The pro wrestling world lost New Jack on Friday, June 14th and many mourned the passing of a very complicated character. New Jack gave his all for the pro wrestling business and many of those bumps were for Paul Heyman’s ECW.
During Talking Smack, Paul Heyman had a chance to pay homage to New Jack. He discussed the man that many didn’t know. He also shared a little bit about the man who just didn’t fit into the PG landscape of modern pro wrestling. He said in the end, the whole situation of losing New Jack sucks.
“I avoid eulogies as best I can because anytime I’m faced with them, the first thing that comes to mind is, ‘Hey, this sucks,’ and there’s no good spin that I can put on it,” Heyman began with tears in his eyes. “When I heard that New Jack had passed away, my hope was that New Jack had turned to his wife and said, ‘Hey, I’d like to read my own obituary. Call a bunch of people, and tell them that I died. And then everybody’s gonna make a big fuss about it. And I’ll read about my whole life.’ And then, at some point this weekend, they’d sell a bunch of t-shirts, and he’d sit there and go gotcha. That’s what New Jack would do. Apparently, it’s not so, which sucks.”
“Usually, when we pay tribute to somebody here in WWE, we show a lot of footage of that person. To be blunt, we can’t show you a lot of footage of New Jack because he was the most non-PG performer in sports-entertainment history because New Jack was a gangsta. Everybody who was a fan of ECW that came to see ECW who watched ECW knew that fact from the moment his music hit. New Jack was the most gangsta of all of us gangstas. Anybody that ever saw New Jack perform live or heard him cut a promo understood just how real he was.”
“Jerome Young was quite the individual. And deep in his heart, he was every bit of New Jack that he could offer you,” Heyman said with a faint smile. “I wish you all a most extreme weekend. Gangsta style.”
New Jack will be remembered by fans and friends for many different reasons. He had an entire episode of Dark Side Of The Ring dedicated to him last season as well. That should tell anyone who didn’t know about him just how much off a story he had to tell.
RIP New Jack, and thank you for everything. You can check out the video below.
What was your favorite New Jack moment? Sound off in the comments.
Thanks to Wrestling Inc for the quote