On February 23rd 2002, one of the most infamous moments in wrestling took place. All I have to tell you is that it involves Vic Grimes and New Jack and I’m sure you’ll know what I’m talking about. Two would meet in a Scaffold match, where the loser would fall from an ungodly height, that was advertised as being twice what Mick Foley fell at King of the Ring 1998. The cushion? A pitiful looking twelve tables covering the center of the ring, but it ended up not working out that way.
In this video, we’ll look at the feud in ECW that led to the match in XPW. We’ll hear from both Grimes and New Jack, and we'll look at the newsletters to see what was being reported at the time.
I know what you might be thinking, this story has been covered many times, not just here on YouTube, but even by TV docs. In this Timeline series though, I like to focus on what was being reported as the feud was happening. because sometimes you find parts of the story that might otherwise have been lost.
Before I get to XPW Freefall, let's take a bit of a look at the history between New Jack and Vic Grimes, as that plays a big part in what happened later. By the time Grimes started wrestling around 1995 in California, New Jack was just arriving in ECW. New Jack had become one of the most popular acts in the company by the time Vic got there in late 1999. Through the year so far, New Jack had been feuding with the Dudley Boyz, who had recently left for WWE, and his former tag team partner Mustafa, who had also left the company. New Jack was therefore in need of new opponents, and so would be assigned The Baldies.
The group weren’t the most complex of characters, if you were bald and could pull off looking like a thug, you were in. Early on the group had some interchangeable members who you might know from elsewhere, such as former WCW star PN News, Redd Dogg who would later have a run in WWE as Rodney Mack, and Vito LaGrasso, formerly ECW lower carder Skull Von Krush and the future Big Vito in WCW. The three main members that ECW eventually settled on were Angel or Spanish Angel as he had been known, Tony DeVito and arriving last, Vic Grimes.
Grimes had been signed to a WWE developmental deal earlier in ‘99, working mostly for Power Pro Wrestling in Memphis, where officials were keeping tabs on him. He was wrestling alongside other developmental wrestlers like Kurt Angle at the time, who was thought to be head and shoulders above all the others, and was soon to make his WWE debut. Vic however, wasn’t very popular with management. According to the Wrestling Observer in September ‘99, their main concerns with him were his in ring ability and his weight.
Vic would make several appearances on WWE television, wrestling only one match on the August 8th ‘99 episode of Shotgun Saturday Night. He would be given awful looking white gear to wear, have long white hair, and be given the name ‘Key’. He was intended to be a drug dealer character, the weirdest looking drug dealer ever. Key was put in a trio with Prince Albert and Droz, running away with the award for wrestling stable you’d least like to meet in an alley. On Heat, he Droz and Albert would defeat three enhancement talents. A promising start that turned into a dead end.
Later that month, it would be reported in the Wrestling Observer that WWE officials weren’t happy with Vic’s match. “He (Vic) told friends that he couldn’t punch good in the suit they had him wearing and he slipped off the ropes wearing street shoes instead of wrestling boots. Anyway, he wasn’t at the tapings at all this week and the character may have been dropped for now” In the next week’s issue, Dave notes “There is talk of WWF trying to get ECW to use Vic Grimes to give him more experience since he isn’t ready yet.”
WWE sending people to ECW had become an established practice over the past couple of years. They had previously sent Al Snow for an extreme excursion, and he came back with an entirely new gimmick, and a plastic head, both of which were proven to be popular with the fans before he ever stepped back into a WWE ring. Maybe then something like this could happen for Grimes? A couple of weeks later, Paul Heyman was reported to not be averse to taking in WWE talent, given how well the Al Snow run had gone. “He said he felt the Al Snow deal benefited everyone, as he got a good wrestler for several months for very little money (since WWF was paying the guy), that Snow got a gimmick that got him back into WWF and WWF got to use the gimmick ECW created for him.” Vic seems to think differently though, saying in a 2021 interview with the Xtreme Memories podcast, that WWE sent him there knowing full well that they weren’t going to call him back up. While we can't say that this reasoning is true, it is exactly what happened.
