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Pro wrestling may have the ability to truly reach all corners of the world.
In the United States, any person could look left or right and find someone who loves the sport. Let’s take Violent J from The Insane Clown Posse for example. Most people may know him as part of the infamous hip-hop group, but others may remember him for pro wrestling.
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Violent J of Insane Clown Posse performs during the 2025 Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, Ill., on June 22, 2025. (Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images)
Born in 1983, the 54-year-old Michigan native started back in the 1990s, appearing in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) before starting Juggalo Championship Wrestling (JCW) in 1999.
Violent J told Pakinomist Digital that his pro wrestling fandom dates back to before he was a teenager.
“I’ve been a wrestling fan my whole life. I had it as a goal in my life that I wanted to be a wrestler. And if anything I learned in school, it wasn’t about being a wrestler, I didn’t listen. It was about being a wrestler. And it wasn’t something that I wanted or I hoped or dreamed about. It was something that I wanted to be a wrestler without a doubt and I knew I was definitely going to be a shaggy. (2 Dope) also without a doubt,” he said. “But when I turned 19, or probably 17, hip-hop started to overtake that dream, that goal, just like hip-hop started to overtake that love, and we tried to fight it because we had set our goal for so long that we were going to be wrestlers, and we knew we wanted to be wrestlers. Failure was not an option. But that love started to overtake.
“So, we fought for it for a long time. But once we decided that the love for hip-hop was stronger, there was no going back. Next thing you know, we knew without a shadow of a doubt that we wanted to be rappers. You know what I’m saying? But it’s funny, because from the age of 12 to about 17 or 18, we had already used whatever was the karma that we had already applied to manifest itself.”
He said that he and Shaggy 2 Dope received a call from the WWF to produce music from a tag team called The Oddities, but it turned into their own run in the company.
“So when we were 26 and we had our first gold album, the WWF called us at the time and said, ‘Hey man, we want you to do the ring music for this team we’ve called the Oddities.’ And we were like, ‘You know we wrestle? We actually wrestled on the independent scene. And you know, me and Shaggy both wrestled when we were about 18, 19, we wrestled around the Midwest, though we knew we wanted to be rappers, we still had a love for it,” he said. “So we kind of made it fun. But when the WWF called all those years later, we said, ‘You know we’re wrestling?’ And they said, ‘We had no idea.’
Violent J of Insane Clown Posse attends the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards at the UBS Arena in Elmont, NY (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for MTV)
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“So, they flew us out to Stanford, Connecticut, where we had the wrestling match. We wrestled each other. We wrestled Bruce Pritchard, or was it Tom Pritchard, one of those guys. So, I mean, the next thing you know, we debuted at SummerSlam in Madison Square Garden. But yeah, man, it used up all that dream because we already had that positive energy and it came back. crazy, man, the way it worked.”
The love Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope had for pro wrestling manifested itself in their own promotion – Juggalo Championship Wrestling.
He recalled the first show the two put together and how fans were skeptical that they would be in the ring.
“After we went to WWE and we went to WCW, we also decided to do it ourselves. So we started our own promotion and actually we were, I’m trying to remember if we ran shows, we ran shows before we went to WWF,” he told Pakinomist Digital. “We ran our own shows in Detroit. It was ICP. I’ll never forget the first time ICP wrestled in front of a crowd like Violent Jay and Shaggy. They didn’t know we had anything to do with wrestling. The fans didn’t know we used to be wrestlers. They had no idea. Back then nobody knew anything about the internet like we didn’t know about anything wrestling. They didn’t know.
“We put the flyer out and said, ‘It’s going to be Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope, Insane Clown Posse, versus the Chicken Boys,’ these two red-necked guys with riot flags, in a steel cage. And the show is going to be called Strangle Mania Live. Man, that venue is sold out. People were just like, ‘What are we supposed to see?’ Because they only knew us as musicians. Do you know what I’m saying? They said, ‘Shall they fight? What is this?’ And sure enough, man, we fought our fight, man. And I will never forget that show. It was one of the greatest nights of my life. But of course, after ICP entered the ring, it was over from there. Do you know what I mean? We had to walk everywhere. We tried to go to every major promotion there was.”
JCW’s popularity has only grown from there.
Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of Insane Clown Posse attend the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards at UBS Arena in Elmont, New York on September 11, 2024. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
The campaigners run a weekly Thursday night show on YouTube called “Lunacy.” It also runs a flagship event at the annual Juggalo carnival called the Gathering of the Juggalos called Bloodymania.
Bloodymania 19 takes place August 20th and 21st at Mother Nature’s Riverfront Retreat in Macks Creek, Missouri.
“Man, the best thing our promotion can do. JCW, Juggalo Championship Wrestling,” he told Pakinomist Digital. “We’re on every Thursday night at 7 Eastern on YouTube. We provide something for everyone. I guarantee you, no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from in life, or who you are in life, you’ll find something to like about JCW. That’s a fact. I challenge everyone to watch an entire episode of ‘Lunacy,’ the show is called ‘Lunacy,’ and the series is called ‘Lunacy,’ and not just see if you enjoy something, not something. You’ll come to to find something you really like.No matter who you are, we aim to entertain them all.
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“And Bloody Mania takes place from The Gathering. It’s Bloody Mania 19. It’s the 19th time we’ve had Bloody Mania. And of course it’s like our WrestleMania. It’s like our big deal. It happens at The Gathering of the Juggalos, which is our big fan festival every year. And it’s like we’re bringing the thick shows home. The heart of the Juggalo Nation. It’s a great feeling and you can feel it in the air. It still is.
