When Raja Jackson, the son of Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, jumped into the ring at Rikishi's then-WWE ID promotion Knokx Pro for an angle that went bad, it became national news.
Agreeing to an angle with local wrestler Syko Stu, Jackson picked up the veteran brawler but knocked him unconscious in an ugly slam. Jackson then got on top of the fallen fighter, and the work rapidly turned into a shoot, with the second-generation fighter unloading 22 unprotected shots to Stu's head before he was subdued by the members of the show's roster.
When the videos went viral online, the condemnation of Jackson was near universal, with stars from AEW and WWE like Swerve Strickland and Rusev calling out the incident. However, some oldheads of the previous generation tried to give El Hijo del Rampage the benefit of the doubt, including ex-WWE star Mark Henry, who made the shocking decision to defend the angle to TMZ.
“That’s what happens when people are not experienced to our business. You have to be fully educated, you have to be fully trained, and people think that’s something that’s not prevalent. When I came into wrestling in ‘95, ‘96, I had a lot of the same issues. I didn’t like the ribbing, I didn’t like the joking. Anybody that talked to me that I didn’t think was worthy of having that kind of aggressive conversation, they got that work,” Henry explained.
“I don’t know the full story, but I do know what I saw, and it looked like he wasn’t smart to what was going on, and the dude that was messing with him bit off more than he could chew.”
With all due respect to Henry, this wasn't an issue of ribbing or jokes. Jackson and Stu agreed to an angle, the former hit an unsafe move and put a man's life in danger due to what Dave Meltzer called “one of the worst things I've seen in professional wrestling.” Even if Stu is able to recover, Jackson has been banned from Kick, is being investigated by the LAPD, and will almost certainly never be welcomed in a wrestling ring again at any level.