ECW
On November 13th 99’ Grimes would arrive in ECW, and straight away be put with the Baldies. Perhaps his most notable match early on came on an episode of ECW on TNN, where he would unsuccessfully challenge Mike Awesome for the ECW world title. The match is notable for a terrifying looking awesome bomb off the apron through a table, an incredible move to even try on a man the size of Grimes. Though Vic had been wrestling for ECW for about a month, this would be his first appearance on their television. In an Observer from around the time of this match, Dave wrote that Heyman had grown to really like having Vic around, because he liked Grimes’ attitude, and that he would work on the ring crew while also wrestling on the shows. It’s also noted that Vic at this time was still on a WWE developmental deal.
Vic and New Jack first appeared in the same segment on the December 17th episode of ECW on TNN, the same show where he faced Mike Awesome. Their only real interaction would come as part of a three on one attack, so would be fairly limited. Grimes and New Jack specifically would meet in a few matches on house shows in 99, but their feud would eventually make it to TV in the new year.
On January 9th 2000 at Guilty as Charged, New Jack would face Angel in a King of the Streets match, where the winner would unofficially win the right to that title. The match is essentially a three-on-one handicap brawl, as New Jack holds his own with various weaponry until the numbers are eventually too much for him. Joey Styles on commentary even made the claim that it was the Baldies’ plan to get beaten up by new Jack, distracting him away from fighting Angel. One moment of note occurs when New Jack takes Vic into the crowd, and places him on a table underneath the balcony where the hard camera is positioned. Jack proceeds to leap from this balcony, with Grimes and the table breaking his fall. Once New Jack is back in the ring, a distraction from DeVito allows Angel to merc Jack with a shovel, and actually defeat him by pin fall, which had to be considered surprising at the time. The reviews for this match were what you might expect for essentially a weapons mess, with Wade Keller in the PW Torch calling it a “typically intense, watchable garbage match”.
On the January 15th episode of Hardcore TV, which confusingly was actually taped 2 days before the pay-per-view at the famous Centre Stage theatre in Atlanta, New Jack and Vic Grimes would have their only televised one-on-one match. At one point Grimes produced a pizza cutter which he often carried to the ring, but would show that in character, he isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, by proceeding to jab the handle of the cutter into New Jack’s head and not the sharp blade on the other end. That said, if I were in there with New Jack I wouldn’t want to blade him either. Towards the end, Grimes performs a somersault from the top rope to the floor, missing New Jack, crashing through a table. Foreshadowing is a literary device where- New Jack then gets him back in the ring and finishes the match for the win. From here, having done the three on one match a few times, New Jack would find himself tag team partners to fight the Baldies. Both Tommy Dreamer and Balls Mahoney would team with New Jack, both defeating combinations of the group.
*We’re about to get to the first major part of this story, which took place at Living Dangerously 2000, but I thought it felt necessary to tell you about the lead up to this event, because it seemed that Vic and New Jack had worked well enough together in the past, until that night in Danbury Connecticut.* At the Living Dangerously pay per view on March 12th 2000, the night was mostly built around two things, a tournament to crown a new television champion following the heartbreaking end of Rob Van Dam’s epic twenty three month long reign due to in injury, and the long built up match between Steve Corino and Dusty Rhodes, which was a big step towards Corino becoming a more serious heel in the company. Near the end of the night though, a Danbury street fight would take place between two of ECW’s most vicious brawlers. At least that's what Joey Styles calls it, but there is at no point a referee, so this may never have been an official match.
