New Jack

You may have cheered him. You may have booed him out of the building. But until now, you’ve never really known “The Most Dangerous Man in Wrestling.” For the first time, Jerome “New Jack” Young opens up about his rise to stardom in Extreme Championship Wrestling. From his crazed dives off balconies and scaffolds to his bloody weapons matches that trampled the line between reality and entertainment, this candid memoir reveals the man behind the infamy, with new disclosures about the Mass Transit incident, the brutal beat-down of Gypsy Joe, and the stabbing of a fellow wrestler in Florida. Beyond the gimmicks that united white supremacists and the NAACP against him, New Jack discusses his violent youth that nearly led him to a life of crime, his career as a bounty hunter, a near-fatal drug addiction, the last months of ECW, and his place in wrestling history.

After starting his career in wrestling on a whim, Jerome “New Jack” Young plunged into the sports entertainment for over a quarter century, winning multiple titles in a career that took him all over the country, his greatest success coming in both singles and tag team action in Extreme Championship Wrestling for much of the 1990s. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

A former award-winning journalist and lifelong wrestling fan, Jason Norman teaches college English in southeastern Virginia.

New Jack and Jason Norman

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 210
Bibliographic Info: 20 photos, index
Copyright Date: 2020
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7977-8
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3830-0
Imprint: McFarland

Foreword 1
Introduction 3
1. Growing Up Violent 7
2. Moving Everywhere 11
3. Recording Some Crime 14
4. Higher Education 18
5. Hunting for Bounties 20
6. Drugs Arrive 23
7. The Call of Wrestling 26
8. Crossing to the USWA 31
9. Back to Georgia 35
10. Climbing the Mountain 38
11. A Taste of Extreme 52
12. ECW Debut 54
13. Ring Rats 59
14. New Jack’s Kids 63
15. Using Drugs 64
16. Kayfabe 71
17. Taking Dives 74
18. New Weaponry 79
19. Oct. 6, 1995—A Dance with Dudley 82
20. New Jack Goes Good 87
21. Jack vs. Austin and Pillman 90
22. Title Shots 94
23. ­Pay-per-view Approaches 96
24. Mass Transit 98
25. Mustafa Leaves 104
26. WCW/WWE 108
27. Too Close to Death 114
28. Spike Dudley 117
29. Mustafa’s Return 119
30. An Awesome Stapling 122
31. Some New Fans 125
32. An Acting Career 127
33. My Fall at Danbury 131
34. Things Get Hotter 135
35. ECW Begins to End 139
36. My View of Paul E. 144
37. XPW 146
38. Grimes Goes Down 151
39. Gypsy Joe 154
40. CZW 159
41. TNA 162
42. The Florida Stabbing 168
43. My Fighting Career 173
44. Wildside 175
45. The Benoit Murders 180
46. Retirement 184
47. Meeting and Marrying Jennifer 191
48. Injuries 194
Epilogue 197
Index 201