Original subtitles

New Jack is in the belt, getting 20 feet up!

Jack could turn the ring into a riot scene. Quick.

Whoa! Holy ----! ----!

But that was his job.

[Audience] [screams]

He fucked some people's lives up.

He stabbed a dude during a match? Nice.

He always had some type of fucking razor,

taser, staple gun.

[Narrator] In a world where the lines of

fiction and reality are blurred,

no one pushed the boundaries further than

Jerome Young, aka, New Jack.

I'm not selling out to y'all!

If you don't like me, the hell with all of ya!

The line in wrestling between cooperation and

physical assault is blurred.

You can only go so far without your opponent

knowing that it's coming.

But how far is too far?

Fuck 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?

[chants] New Jack!

You want to talk that big boy shit to me?

[shouts] I will dare you to come to my face and say that shit.

I will dare you! I eat your ass alive.

I dare you.

♪

Far beyond the world of elbow drops and head locks,

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 and controversial characters

to reveal the man behind the monster,

and the legacy he has left in his wake.

[off-screen] Okay, so, for someone who is

totally not familiar, who is New Jack?

Ha!

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 fuck with him, he will kill you.

Maybe not kill you, kill you, but he will fuck you up.

He's that tough motherfucker, dude.

I went to a movie, called New Jack City ,

just getting into wrestling then.

And when I heard the name New Jack,

I started playing with it in my head,

like hearing fans chanting,

"New Jack! New Jack! New Jack, New Jack!"

[off-screen] How did you come into wrestling?

Like, who taught you the ropes?

Ray Candy. I got in the ring with him,

and we was like, "Trust me. Let me train you."

And, he told me something one day that

fucked my head up so bad...

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

I said, "What kind of mind fuck 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 room, and people reacted to him.

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.

It was like, just straight up motherfuckers

from the god damn hood.

And he had an intensity on his face.

And then he gets the, 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.

I don't care nothing about these hillbillies not liking me!

Get in this ring and I ll beat you like I own you.

If Eddie Murphy was a bad-guy wrestler

instead of a comedian, it would be New Jack.

He could talk nonstop, but he could say these things in

an 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.

[New Jack] L.A. was hot at the time because of the

Rodney King thing going on.

OJ 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 special shout out to my homeboy, OJ 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 motherfuckers to

believe what I m doing.

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

To enhance New Jack's cutting-edge character,

he is paired with the perfect enforcer,

another Smoky Mountain recruit named Mustafa Saed.

[Jim] 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 to be here until

I feel like I want to leave.

And, a guy that looks like Mustafaa

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".

So then he said, What about The Gangsters?"

I said, What about The Gangstas,

with an 'as' on the end?"

Just picture a hard ass fricking movie in the hood

somewhere, dude, and they're the baddest dudes in the hood.

I m the Sandman.

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 want to hit you over the head

with the stick and drink your beer anyway.

That's me, in a nutshell.

The Gangstas had a lot of heat down there

in them white neighbourhoods.

The Gangstas 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 gonna choke the life out of you.

My name is D'Lo Brown. I m a 26-year pro.

God, that sounds so old.

My role in The Gangstas was, I was their head of security.

In reality, I was the bump guy.

The Gangstas would lose no heat,

but you could beat me and we can keep rolling.

There 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 were some times I stood there and I listened,

and I was like, "Ooh."

You wish I was like some old, some old...

Watermelon... chicken bone suckin' black folk!

[Mustafa] Ya-ha-ha-ha!

Check those promos out.

When Mustafa s standing there next to him going,

Na-na", 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 that for the interview,

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"

[laughs]

I plead the fifth. [laughs]

He's like, Jack, this is the new shit."

He had pencil shavings. He had some shit he found

growing on the side of the building in a bag.

I said, If you smoke that shit,

it's gonna come back and haunt you one day."

He's like, Nah, man, this is some good shit, man.

I'm fucked up right now. You gotta try."

