411’s Dark Side of the Ring – ‘The Life and Crimes of New Jack’ Report

-I mentioned last week I was looking for more to review with Backstage on hiatus. Well, Backstage has returned and then I was given the nod to start tackling this series on a weekly basis. I quite enjoy documentaries on pro-wrestling and I enjoyed season 1 of this show. I did check out the 2 episode premiere of Dark Side of the Ring about Benoit and it was tough to watch at times, but it was well done. This week the focus is on New Jack and the craziness behind his life inside and outside the wrestling ring. Let’s get to it!

-Show teaser as the talking heads start discussing the lines in wrestling being blurred and how some guys can get lost in their character.

-Show Intro!

-Chris Jericho is the narrator and he starts by talking about the underground hardcore wrestling scene. They will be pulling the curtain back on the man behind the monster and give us a look at one of the most infamous wrestlers in history. The producer asks several talking heads who is New Jack and Jim Cornette responds by saying if he was under oath in court he wouldn’t be able to say true or false to any of the stories New Jack has told about his up bringing. He has heard he was a bounty hunter and had a number of justifiable homicides under his belt. Sandman calls him a tough mother fucker and that he will kill you if you mess with him.

-New Jack says he learned wrestling from Ray Candy. Ray told him something that completely messed up New Jack’s head: “you have to create something you have never seen before.” New Jack calls that a mind fuck!

-Jim Cornette talks about running SMW and they needed a heel that could be believable. We see some SMW footage of Jack cutting legendary promos that nearly incited riots. Beyond just his natural charisma, New Jack decided to use real life situations in his character. He used what was happening in LA because “OJ was killing everybody.” Cornette mentions SMW was mostly made up of white, redneck fans, and all he had to do was tell New Jack to piss off the white people. They show a promo from 1994 where New Jack gives a shout-out to OJ Simpson and tells him to keep up the good work as that is 2 less they have to worry about. Damn!

-New Jack was paired with Mustafa, who had an amazing look, but couldn’t talk. Cornette came up with the name of The Gangsters, but New Jack told him Gangstas would be better. We meet The Sandman and he talks about all the heat the team had in white neighborhoods. D-Lo Brown puts over the team and how they were able to say things that others wished they could. D-Lo was the head of security for the team, but really was the bump guy. He took all the abuse while Mustafa and Jack could keep rolling.

-D-Lo talks about how crazy Mustafa is and that leads to a hilarious story of him smoking pencil shavings. D-Lo loses it and pleads the fifth. Jack has no issue as he says that he told Mustafa that it was going to mess him up one day. It happened as he gets arrested in a hotel and cuffed to the ground well yelling to New Jack that they were trying to fuck him. New Jack is just hilarious with these stories and really the stuff is so crazy, you shouldn’t laugh, but it’s hard not to.

-New Jack tells the story of getting a white baby doll and tying a noose around her neck and parading around the ring with her. D-Lo believes that Hitler would have been a face against New Jack during that period.

-Cornette wanted to get The Gangstas in the Tag Title scene so they started a feud with The Rock N Roll Express. They isolated Morton one night and New Jack and some friends beat him in the middle of the ring with nightsticks as a way to reverse what happened with Rodney King. I’m sure you can guess how well that went over with the crowd. The police had to escort the Gangstas out of the building and out of the town.

-Cornette says that that NAACP called and told him they didn’t like New Jack’s representation on TV. Well, this being New Jack he railed against the NAACP on TV and called them “home grown monkeys.” Cornette’s facial reaction when remembering this is priceless and I had to pause the video until I could stop laughing. From that point forward they had to put a disclaimer on the bottom of the screen reading that these views weren’t of SMW, the station, or any of the sponsors.

-The producer asks New Jack if that was the most fun he had and he says no because it’s not fun being called the N word. D-Lo talks about them being dropped in the south and how the N word was thrown around like hello. They knew if they weren’t being called that, then they weren’t doing there job, so it was an interesting balancing act. New Jack talks about meeting a kid who rubbed his arm and wanted to see if the black would wear off like his father told him. I have no words!

-The Gangstas moved on to ECW and Cornette talks about how they were the wrestling version of grunge music. Cornette didn’t like the team leaving on bad terms, but he knew they did all they could in SMW. For New Jack it felt like home in ECW.

-Jacks says they fit right in with ECW and he immediately loved the scene. Sandman was the first person to meet Jack when he arrived. Jack told Sandman don’t fuck with me and we will be cool. That worked for Sandman and says there roster was like a family. The talking heads talk about Paul Heyman and how he did everything for ECW. Jack was given the okay to be as violent as he needed to be. We see footage of him destroying people with weapons, diving out of balconies, and bleeding all over the place.

-D-Lo thinks a lot of Jack’s violence comes from his family life. Jack talks about growing up with a father who hated his wife (Jack’s mom). His dad came home one day and stabbed his wife 5 times in front of the entire family. Jack’s mom tried to leave once and his dad shot her in the back of the leg. This is what he grew up around and says people wonder why he flips out so much.