The whole thing starts in chaos, as the Baldies run out and attack Balls Mahoney, who had teamed with New Jack recently. Grimes dives off the top rope, crashing through Balls and a table on the outside before New Jack’s music even plays. While Grimes recovers, New Jack makes short work of Angel and DeVito, talking them down with a guitar, and whatever you want to call this move. Grimes attacks from behind with his Pizza cutter, and it doesn’t take long for the two to ominously head into the crowd. As New Jack persues Grimes, we see glimpses of the scaffolding that they are heading towards in the corner of the building. As they reach the scaffolding it gets hard to see what's actually going on, but Grimes lays New Jack on a table, then places another table on top of him. Vic heads up the scaffolding, but he freezes when he sees that New Jack is up. It takes a while for both to get their footing, and you can see the scaffolding shaking under the weight of both of them, and then Jack pulls, and they both begin to fall. They go off the scaffold in perhaps the least safe way possible, with New Jack falling feet first, and Grimes going with a somersault. After going through table one, New Jack topples sideways while Grimes continues falling, and lands on him. While ECW shows lots of replays and crowd shots, including Grimes being helped away, we don't see New Jack again, telling us that something was wrong right away.
Dave Meltzer would begin his review of Living Dangerously by saying that it would be “remembered for one brief glimpse.” According to him, “The idea apparently was for Jack to suplex Grimes off the scaffold, through a table.” I have no idea how this could have happened though with the metal frame so shaky underneath them. “The scaffold didn’t have a large stable floor base. It had a plank like bottom that one could walk on, but hardly do anything athletic on. The side of the plank was several feet from the edge, which had a metal base on nothing else, where Grimes would take the bump from.” It is also suggested here that the two never actually checked the scaffolding. “The feeling was that the two came up with the spot without even scouting out the scaffold to realize what they planned would be impossible to pull off.” Not to throw a spanner in the works, but one person’s account of how it happened contradicts some of what was in the Observer. I'm talking about Angel, who in a 2022 interview with Hannibal TV, and said that the original plan was for him to take the suplex off the scaffolding. *CLIP*
Dave also makes note that the fans, not shocked or stunned, were in his word “euphoric” in their reaction, not possibly aware of the seriousness of what had happened. ECW staff however were not. “In the dressing room, there was a legitimate brief scare that he was dead, enough to send the show into a panic and rush everything to end it as soon as possible without doing two minute matches and making it too obvious. The fact we at home were seeing everything but what was actually happening was a testament to the fact people calling the shots were scared out of their minds.“ The two matches set to follow, a three way for the tag team titles and the finals of the TV title tournament were both under ten minutes. Dave doesn’t question if the show should have been stopped, but draws some similar comparisons to what had happened at the Kemper arena in Kansas City a year earlier.
I quoted Vic Grimes earlier, and now let’s hear New Jack’s telling of the story. In his 2009 YouShoot interview for Kayfabe Commentaries, New Jack claims that Vic told him that he had checked the scaffolding earlier in the day, but he actually hadn’t. He notes that the two of them come close to six hundred pounds, and that the scaffolding was creaking under the weight of them. He also blames Vic for there being two tables to break their fall, as in his words, “because we set two tables up, when I hit the first table it allowed him to catch up with me, cos it broke my fall.” The angle that new Jack fell also doesn’t help, as he tumbled into the direction that Vic was falling. New Jack claims that he had seizures for the next month, as well as sight loss in his right eye for around five months.
In the Observer, Dave noted that New Jack walked away that night with “a mild concussion, an external bruise of the chest and shoulders, a bruised sternum, a cracked elbow (somewhat re-aggravating a previous injury) that won’t require surgery and was able to fly home to Atlanta the next evening. He was actually able to walk around, although very sore, and talked of performing as early as this coming weekend.” Thankfully, he did not perform on the following week’s shows, with his next match being nearly a month later.
On the April 16th episode of Hardcore TV, New Jack’s return would air, a tag match teaming with Tommy Dreamer against Angel and DeVito. The segment starts with all three Baldies attacking Dreamer a bit like at Living Dangerously, until New Jack’s music hits. Grimes can be seen standing in the ring, but after Jack enters he isn’t seen again, with Joey Styles telling us he ran away, wanting no part of New Jack. Angel says in his interview that this was a Paul Heyman call, and at first Grimes was supposed to take a guitar shot from New Jack, but word got out that New Jack was planning some revenge. *CLIP* The next time New Jack and the Baldies meet would be on the May 13th Hardcore TV, a day before the next pay per view. Angel and DeVito attack him with no sign of Vic Grimes.