So, we're sitting in the hotel...

I hear knock at the door. Somebody said,

"Jack, Mustafa's downstairs fighting the cops."

So, we dropped everything.

They had him handcuffed, face down.

He's blowing snot on the floor.

And this is what Mustafa was saying,

You wanna fuck me, don't you? I know you wanna fuck me."

I'm like-- [laughs] What the fuck is wrong with you?"

He s like, Nah, Jack, they wanna fuck me.

Everybody wanna fuck me."

I said, "Mustafa, you lost your goddamn mind."

The Gangstas had embraced the idea that,

I m going to go out there and I m going to be

a menace to society.

[New Jack] 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 doll.

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 they was like,

Get the fuck out of here with that shit!"

New Jack had everyone so mad at The Gangstas,

Hitler could have walked out through the curtain,

and he d have been a babyface.

I pissed people the fuck off.

And we got so much hate to the point

where these motherfuckers was like,

We gonna kill them fucking niggas."

And they said, "Niggers.

We gonna kill them fucking niggers."

Unleashing their unfiltered vision of the times,

The Gangstas are quickly becoming the

hottest villains in the territory.

I wanted to get The Gangstas right into

the tag team title picture.

So, they have to attack the champions,

The Rock n Roll Express.

Now, this is Ricky and Robert,

[New Jack] The Rock n Roll Express.

I mean, these motherfuckers been around forever,

and they d 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 sudden, The Gangstas and their posse,

there's like 3 or 4 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 to fans in

the front row, Help me .

And they beat the bejeezus out of him with these night sticks.

So, when we got done, all the white people,

they went out in the back, and they was waiting for us

at the fucking door, and they had

bricks in their hands and sticks.

So, we got behind the cops, they turned their fucking

lights on, and escorted us out of the fucking town.

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

The NAACP in Knoxville had called, and,

We don't think this is a good representation."

So, Jack took that and he said...

Some negroes down in Knoxville calling theirself the

NAACP or something or another, they don t like me.

I say it once and I ll say it again,

the hell with them homegrown monkeys.

Ah!

Right? So, from that point on,

we started putting up a disclaimer:

The views of The Gangstas are not necessarily

those of Smoky Mountain Wrestling or this station".

You thought maybe we was...

Cotton pickers? Wrong!

Maybe you thought you had some homegrown negroes.

Wrong!

No. To have somebody...

calling you a nigger, I ain't got damn 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 Gangstas 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 freely 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.

[New Jack] I had a 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 did you rub my fucking 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 off on you, and you'll turn black."

And I was just like, You little shit!"

As their provocative routine runs its course,

The Gangstas 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,

the 1990's 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 have you.

The stuff that you would see in one arena show was like,

it was a whole hard-core night.

I had been talking to Paul E. at ECW.

I had never heard of ECW. They invited me to come up there,

and I told Cornette, I said, "Paul E. offered me a deal.

And he offered me a lot of goddamn money,"

and he was pissed about it.

[Jim] 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 guys

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 Jack had to be the guy that went

farther than anybody.

I'm like, man, welcome home motherfucker,

you know what I m saying.

[screams]

In June 1995, The Gangstas leave the hostile crowds

of Smoky Mountain, and join the eclectic crew

of Philadelphia s wildly popular ECW.

I told you, boy, we whooped their ass, again!

When we got to ECW, we fit right in.

New Jack is on a mission here tonight in Atlanta!

And, it was just like, fuck, we love this shit.

You gotta understand, dude, we're clicking hard and

we know that we're like the hottest thing on the planet

by '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 fuck with me, which was cool by me.

You know what I mean? I'm like,

oh, this guy's gonna fit right in.

Our locker room was one big family.

It's Tommy Dreamer, RVD, Tazz, Sabu,

you know, New 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 fucking the Steven Spielberg of all of it,

you know what I mean.

That dude was 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 most extreme guy in any situation,

but there were no limits up there.