-New Jack gets asked about The Mass Transit incident and he says the kid was 17, but said he was 21. He also had a midget wrestler with him and thus we meet Tiny The Terrible. He shows the producer a video of him being on Jerry Springer. He loved being on Springer and says “it’s the reason I got most of the pussy I got.” Tiny says New Jack would mess with guys if they went off script and bashes him for cutting a kid up in their first match.

-Mass Transit (Erich Kulas) wrestled matches with Tiny and his brother who was also a midget. Heyman saw the tapes and invited all three to an ECW show in Massachussets. A couple of ECW security guys pop up to talk about the show. Neither had any idea who Erich was, but he said he was part of the show. Erich lied and said he was 21 and took the spot of Axl Rotten who had a family emergency. Tiny was kind of irritated Erich went in business for himself and took the spot while leaving him and his brother off the card. Heyman told Jack they had 7 minutes and do what they needed to the fat guy. Cornette sums it up by saying they just needed someone for New Jack to beat up. Jack says he told Heyman what he was going to do to this kid would be talked about for the next 10 years, and here we are 20 years later still talking about it.

-We are at the end of 1996 with Jack in ECW and he is in the ring with a novice wrestler. The security guys are at the site of the place where the match took place. Erich was put in a tag match with Devon Dudley as his partner against The Gangstas. This poor kid apparently made the mistake of asking Jack if he could get some offense in and backdrop him to the floor. He also wanted to put him through a table. New Jack found this disrespectful and Sandman laughs as he didn’t know that was the reason he cut the kid. New Jack: “I didn’t want to kill him, but wanted him close to death.”

-Cornette mentions the kid wanted to get some color and goes over the hard way of bleeding and the easy way by using a piece of a razor blade. Cornette: “The blade was never intended to be an exacto knife.” Jack tells us that he had been getting high all day and they tossed Devon out and told him not to get back in the ring. When it came time to get color he used a surgeons scalpel on a stick and at first there was no blood, so he did it deeper. The blood is pouring out of the kid as they show footage with Erich’s father screaming that he was just a kid. New jack jokes to the camera that he is sure they’ve seen the video by now. They continue to beat on him as medics check on him in the ring. New Jack cuts a promo saying “I hope this fat piece of shit bleeds to death because I don’t give a fuck.” The security talks about just trying to get the kid out of the ring, but also mention they realized they were part of history.

-Erich gets taken off on a stretcher, but throws up a double bird (so that’s where Vince got it from) and most think this means he is fine. That wasn’t the case as Erich’s father tried to get in the back at New Jack and kept calling him the N word. New Jack says that all bets were off and he would have killed the old man. Sandman says he was the next match and bleed like crazy to try to take heat off New Jack. Tiny is back and nearly got into a fight with Erich’s dad because he refused to give him a ride back. They get Erich to the hospital and it takes 50 stitches to close the wound. Tiny mentions the incident changed Erich and there is news footage of Erich talking about the incident and showing his scar.

-New Jack gets charges pressed against him and asks about taking a plea deal. Even with the deal he was looking at years in prison, which he didn’t want. His attorney told him he thinks he can win the case and get him off free.

-The incident created a media frenzy and showed the world the brutality of hardcore wrestling. Jack talks about the 6 person jury being 5 white women and an older African American man that kept dozing off and New Jack needed him to stay awake as he saw him as his savior. Tiny was part of the trial and it was his job to show that if Eric could wrestle with him, then he was qualified enough to do so with New Jack. Tiny told Jack that he wanted to work in WWE and Jack told him he would take care of him if he got off free.

-Heyman had to testify and was asked what Erich’s dad called New Jack and Paul said “the n word.” The attorney wanted Paul to say the word and he did so after apologizing to New Jack first. New Jack says hearing that word in court woke the black juror up and got the women to all pay attention. He puts over Heyman for working it on the stand and knowing what he was doing. New Jack was found innocent and Tiny ended up getting to do some promos in WWE. He shows the video of him coming out with another midget known as The Two Towers as a way for HHH, Steph, and Shane to make fun of The Rock. He is shocked that New Jack had connections like that.

-Erich’s family sues for civil damages, but Erich dies in 2002 from complications due to gastro bypass surgery. New Jack heard and didn’t care as it wasn’t his fault. Cornette blames New Jack for messing up the kid, but also puts some blame on ECW and the boundaries they kept pushing.

-They discuss New Jack doing balcony dives. Jack says he was snorting coke in the locker room and he was doing it every night to get him ready for each dive. The higher he got, the higher the dives got. He gets asked about his favorite dive and brings up one with Vic Grimes. They show a dive they were both supposed to do, but Vic got cold feet while up there. Jack told him they were going together and Grimes landed on Jack’s head causing permanent damage. He is blind in one eye, had a cracked skull and gets daily headaches to this day. D-Lo mentions that if you tell Jack you are going to do something and you don’t he is going to break you.

-A year later they have a rematch in XPW. The match is a scaffold match with stacked tables in the ring. New Jack bought a stun gun earlier in the day. Sandman is asked what Jack told him: “I’m going to taze the motherfucker.” Grimes meets Jack before the match and apologizes. Too late as Jack says he told Grimes he never once called or checked on him in the last year. New Jack again admits he was high and we see video of his using the taser. Grimes tells Jack he can’t feel his legs. Jack “you won’t need em….bombs away.” I shouldn’t laugh, but his delivery with these stories are killing me.