At Hardcore Heaven on May 14th from Milwaukee Wisconsin, the long running feud between New Jack and the Baldies would finally end. Following a three way tag team match there Chris Chetti and Nova would defeat Angel and DeVito as well as Danny Doring and Roadkill, New Jack would come back for his King of the Streets title. In a brisk match which included a balcony dive, Jack would defeat Angel, tying up that loose end. Rather cleverly, in the tag match prior, Roadkill had splashed Grimes through a table, meaning that Vic would have no later involvement, selling for the table move, and keeping he and New Jack separate. By the end of May, Vic would be gone from ECW, only having one more match on TV after the pay per view.
In the June 12th Observer, it was noted that “WWF has yet to make a decision on whether or not to renew Vic Grimes’ developmental deal”, implying that it was coming up soon. A month later a follow up was published. “Vic Grimes’ WWF contract wasn’t renewed. The feeling seems to be that he didn’t improve on his in-ring work and conditioning over the year he was under contract. He is technically still with ECW, but hasn’t been used because he moved back to Northern California and with money being tight, they aren’t going to fly him in.” Grimes said in his podcast interview that ECW told him that they wanted to keep using him, but they never flew him out from California. He does note that he was backstage at Heat Wave 2000, ECW’s one and only event in Vic’s home state, but he wasn’t used, a clear sign that he was done.
On Vic’s exit from ECW he says in the podcast I referenced earlier, “New Jack didn’t like me, and politics again, boom.” He says that once he left ECW he thought his career might be done, until he checked out an XPW show near where he lived, as he had some friends that worked there. Grimes would begin wrestling for XPW in early 2001, getting some early success by winning the 01 King of the Death matches tournament. Later in the year, he would lose an exploding ring match to crown the first King of the Death match champion.
New Jack claims on YouShoot that he never hated Vic, not at the time at least. He then says that the problem between them grew when he heard of Grimes quote “taking credit” for hurting him. “That’s when I decided that I wanted to go to XPW where he was at.” Angel makes a statement that corroborates this, and maybe explains a bit. One show after Vic started with XPW, New Jack would follow. Less than a month after that, the two would be on opposite sides of a tag team match, but they wouldn’t meet again in a singles match until a year later, setting up the scaffold match.
XPW
On January 12th 2002 at XPW’s New Year’s Revolution, New Jack and Grimes had a match with no clear winner. The two men would brawl to the backstage area, and the lights in the building would go out. When they came on a few minutes later, the referee was left pacing, having no idea what was going on, until Vic and New Jack would appear on a balcony in the Grand Olympic Auditorium. The two teased throwing each other off the balcony, but eventually New Jack would take a horrific looking fall, chasing into, but not necessarily through two tables. The match would be officially ruled a no contest, as Grimes celebrated from above.
This would lead to a rematch in the following month where they could only be a decisive winner, as the loser would have to come off the scaffolding. In the build up to Freefall, New Jack had been telling people that he was due to hang up his boots. “The match was also billed as loser having to retire, and New Jack went around telling people he was going to retire (although he was still taking bookings for whomever asked) because of doctors orders to get it over that he would be losing and it would actually be a stip adhered to, but nobody was taking it seriously.” Bryan Alzarez gave more detail in his Figure Four Weekly, saying “New Jack is now claiming that his doctor told him if he gets hit on the head one more time, he could lose what’s left of his eyesight and be paralyzed.” If you're wondering, both New Jack and Vic Grimes would be back in the ring about two months after the scaffold match.
And now, we get to the day of XPW Freefall. According to an account published in the Wrestling Observer, “When Grimes first arrived at the building, the scaffold was already set up. Grimes climbed to the scaffold, looked down, and recognized he was in trouble because the ring was out of position. He moved the ring five feet by going into the ring and running the ropes and moving it that way.” That in itself is a stunning statement, and the part about the ring being moved is confirmed by New Jack on YouShoot. Dave adds “He actually should have moved it three or four more feet, because hitting the ropes shows just how little the margin of error was.”