I'd come out with weapons...

Dive off shit...

Fighting out in the audience,

going through chairs and tables and

knocking down chairs and shit.

It 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 who he is --

I mean, it has to.

My childhood was fucked.

I had a daddy that was an alcoholic.

He hated my mom.

One night, she came home from work.

She walked in the door.

He pulled out a knife and he stabbed her,

five times he stabbed her...

[hand in fist]

In front of the whole family. He didn't give a fuck.

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 23rd, 1996,

a chance encounter with a novice wrestler is about to send

shock waves through the entire wrestling world.

[laughing] I knew it was coming.

He was 17. He told he was 21.

And, he had a little person with him.

Listen, New Jack, I m not gonna 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 short.

[Tiny answers] Jerry springer. Twin Terrors.

Over 52 million viewed this episode.

Jerry's the one that gave me the first opportunity

to really speak on a nation level like that.

[Tiny answers] Oh, yeah

Oh, great, man. You know,

that's how I got most of the pussy I got.

[Tiny on TV] I'm used to having good looking women.

That's true. [laughs]

I got ego, too, 'cause I ve been on TV, you know.

New Jack was like, if you went out of script,

he would make you pay for it.

If you're gonna cut somebody all the fuck up

on their first match, that don't make no fucking sense.

And... and, you know,

and that's basically what happened with...

with the Eric Kulas type situation.

Teenage wrestler, Eric Kulas,

calls himself Mass Transit.

Dressed in a bus driver gimmick,

his matches with Tiny and his brother

attract the attention of ECW.

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

Paul Heyman couldn't believe that a big guy could work

with midgets because that's like unheard of.

The three men are asked to appear at an upcoming match

in Revere, Massachusetts.

The best wrestling is... is not being able to

discern the line between fiction and reality.

That was one of the big appeals of ECW.

- 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 the talkie and said,

"There's 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 last time I saw Eric

until he came out of 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.

Axl Rotten didn't show up for the show.

He had a family emergency.

So Paul E. was like, "He gets a tryout."

He decided to cut us out.

Eric, like, just fucking, 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 Jack to beat up.

So they said, "Okay".

That was their first mistake.

So, Paul E. was like, Jack, y'all go for, like, 7 minutes.

Whatever you want to do to the fat kid, just do it."

I said, "Paul E., what I m going to do to him,

people are gonna be talking about this 10 years from now."

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

♪

By the end of 1996, New Jack has taken

his controversial career to dangerous new heights

in the violent world of ECW.

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

with novice wrestler, Eric Kulas.

You know, we're on the grounds now of the

Wonderland dog track, where, the ECW famous gangster,

Eric Kulas incident happened.

And, we got here early. We got here probably 2

or 3 hours before the show. 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

3 local matches in his life, is now gonna wrestle New Jack.

I saw Eric coming out, and I m like, wow,

that was the guy that was with his father when he came--

he must have gotten on the show.

Eric Kulas is paired up with D-Von Dudley,

replacing Axl Rotten in their tag team match

with The Gangstas.

Mass Transit, this big teenager,

went up to New Jack and told him

he wanted to get some offense in.

He came to me and he was like, Can I do this?

Back drop you out of the ring, push you through a table?"

And I said, Fuck 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.

[laughs] So, that's what pissed Jack off!

Alright, now it all makes sense why Jack was like,

"I m gonna cut this motherfucker."

He wanted me to cut him.

He had already pissed me off at the time,

so I was like, "I m good with it.

I'll cut the shit out of you."

I didn't try to kill him, but I wanted to go close to death.

Not only did the kid want to get some offense in,

but he wanted to have a great match so,

he wanted to, 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 you 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

some tape, and then you can keep it on your wrist,

in your mouth, in the waistband of your tights.

In wrestling, it 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... as fuck.

So, we told D-Von, we said, We gonna 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 New Jack giving it to Eric.

