Some days ago, rumors spread that TNA were looking to get Jerome Tony Young (a.k.a New Jack) to perform for the ECW oriented Hardcore Justice pay-per-view so I checked about this guy's past and what I found is literally EXTREME!! 

This first article will give you an intensive background about New Jack:

New Jack

After reading these parts you will realize why “New Jack is known for his willingness to take dangerous bumps and famous for his stiff hardcore wrestling style, often taking high risks and "shooting" on opponents especially those who are deemed disrespectful in the ring. No wonder why his lunatic persona has been so effective that sometimes opponents refused to get in the ring with him.”

New Jack is known for hitting opponents with guitars to their heads, attacked them with staple guns, and jumped off balconies to slam them through tables. He also suffered guitar and staple gun attacks and countless hardcore weapons, which he carried to the ring in a garbage can as he himself states when remembering his injuries: “Here's me getting set on fire, here's me with a piece of wood sticking out of my back, there's me with a nail sticking out of the side of my head and what about this one right here when I cracked my skull and my eyeball was cocked to one side and I had brain stuff coming out of my ears?”

New Jack's Background

Let us first have a look at our New Jack and see what his wrestling career holds.

Before joining any professional wrestling company, New Jack states that his love for heights and jumps started at a young age when: “When my mom would get off work, I thought it was funny to get on top of the house. She'd drive up into the driveway and I'd dive off the top of the house right in front of her car. She'd get out and beat the hell out of me.”

Young's wrestling career started when he began training under Ray Candy and debuted in 1993 in the United States Wrestling Association (USWA). T here he changed his name to New Jack for wrestling shows: "I came up with the black army fatigues and black boots. O.J. had just killed everybody in California. There was rioting. And I said, 'I'll be from South Central L.A. My name will be New Jack. My style will be real slow and aggressive, and we don't rap and sing and tap dance and 'Mammy.' We don't do none of that. That's when I came up with my character and when I presented it to the people, they were like, 'Yeah!' and I ran with it."

New Jack then moved to Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW) where he met Mustafa Saed and together they formed The Gangstas tag team who would, as part of their act taunt white people which formed the major part of the audience.

The Gangstas became the center of attention as they took part in several controversial angles such as using affirmative action to enable them to win matches with a two count pin fall as opposed to the normal three counts. The Gangstas then took part in a long feud with the Rock 'N Roll Express (Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson). Their gimmick lead to protests from the NAACP outside the arenas where The Gangstas were performing, claiming that no racial violence had occurred in the Tennessee area for years, and they didn't want the reputation and influence of gangsters in the Tennessee area.

And the Violent Side of Wrestling?

Yeah, that is what brought you here … let us see why I presented New Jack as violent, brutal and aggressive.

Young claims to have been a bounty hunter before becoming a professional wrestler, and to have committed four justifiable homicides. These claims have not been verified by independent sources and to be honest, I found this an exaggeration at first. But wait, read the following first and decide for yourself … I will just say that his aggressiveness is far from normal and his claim: "I learned how to fight. I would start fighting with no reason. I'm not the type of person that can fight with you and stop. I'll stop when I see you not moving. When you land like you're dead. Then, I'll stop. I say that I'm not mean. But I am. I know I am" already proves me right.

New Jack was an American Football player and claims that "I'd hit you so hard, that if you got up, it made me cry".

Someone once claimed that "People didn't want [wrestlers] beaten, they wanted them dead." And ECW fans were that type as they would chant all through the matches: “We want blood!" and would bring with them kitchen appliances, VCRs and other household items to matches so wrestlers could use them as weapons. New Jack was the type of guy who would satisfy them.

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 evolved from broken glass scattered on the mat to forks and bats wrapped in barbed wire to a staple gun: “One week I was suspended," he says. “I'm laying carpet at home, putting the carpet pad down with a big staple gun. I was like, 'That would be good in a match.' It's got half-inch staples. So during the match, I pulled it out, grabbed a guy by the head and stapled him in the head with it."

Over the years, all the cuts caused by razors and barbed wire have left numerous scars on New Jack's forehead. The deepest scar is from a pizza cutter that an opponent ran over his head, an episode which New Jack states to have vindicated by striking that opponent with a shard of metal.

New Jack's level of hardcore wrestling is a step higher from the others. He states that when others are doing hardcore, they are joking. He continues that when you see such wrestlers trying to appear as “hardcore wrestlers” but then they're pushing a grocery cart to the ring. For New Jack, “they couldn't do hardcore if I wrote the manual and gave it to them.”

 New jack uses the example he recalls of a wrestler who “used to wrestle in ECW, and then he went to WCW. He couldn't fight hardcore to save his life. He used to beg us not to kill him when we had matches in ECW. They put him in WCW and he was the hardcore champ.”

According to New Jack, many wrestlers were afraid to be in a match with him, even if these wrestlers claimed to be hardcore ones: “A lot of the guys who are wrestling hardcore would never work with me. I've carried this reputation for a long time that I've been known to go Off on people in the ring. I've had people who were really scared to get in the ring with me.”

As an example of this, New Jack uses Justin Credible who, according to New Jack “was terrified to get in the ring with [him]. One night we had to work, and he really thought I was going to kill him. It was funny to me.” New jack states that Credible hit him with a punch before the match and returned to pick him up because he was afraid to anger him. In fact, after the match, Justin Credible turned to New Jack and said: “Jack, I'm sorry dude. I thought you were going to kill me out there.”

Fans always thought that New Jack was pissed off as he carried out his gimmick so well and he always managed to sell his matches: “When you see me jab a fork in somebody, you don't know if I've stabbed them or not.” One night, states New Jack, he was planned to verse Mike Awesome who was terrified to compete with him. New Jack and Raven kept picking on him by telling Mike what was going happen to him with the use of the staple gun. “He ran to Paul E. and said he didn't want to do the match. I had staples in it, and he didn't know if I was going to really shoot him or if it was going to be a work.” New Jack states that this was not just bluff and that multiple times, Paul Heyman was standing backstage because of thinking that new Jack was mad at his opponents. “And it was a big work. When you can fool people in the locker room, I think it's funny.”

That was Mortal Van Dam with the first part of The Violent Side of Wrestling. Next week we will focus on some of the accidents that involve New Jack's career. And PLEASE: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!