Earlier in the night, the Sandman had won the XPW King of the Death match Championship from Supreme. The report in the Observer says that “There were also a lot of fans upset by a Sandman heel turn that didn’t get over the way it was supposed to.” This wouldn't be the only thing they would be upset by though, as also on the card, promoter Rob Black’s wife Lizzy Borden would take part in a Lumberjack Buck Naked match with Veronica Caine, where the loser would be stripped completely. “Well, just at the moment that was supposed to happen, the lights went out, and they rushed Caine backstage. The fans were so upset there was fear of a riot for not following through on that stip.” On a night where things were already going wrong for XPW, New Jack and Grimes were scheduled to take part in the main event. “The match didn’t start until after 12:40 a.m. because the show went forever.”
New Jack takes to the ring and tells the crowd that he wanted this match. There’s a very ominous feeling even when you know what’s coming. He then tells us that either he or Grimes won’t be walking out. New Jack goes on the attack straight away with a chain, as Grimes enters the ring with his trusty pizza cutter in hand. The two walk and brawl with weapons around the ring, which is taken up mostly by a stack of twelve tables meant to break a man's fall really badly.
After about five minutes of fighting, Grimes exits the ring, and the two look at each other as he points up. Both men ascend opposite sides of the scaffolding, with Grimes setting off first, but the smaller New Jack making it up first. About six hundred pounds of Jack and Grimes makes the scaffolding shake.
From the ground, we see New Jack reach into his pocket and produce a taser. He even shows us that it works and the crowd beneath gasps. He proceeds to jab it into Vic, though mercifully, because of the camera angle that is used, we can’t actually see that New Jack is really using it. There’s nowhere to go from there though but down, as New Jack gets Grimes to the edge, and throws him over the rail. A blood curdling scream can be heard from commentator Kris Kloss, who said that in that moment, he threw down his headset, knowing there was nothing left to say.
New Jack said on YouShoot that Vic had requested the twelve tables, but that he was aiming for the pole, which I assume means he intended to throw Vic past the tables and towards the ring post. He confirms that the ring had moved from where it originally was, not adding, or maybe not knowing that Vic was the one who moved it. Interestingly, Vic also claims that he was aiming for the turnbuckle, perhaps hoping for it to break his landing. Vic would hit off the ropes, hoping that he would bounce the right way back into the ring, which may have also helped in his miraculous landing.
Immediately following the fall, “The ring announcer, Ron Hed, was screaming for people to leave the building, giving the idea that Grimes’ life was in danger to the fans as they left.” Vic stayed down in the ring until all the estimated one thousand five hundred fans had left. He even worked the paramedics until this point, after which he got up. “In reality, while very bruised up, he was walking around backstage. Grimes was very lucky not to have been hurt worse.” Dave Meltzers there, with maybe the biggest understatement in the history of the Wrestling Observer. Watching the fall, it's incredible that Grimes wasn't more hurt or worse. Vic told us that he laid there in the ring while the paramedics tried to assess him, refusing to cooperate with them until the fans had left. He then tells a story that I have to leave to his words. A brief report in the PWTorch published on March 9th notes that when Vic was contacted for an update on his condition, “he had already returned to his day job the following Monday.” Speaking to Kriss Kloss, Vic references Mick Foley’s first Book, Have a Nice Day. On the back cover, there is a picture of Mick, annotated with every injury he had suffered in his career to that point. Amazingly given what we’ve heard in this video, Vic claims to have had no major injuries in his career.
Over the years, perhaps spurred on by the long history of New Jack incidents over the years, and maybe also encouraged by what we know about Living Dangerously 2000, there have been plenty of theories about whether any of this was real or not. In Figure Four Weekly, Bryan Alvarez notes that “In fact, one of Grimes’ friends was told before the show that the two guys were planning something that they weren’t even letting XPW in on, and if you’ve ever watched XPW, well, that’s saying something.” The way New Jack tells the story, he demanded the match from Rob Black, and there's something quite chilling about the idea that Vic was complicit with this, but he doesn't say otherwise. In his Dark Side of the Ring episode, New Jack says that after the match, he told Grimes that they were even, and this may have been the last time the two ever spoke.