Ah!

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 scalpel...

about that long.

And I had it taped to a stick.

So, I stuck him in the forehead a couple of times,

and then nothing happened...

So, I just sliced him and blood was skeeting out.

I'm sure you saw it.

And, I beat the shit out of that kid.

His father was there, in the audience.

Mustafa picked him up and slammed him.

He was bleeding everywhere.

[Audience] Oh!

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

I m standing there, and I could see over my shoulder,

they need paramedics, but New Jack was firing up the crowd.

I hope this fat piece of shit bleeds to fucking death

because I don't give a fuck!

[Audience cheers]

At that point, I m like, Okay, let s just get him out."

I knew we were part of history.

A defiant middle finger from Eric

seems to suggest he's okay.

But everyone at ringside can see that's not the case.

Especially his family.

His father was trying to get in the back,

but I m not gonna let him get into the locker room

or near New Jack.

He was just calling me a nigger.

He's like, You fucking nigger, you stabbed my son.

You goddamn nigger," you know.

We was off camera then, all bets was off.

I'd 'a killed that old man.

I went backstage with him, but I was like,

Was it worth it? And 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 bit of the heat off of New Jack.

We got into an argument in the car.

Eric s father was like, Where are you guys going?"

I said, You re fucking giving us a ride back."

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

I said, "Steve, yes, the fuck you are or we're gonna

be fighting again up in this motherfucker."

And, you know, he got in the van,

went to the hospital.

And I remember him taking this fucking,

the bandage off in the car, pulling his hair up and

just looking at it in the fucking mirror.

[News] Eric received 50 stitches for his injuries,

and says he never wants to get in the 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. So-

The underground world of hardcore wrestling is

exposed to unprecedented national attention,

as New Jack is charged with assault and battery.

So, he took me to trial.

I told my attorney, I said, Are they offering me a deal?"

He said, "Right now, they want you to do 5 years."

I was like, [groans] "I don't know."

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

♪

Oh!

The brutalization of teenage wrestler, Eric Kulas,

has created a media frenzy and 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?

I want to go to court.

Now understand something: It was a six-jury panel.

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

He was nodding out. I was like, That's my savior.

I'm like, "Stay awake, motherfucker.

You're my savior" [laughing] You know?

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.

'Cause, I mean, at that time,

Kulas wasn't on my side. We weren't fucking 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." And New Jack promised me,

If I get off, Tiny, I swear I will take care of you"

They had Paul E. on the stand. The D.A. asked him,

"What did Mr. Kulas call Jerome Young?"

But he was like... He called him the n- word".

The DA said, For the record, say it."

Paul E. looked at me, he said, Jack, I m sorry".

He said, He called him a nigger".

The old juror, the black dude, he sat up. He was like...

And the white women was like, [gasps].

I was laughing so hard, I'm sitting there, like...

[mumbles & laughs]

He was working the motherfuckers. I mean,

he was working the shit out of the goddamn--

the judge, the D.A., the fucking jurors.

He did his best work.

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 back 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 is introducing me and

my partner as The Twin Towers to go against The Rock.

Oh, fucking great, dude. There's me.

There's my partner that could do the eyebrow.

And this was fresh after Eric Kulas.

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?

I didn't even know, really until like, years--

[coughs] Years later.

I forgot how it went, but people said,

"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 bypass surgery.

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

I didn't give a fuck. It wasn't my fault.

I heard about it, I was 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 who 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 snorted coke in the locker room.

I mean, it was like a boost. [laughs] You know what I mean?

It was like if I get high, I can go get high.

And I was snorting every night.

[cheering]

[Jim] Once you've jumped off a 10-foot balcony, what's next?

Jump off a 15-foot balcony and then a 20-foot balcony.

[cheering]

And at some point, there's no way that

this can end well, even if you do it right.

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 wanted 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."

Now, we're on Pay Per View. There's no time for error.