-The fall is absolutely terrifying as he missed hitting the floor by a foot. Jack admits he didn’t throw him hard enough as he wanted him to miss the ring and hit the floor. Sandman is amazed he didn’t die and Cornette says it is the luck of fools that he wasn’t paralzyed. It seriously looks like a crash test dummy being thrown or something from a physics engine in a video game. He told Vic after the match they were even now. Somehow Grimes only ended up with a dislocated ankle.

-A new generation was doing what Jack was doing and trying to top him. The producer asks New Jack if he ever went too far and he brings up a match with Gypsy Joe in 2003. Jack knew the guy was 73 years old, but forgot when the match started. Joe was billed as a tough guy who doesn’t feel pain. Joe talked to Jack before the match and said to follow him. That was a mistake apparently. So they have the match and Joe’s gimmick is that he doesn’t sell moves. Jack starts beating the crap out of him and as the crowd screams the N word at him, it only makes him angrier. Jack grabs a barbed wire bat and just unloads on this poor guy. I mean the shots with this bat are just crazy and Jack admits he beat up that old man real bad. He feels the match never should have happened.

-They discuss if Jack was a liability to some promoters and Sandman thinks to some he was. Cornette mentions the WWE and how they were never going to touch Jack. They were afraid of law suits, bad publicity, and how he would hurt someone. Jack was stuck doing small indy shows in front of small crowds as hardcore wrestling started to lose favor.

-We jump to Florida and meet MWW who is a former wrestler/promoter and now a recording artist. He talks about bonding with Jack and booking him in Jacksonville for his promotion Thunder Wrestling. He also mentions Jack is a comedian and is a great cook as apparently he can cook a mean spaghetti.

-Jack is booked against a wrestler named Hunter Red. It was Red’s idea to have the match with Jack. The promoter told him it was a whole new ball games to work that match. Red wanted to know what they were going to do, and Jack said they would talk about in the back. Red left pissed and that irritated Jack as you would expect by now. Jack admits he was doing coke again and drinking vodka. They have the match and Red stiffs him in the nose a few times. They show the match to D-Lo and he can see Red has pissed Jack off with the stiff shots. Jack apparently had a wolverine claw and one of the blades broke off, so he had it in his pocket. He chases after Red and starts stabbing him in the back. Again, I have no words, but D-Lo’s reaction to the video has me laughing again. I should be better than this!

-Now Cornette watches the match and he also can see that Red has pissed of New Jack. He loses it as well as he can’t believe Jack is stabbing the guy. Cornette admits this doesn’t do the image of pro-wrestling any good. He talks about how wrestling can blur the lines of what is a felony assault. For him if both guys agreed to something and they stay in those lines everything is good, but stabbing a guy in the face is over the line. You think!

-Jack says he stabbed the guy 9 times, and not 16 like the news said. He knows because he counted! Amazing! The police are called and told there was a black guy in camouflage stabbing a white guy. The police arrive and arrest Jack and one of the cops asked why he hated white people. MWW thinks that was uncalled for. Jack gets taken to jail and he is facing 15 years. Hunter Red visits Jack in prison and says he will drop the charges if Jack takes him on the road to run this as an angle to make money. Jack told him to drop the charges first and once he did, Jack ghosted him and hasn’t talked to him since. That is just insane and somehow fits perfectly in the world of pro-wrestling.

-Jack says it was all on the news and his mom told him he should be ashamed. Jack’s response: “Bitch, it’s a fucking show, so leave me alone. Me and my mother don’t get along.” I wouldn’t have guessed! He tells his mom that he has toys of his character in Toy R Us, so leave him alone. He talks about his father dying when he was young and he was raised in a violent world.

-The talking heads are asked who Jerome Young is and nobody is sure. Cornette doesn’t even know if he every met Jerome and doesn’t want to as Jack is still believable. Tiny doesn’t think Jack should have been able to get away with what he did and I now fear for his life after he goes off on New Jack here. I am sure there is someone out there sleazy enough to try to book them together.

-We are told the Kulas family declined to be interviewed for this show. The producer asks Jack how a movie based on his life should end and Jack says it would be him in a wheelchair with cocaine falling all over him and they actually show the stand in for this show in that exact scene. Tremendous! That’s one way to end the show!

-This was amazing and terrifying to watch all at the same time. New Jack was honest as you would expect as he has nothing to hide from at this point. He has great charisma that pull you in, but at the same time you know this is a dude that would do you serious harm if you wrong him in anyway. The talking heads they found were great as Cornette is always good on these shows and D-Lo was wonderful as well. Obviously Heyman would have made sense, but with his position in the WWE, he isn’t going to show up for this. Hearing from the Kulas family would have provided some context as well, but I totally understand them wanting no parts of any of this. This series continues to deliver and I am looking forward to whats to come. I believe the teaser for next week is Brawl for All, and since nobody was stabbed I can feel good about laughing with that one. As always thanks for reading!