In Vic's podcast interview, he closes talking about Freefall by offering an apology to New Jack. In an interview that was recorded about a year later, not long before New Jack’s passing, billed as his final shoot interview, an inebriated Jack makes reference to Vic’s apology, and plainly doesn’t accept it, citing the vision in his right eye never completely healing.
Ending
I’m sure I can say this and most fans will agree that what happened at Freefall should undoubtedly never happen again. Fortunately though, at the time there were things on the horizon that may have helped this.
In the Observer post Freefall, Dave reported that changes were already coming for XPW. “Shane Douglas, whose Time Warner contract expires on 4/17, is at that point scheduled to take over as booker of XPW. Most likely the really crazy stuff will be toned down at that point.” You're wondering how that went, on July 20th at Baptised in Blood three, Shane would win the XPW World title in his very first match for the promotion. As far as that toned down booking goes, it didn’t exactly come straight away. On the same night Supreme would win an exploding ring scaffold match, when Shane Douglas would shoot Supreme’s opponent Angel with a tranquilizer gun, causing him to fall on his own off the scaffolding. A lesser YouTuber would make a joke here about Angel at least being able to control his own bump through this booking, and I am that lesser YouTuber.
One final thing that really signified that times were changing for wrestling didn’t directly involve XPW, or even WWE. Over on the other side of the United States, on the very same night Ring of Honor held its very first event in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Built on an emphasis on in ring wrestling, a code of honor, and lots of handshakes, ROH would over the next couple of decades play a big part in shifting wrestling away from what we know of the Attitude era, and towards what it is today. Death match wrestling still exists today, and takes place regularly in promotions like GCW, but never since Freefall has the line been quite so blurred, between what was real and what wasn’t.
Sources:
WON August 30th 1999 - WWE not happy with Vic https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/august-30-1999-wrestling-observer-newsletter-wwf-summerslam-review/
WON September 6th 1999 - PPW and ECW https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/september-6-1999-wrestling-observer-newsletter-week-both-high-and-low/
WON September 20th - Heyman not sure about Vic https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/september-20-1999-wrestling-observer-newsletter-eric-bischoff-fired/
Vic Grimes on Xtreme Memories with Kriss Kloss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCBxwOrtubg
WON Dec 20th 1999 - Heyman likes Vic https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/december-20-1999-wrestling-observer-newsletter-wwf-armageddon-review/
PWTorch Jan 15th 2000 Guilty as Charged 2000 review: https://members.pwtorch.com/torchbackissues00/torch584/Torch584.shtml
WON Mar 20th 2000 Living Dangerously review: https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/march-20-2000-wrestling-observer-newsletter-wwf-leave-usa-network-ecw/
Youshoot: New Jack, September 2009, Kayfabe Commentaries
WON Jun 12th 2000 Grimes’ Deal expiring https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/june-12-2000-wrestling-observer-newsletter-paul-heyman-meets-ecw/
WON Jul 10th Grimes released https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/july-10-2000-wrestling-observer-newsletter-wwf-signs-brock-lesnar/
WON March 4th 2002 Freefall report https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/march-4-2002-observer-newsletter-pride-goes-head-head-wwa-97455/
F4D March 4th 2002 Freefall comments https://members.f4wonline.com/newsletters/figure-four-weekly/f4w349-frye-beats-shamrock-classic-battle-march-4-2002-89236/
PW Torch Mar 9th Vic update: https://vip.pwtorch.com/2022/02/19/vip-2002-back-issue-pro-wrestling-torch-695-march-9-2002-pwtorch-breaks-the-news-of-the-launch-of-tna-by-jarretts-in-detailed-cover-story-mitchell-feature-on-the-return-of-the-nwo-edg/
New Jack final shoot interview, December 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeEgbz6Xh2o
No comments:
Post a Comment