I said, Vic, let's go on 3." He said, Jack, I can't do it."

I said, Fuck you, we going on 3."

I said, "1, 2, 3," and I pulled him.

He did this flip and his back landed up against the

side of my, my head, and I cracked my skull.

I've 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 'cause I cracked my skull.

Vic, this is all your fault, you dumb fuck.

That's one of Jack's rules: Don't say you re gonna do

something and get up there and chicken out.

Jack's the kind of guy that if you,

you break those rules, well then, he'll probably break you.

[screams]

A year after the horrific fall that cracked open his skull,

New Jack agrees to a rematch with Vic Grimes,

with even higher stakes.

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 when New Jack, when New Jack--

And he told me he was going to do it

before it happened too, so-

He told me he was going to tase the motherfucker.

[New Jack] In the locker room, he came up to me,

and I was ready to kill this motherfucker.

He said, "I m sorry."

I said, Motherfucker you didn't even call me."

I said, "Almost a year," I said, "You didn't even call me...

to see how the fuck I was doing."

[Announcer] This is the highest elevation

of any match in the history of our sport!

I was high. [laughs] You know what I mean.

I was high as a motherfucker.

So, I just tased him. I tased the shit out of him.

He was like, " Jack, Jack, I can't feel my legs."

I said, You ain't gonna need 'em." Bombs away!

[screams]

Vic was a foot from missing the ring completely,

which would have killed him.

I wanted him to hit the floor.

I just didn't throw him hard enough.

I was trying to throw his ass to the fucking floor.

That's why you don't piss Jack off 'cause,

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 guy was not at least paralyzed.

And I don t think Jack was particularly broken up about it.

I climbed down off of the fucking scaffold,

and I went up to him. He was laying in the ring.

I told him, I said, Now we're even, you fuck."

[Announcer] Vic grimes is gonna need medical attention.

[D'Lo] Could you have got him for attempted murder?

I don't know. I mean, I think

throwing someone off of scaffolding kind of...

is right on that line.

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 a

new generation of hardcore wrestlers,

willing to give and receive disturbing levels of punishment.

So, it became a one-ups-manship,

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.

Well, I can name a few of them, but I'll 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 gonna be

the today's hardcore icon and the old pro

from yesteryear that everybody knows is

tougher than a two-dollar steak."

So, the night of the show, Joe comes up.

He said, Listen to me kid. I can teach you a lot."

I said, Are you talking to me?" We didn't talk no more.

I went into the ring. Joe comes in the ring.

And Gypsy Joe, as per his gimmick,

wasn't selling New Jack's stuff because you really

have to hit Joe to make him go down and register

because he's so tough.

So then, I got listening to these fans.

Go home nigger! Fucking nigger!"

And then, I was pissed. I started beating Joe like

motherfucker owed me money. I beat the shit out of him.

Outside the ring, I got a bat...

had barbed wire wrapped around it.

[Audience] [shouts] No! No!

Hit him in the head 3 times.

[Jim] Jack just said, "Fuck this old man."

I threw a row of chairs on him. And they got louder,

Go home nigger! You fucking nigger!"

And, dude, the more they said it,

the more pissed off I got.

[indistinct shouts]

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 just 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...

Yes, some promoters would, yeah. Absolutely.

New Jack never made it to the WWE because

they were never gonna touch him...

because he was too controversial.

They were afraid of lawsuits.

They were afraid of bad publicity.

They were afraid he was gonna hurt somebody.

With the mainstream appeal of hardcore now in decline,

New Jack is resigned to working for much

smaller outfits in the independent circuit,

some of whom can barely muster a crowd.

Despite this, New Jack isn't slowing down,

and he crosses the line again in 2004.

♪ [singing] I ve had many trials in my life. ♪

♪ Yet I keep trying to do what's right. ♪

We bonded really, really well.

I'm MWW, independent recording artist now.

But 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.

Spaghetti.

But he enjoys making sure that everybody's happy.

