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Jerome Young
Statistics
Ring name(s)	New Jack
Billed height	6 ft 0 in (183 cm)
Billed weight	240 lb (109 kg)
Born	January 3, 1963 (1963-01-03) (age 44) Atlanta, Georgia
Trained by	Ray Candy
Debut	1992

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 1 Career 2 Extreme Championship Wrestling 2.1 The Mass Transit Incident 2.2 August 1998-1999 2.3 The Danbury Fall 3 Independent circuit 4 In wrestling 5 Championships and accomplishments 6 Other media 7 References 8 External links

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.

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 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. In the course of the match, New Jack attempted to blade Kulas (at Kulas' request), but Kulas flinched causing New Jack to cut through an artery, causing him to begin bleeding profusely. 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 in 2002 due to bypass surgery.

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.

On March 13, 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 off of 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 off of 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."

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 5. 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, OR, on October 29th, 2007, for Dr. Pain's Clinic Wrestling.

• Finishing and signature moves

• Death Valley Bomb
• Suicide Splash (Diving splash off of 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

• The Original Gangsta

• Extreme Championship Wrestling

• ECW World Tag Team Championship (3 times) - with Mustafa Saed (2) and John Kronus (1)

• North Georgia Wrestling Association

• NGWA Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
• NGWA Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Mustafa Saed

• Smoky Mountain Wrestling

• SMW Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Mustafa Saed

• United States Wrestling Association

• USWA Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Home Boy

• Pro Wrestling Illustrated

• PWI ranked him # 386 of the 500 best singles wrestlers of the PWI Years in 2003.

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.

• Weekly Planet's extensive story on New Jack's career
• The official website of New Jack
• New Jack at the Internet Movie Database
• New Jack Shoots on Chris Cash