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| Complicated legacy or not, New Jack was one of the all-time titanic figures in pro wrestling. |
Jerome Young, who competed for Extreme Championship Wrestling and other promotions under the name New Jack, died Friday evening of a myocardial infarction. He was 58 years old. He leaves behind a complicated and misunderstood legacy, but it was undeniable he embodied the manic and unpredictable energy that made pro wrestling great. Few wrestlers were as dedicated to the craft as he was, and few others paid a price with their bodies like he did.
Young emerged from a hectic life to emerge as a pro wrestler in the early '90s. It was in Jim Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling where he and Mustafa Saed, his longtime tag team partner, would begin to make waves as a militant Black liberation faction known as The Gangstas. They would rile up racists in the territory to the point of frothing and full-throated boos and jeers, often acting as the villainous foils for the Rock 'n Roll Express. ECW noticed this act had gotten red hot and brought them into their territory, where the team became quick fan favorites, regardless of how they were pushed, thanks to their tendencies for gonzo violence and creative use of plunder, which New Jack would often wheel to the ring in shopping carts. The team, New Jack especially, was not violent in a brutish way that many of their peers were, but they often had fun with how they would use their weapons and what weapons they would use.
New Jack would not be without controversy in his career. The most infamous incident occurred when Erich Kulas, ring name Mass Transit, lied about his age and experience level to get a booking in ECW and got himself put in a match with the Gangstas on November 23, 1996. Despite protestations from New Jack, he bladed Kulas during the match, but the blade cut deeper than intended. Kulas bled so much that he passed out. Criminal and civil charges were brought up against Young, but he was found not guilty and not liable respectively given the shady circumstance by which Kulas was allowed to compete on the show. People will use this incident, as well as incidents where New Jack arguably tried to murder Vic Grimes during a match in Xtreme Pro Wrestling and where he stabbed William Jason Lane 16 times in the head unexpectedly, to paint him as some kind of sociopath above and beyond the baseline in pro wrestling.
Honestly, while his outbursts were unorthodox in where they happened, I would argue that New Jack was a victim of circumstance, a guy who probably needed some therapy to work out legitimate anger issues with people in an industry fully of people as poorly mentally adjusted as he was or worse. To start out your career with crowds of rednecks hurling the n-word at you could not have been the best for anyone's psyche, no matter how strong they styled themselves mentally. The Mass Transit incident especially could not have been all that healthy for him to experience, especially with so many ignorant people blaming him for something that should have been sniffed out by Paul Heyman immediately. Even then, what were Kulas' parents doing encouraging him to try to get in a ring with no experience at 17 anyway? After something like that happens, you get people, especially those with power, who look for any reason to marginalize someone in an attempt to control labor further than they already do. It's not to say Young was well-adjusted. It's to say he probably was no worse for wear than most other wrestlers, especially those who worked for ECW.
Sadly, where I think his legacy is most complicated is with his daughter, a drag queen who competes under the name Washington Heights. They had a falling out in 2017, and as recently as last year, New Jack, using misgendering and homophobic terms, decided emphatically that he had no child. It's hard to fathom how one can turn their back on a child, the one group of person you as a parent should unconditionally love, for something as piddling as performing in drag or finding in their hearts that maybe they weren't the gender everyone thought they were at birth all along. Heights' reaction to her father's passing showed no real signs of holding onto that hurt, and I can only hope she finds peace in this.
Wrestling has lost a huge personality though. Regardless of whether or not you liked him, New Jack embodied pro wrestling to his very core, and the industry was richer for having him, whether for the positives he provided or for the cautionary tales he told. Either way, the wrestling world has lost a titan, an insanely essential person without whom the industry in the '90s might not have been as colorful. Rest in peace, Jerome Young.