♪ [singing] 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 Red.

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 ball game."

[New Jack] Hunter Red comes up, and he's like,

"What you wanna do?"

I said, Dude, we can go in the back and talk about this."

He said, Well, we can talk about it now".

I said, No, we'll go in the back and talk about it."

So, I laid it out. I said, "This is what we're gonna do."

And, in the middle of me talking he got up and he said,

"Alright. We'll do what the fuck, whatever the fuck.

Fuck it." I m looking around like, what the fuck?

I said, "Who put him up to this?"

I said, "I will see you in the ring.

What the fuck ever we do, just whatever."

Something was troubling Red, the actual reality of

wrestling New Jack, I think, it kind of set in.

[New Jack] Once again, I been snorting coke.

Once again, I was high as a motherfucker,

drinking vodka... like I m doing now.

And, I had a claw, a wolverine claw

that had these 3 blades on it.

One of the blades had 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 the motherfucker no bigger.

Then he punched me again... in the nose.

It looks like this guy is really hitting Jack hard and,

Jack, yeah, well, the way Jack moves across this ring,

now he's hooking him, and he's talking to him.

[New Jack] 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 this mother... Run!

Oh shi... Ooooh!

♪

It's never good when you open a wrestling video

with a shot of a stage in an 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 fucking pants and is now apparently

stabbing this guy, who's trying to get away.

What the fuck is going on here?

But, is he actually stabbing this fucking guy?

Look at that woman with her hand over her mouth and

the 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 wrestling a world of good.

The line in wrestling between cooperation and

felonious assault is also one of those lines that's blurred.

But, I always looked at it this way: If two guys agree

to something beforehand, and everything that happens,

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 slash a guy's face, that's crossed the line

from cooperation to felonious assault.

I stuck him like 9 times. On the news they said 16.

I said, "No, it was 9." I counted. It was 9.

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's been a stabbing at the Ramada Inn.

There s a black guy with camouflage on,

stabbing a white guy." So, that s how they treated it.

The cops came in, guns drawn. Get on the floor!"

[MWW] 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 up to the 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 could do the whole Florida circuit."

I said, Well, you gotta drop the charges first."

I sat in jail for 3 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.

And she was like, Oh, my god, I can't believe

you were up there and you stabbed somebody in the ring.

You should be ashamed of yourself."

I m like, "Bitch, it was a fucking show. What the fuck,

leave me alone," you know what I mean?

'Cause me and my mom, we never got along.

She didn't fucking back me when I was wrestling.

I'm like, "Bitch, I got action figures in Toys R Us.

How many of your fucking friends' sons got

action figures in Toys R Us?"

My dad died when I was 5. He died when I was 5.

But, I remember the fucked up shit he did before he died.

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

Because, motherfucker, I was raised in a family

that was fucking 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 was no Jerome young. It was just New Jack.

[Jim] 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.

[New Jack] I was New Jack when I came in the door and

I m still New Jack.

That's a difficult question because the line is blurred

between Jerome Young and New Jack.

[Jim] If there's a difference, I don't know because

I don't know if I ever met Jerome Young.

I don't think I wanted to know for sure...

'cause here was a guy that I could even halfway believe in.

Best part about it is the legend,

believe it or not, it's probably gonna be bigger

than the person, you know what I m saying?

How stories can-- the tales get taller and taller,

and bigger and badder 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 don't need you.

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

You know, New Jack ain't gonna probably like

what the fuck I m saying about it.

Fuck you, man. You know what you did.

You fucked up innocent people.

Eric Kulas' family declined to participate in this documentary,

stating it was too traumatic to revisit the

circumstances and aftermath of the incident

in Revere, Massachusetts.

I'm sitting in a wheelchair, snorting coke.

[laughing]

I'm just sitting there snorting coke,

just getting high as a motherfucker,

and it'd be, like, the end. I'd be like,

"Thank you, bitches!" [laughs]