now it's more of an

albatross around his neck.

I was New Jack when I came in the door and I'm still New Jack.

And so then who is Jerome Young?

That's a difficult question because the line is blurred between Jerome Young and

New Jack.

If there's a difference, I don't know because I don't know if I ever met

Young. I don't think I wanted to know for sure because here was a guy that I

could even halfway believe in.

The best part about it is the legend, believe it or not, is probably going to

bigger than the person.

You know what I'm saying? How stories get, the details get taller and taller

bigger and better as the time goes.

He perfected his craft and brought it to the highest level that he could bring

it to.

Because he knew it would leave a lasting impression.

New Jack leaves behind a complicated legacy.

Pioneering, unrepentant, but above all, without compromise.

I don't need nobody out here cheering for me, and most of all, partner, I

need you.

I believe people like that shouldn't get away with it.

You know, New Jack ain't gonna probably like what the f*** I'm saying about you,

man. You know what you did.

You f***ed up innocent people.

Eric Kuloff's family declined to participate in this documentary, stating

too traumatic to revisit the circumstances and aftermath of the

Revere, Massachusetts.

Let's say one day they decide to, like, make a movie about your life. What would

be the end of the new Jack movie?

I'm sitting in a wheelchair, snorting coke.

I'm just sitting there snorting coke. You get in the eyes of them, and they be

like, thank you, bitches.