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Professional wrestling may have the ability to truly reach every corner of the world.
In the United States, anyone can look to their left or right and find a person who loves this sport. Take Violent J from Insane Clown Posse for example. Most may know him as part of the notorious hip-hop group, but others may remember him from his professional wrestling.
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Violent J of Insane Clown Posse performs during the Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash 2025 at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, Illinois on June 22, 2025. (Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images)
The 54-year-old Michigan native was born in 1983 and started over 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 Pak Gazette 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 a goal in my life to be a wrestler. And if anything, what I was learning in school wasn’t about being a wrestler, I didn’t hear. It was about being a wrestler. And it wasn’t something I wanted or hoped or dreamed of. It was something I knew absolutely without a doubt that I was going to be a wrestler and Shaggy (2 Dope) too without a doubt about it,” he said. “But when I turned 19, or probably 17, hip-hop started to surpass that dream, that goal, like hip-hop started to surpass that love and we tried to fight against it because for a long time we had set our goals that we were going to be fighters and we knew we were going to be fighters. Failure was not an option. But hip-hop started to surpass that love.
“So, we fought this for a long time. But once we decided that the love for hip-hop was stronger, there was no turning back. The next thing we know, we knew without a doubt that we were going to be rappers. You know what I’m saying? But it’s funny because from the age of 12 until about 17 or 18, we had already applied all that karma to being a fighter. We had already applied all that. It manifested itself.”
He said that he and Shaggy 2 Dope received a call from the WWF to produce music for a team called The Oddities, but it became his own career in the company.
“So when we were 26 and we had our first gold album, the WWF at the time called us and said, ‘Hey, we want you guys to do the ring music for this team we call the Oddities.’ And we said, ‘You know we wrestle? We were actually wrestling on the independent scene. And you know, Shaggy and I were wrestling when we were 18 or 19, we were wrestling in the Midwest even though we knew we were going to be rappers, we still loved it,'” he said. “So, we were doing it in a fun way. But when the WWF called all those years later, we said, ‘Do they know we wrestle?’ 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, New York (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for MTV)
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“So, they flew us to Stanford, Connecticut, where we had the wrestling match. We wrestled each other. We wrestled Bruce Pritchard or it was Tom Pritchard, one of those guys. So, I mean, the next thing you know, we were debuting at SummerSlam at Madison Square Garden. But yeah, man, it’s like that dream came back and manifested because we had already applied all that positive energy into it. It’s pretty crazy, man, how it worked out.”
The love that Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope had for professional wrestling manifested itself in their own promotion: Juggalo Championship Wrestling.
He recalled the first show the two put on and how fans were skeptical of them being in the ring.
“After we went to WWE and WCW, we decided to do it too. So we started our own promotion and we were actually trying to remember if we were running shows, we were running shows before we went to WWF,” he told Pak Gazette Digital. “We were doing our own shows in Detroit. ICP was it. 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 anything that we used to be wrestlers. They had no idea. Back then, there was no Internet. They didn’t know we used to be wrestlers. They didn’t know anything about it.
“We turned the wheel and said, ‘It’s going to be Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope, Insane Clown Posse, against the Chicken Boys,’ these two southern guys with rebel flags, in a steel cage. And the show is going to be called Strangle Mania Live. Man, that place was sold out. People were like, ‘What are we going to see? Are they really going to fight?’ Because they only knew us as musicians. Do you know what I’m saying? They said, ‘Are you going to fight? What is this?’ And sure enough, man, we fought, man. And I will never forget that show. That was one of the best nights of my life. But of course, after ICP got in the ring, it was all over. Do you know what I mean? We had to go everywhere. “We tried to go to all the important promotions there were.”
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 the UBS Arena in Elmont, New York on September 11, 2024. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
The promotions host a weekly Thursday night show on YouTube called “Lunacy.” It also hosts a signature event at the annual Juggalo carnival called Gathering of the Juggalos called Bloodymania.
Bloodymania 19 will take place August 20-21 at Mother Nature’s Riverfront Retreat in Macks Creek, Missouri.
“Man, the best thing our promotion can do. JCW, Juggalo Championship Wrestling,” he told Pak Gazette Digital. “We’re every Thursday night at 7 o’clock ET on YouTube. We offer something for everyone. I guarantee who you are, no matter where you are from in life or who you are in life, you will find something you like about JCW. That’s a fact. I challenge anyone to watch an entire episode of ‘Lunacy,’ the show is called ‘Lunacy,’ and see if there isn’t something you really enjoy, not just something you like. To find something you really like, it doesn’t matter. whoever you are, in all walks of life. Our goal is to entertain you 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 it’s like our WrestleMania, obviously. 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 home. We’re bringing the show home, to the thick of things, to the heart of Juggalo Nation. It’s cool. It’s a cool feeling and you can feel it in the air, even after 19 times, it’s still there.
