Welcome to a bonus edition of
OFF-TRACK with A-TRAIN
Two of these things before noon?
on a MONDAY?
I must really love you guys
In this episode
WE FINALLY FIND OUT
WHY CRYME TYME GOT FIRED
IN 2007 IN THE MIDDLE OF A PUSH
Seems like Cryme Tyme ran afoul of the law backstage at WWE, and the Sheriff's name was John Cena.
Cryme Tyme consisted of JTG and Shad Gaspar. They were a black tag team with a "gangsta" gimmick. They were literally criminals from "da hood" who thought the words "crime" and "time" were spelled with a "Y."
It was a different time, long ago, when we weren't hung up on things like racial politics and stereotypes.
They made their debut in 2006.
But they didn't hand around long. They were first released from the company abruptly in 2007.
Their Wikipedia page states:
"The duo returned to Raw in July with a new gimmick, which saw them taking items and auctioning them off to the crowd. This led to a feud with then World Tag Team Champions Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch, but both JTG and Gasbard were released from their WWE contracts for undisclosed reasons on September 2, 2007 before the feud was resolved."
One minute they were feuding with the tag champs, and the next minute were given their walking papers practically out of nowhere, and nobody, not even Wikipedia, knows why.
UNTIL NOW.
In a new interview with The Hannibal TV, which you can watch in the video at the bottom of the page, JTG reminisced about the time when his tag team partner Shad Gaspar reacted poorly to the finish of a match,, taking it out on the referee.
This drew hear backstage from just about everyone, from the agent of the match Barry Windham to John Laurinaitis to Big Match John himself. They were released the next day.
“Our agent, Barry Windham, called Shad, he didn’t want to speak to me because it wasn’t me that had a problem, so he called Shad to the back and yelled at him in the locker room,” he said. “He called Shad into the room, yelled at him, then when Shad got out, and he got done getting yelled at by Barry Windham the agent, John Cena let him have it. John Cena let us both have it. And then on the way back, John Laurinaitis called us, let us have it, and the next day we got released at Raw.”
The lesson?
Cryme doesn't pay.
Just kidding. It kinda does. They got re-signed to the company in 2008 and stayed for two more years. They even had a partnership with John Cena for a while, in a faction called CTC, or "Cryme Tyme Cenation." Obviously, Cena was the leader because while he had his doctorate in Thuganomics, both Shad and JTG only had an Associate's Degree. They helped Cena vandalize JBL's limo, because of course they did. The faction was short-lived, however, as Cena got injured and the angle was dropped soon after.
Good to know that Shad and JTG could just bury the hatchet and work with the guy who probably had a hand in them being fired a few years prior. Bygones being bygones, and all that.
