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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 someone who loves the sport. Take for example Violent J of the Insane Clown Posse. Most may know him as part of the famous hip-hop group, but others may remember him for his professional wrestling.
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Violent J of Insane Clown Posse performs during 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 began performing in the 1990s, appearing in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), World Wrestling Federation (now WWE), and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) before debuting in Juggalo Championship Wrestling (JCW) in 1999.
Violent J told PK Press Club Digital that his professional wrestling fandom dates back to before he was a teenager.
“I’ve been a wrestling fan my whole life. I made it my goal in life to be a wrestler. And if anything I learned in school had nothing to do with being a wrestler, I didn’t listen. It was all about being a wrestler. And it wasn’t something I wanted, hoped for, or dreamed of. It was something I absolutely knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to be a wrestler and so was Shaggy (2 Dope) no doubt about it,” he said. “But when I turned 19, or probably 17, hip-hop started to outgrow that dream, that goal, just like hip-hop started to outgrow that love and we tried to fight it because for so long we had set out to be wrestlers and we knew we were going to be wrestlers. Failure wasn’t an option. But hip-hop started to outgrow that love.
“So we fought 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 were going to be rappers. You know what I’m saying? But it’s funny because from the time we were 12 until about 17 or 18, we had already applied all that karma to become wrestlers. We had already applied all of this. It manifested itself.
He said he and Shaggy 2 Dope received a call from the WWF to produce music with a crew called The Oddities, but that turned into their own jobs within the company.
“So when we were 26 and we had our first gold album, the WWF at the time called us and said, ‘Hey man, we want you to do music for this team we called the Oddities.’ And we were like, “You know we’re struggling? We were actually struggling on the independent scene. And you know, me and Shaggy were both 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 pretty fun way. But when the WWF called all these years later, we were like, ‘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 UBS Arena in Elmont, New York (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for MTV)
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“So, they took us to Stanford, Connecticut, where we had the wrestling match. We wrestled. We took on Bruce Pritchard or was it 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 towards him. It’s enough crazy, man, how did that work.”
Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope’s love for professional wrestling manifested itself in their own promotion – Juggalo Championship Wrestling.
He recalled the first show the two put on and how skeptical fans were of them being in the ring.
“After we went to WWE and WCW, we decided to do it ourselves too. So we started our own promotion and actually I try to remember that if we were doing shows, we were doing shows before we went to the WWF,” he told PK Press Club Digital. “We had our own shows in Detroit. ICP was. I’ll never forget the first time ICP wrestled in front of a crowd as Violent Jay and Shaggy. They didn’t know we had anything to do with wrestling. The fans didn’t know we were wrestlers. They had no idea. Back then, there was no Internet. They didn’t know we were wrestlers. They didn’t know anything.
“We took out the flyer and said, ‘It’s going to be Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope, Insane Clown Posse, against the Chicken Boys,’ these two rednecks with rebel flags, in a steel cage. And the show is going to be called Strangle Mania Live. Man, this place was sold out. People were like, ‘What are we going to see? Are they really going to wrestle?’ Because they only knew us as musicians. Do you know what I’m saying? They said to themselves: “Are they going to struggle? What is it? And sure, man, we fought, man. And I will never forget this sight. It was one of the most beautiful nights of my life. But of course, after ICP got in the ring, it was over. Do you see what I mean? You had to go everywhere. We tried to attend all the major promotions.”
JCW’s popularity only grew 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)
Promotions airs a weekly Thursday evening show on YouTube called “Lunacy”. He also hosts a signature event during 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 our promotion can do. JCW, Juggalo Championship Wrestling,” he told PK Press Club Digital. “We air every Thursday night at 7 p.m. Eastern on YouTube. We have something for everyone. I guarantee whoever you are, no matter where you come from in life or who you are in life, you’re going to find something you love in JCW. That’s a fact. I challenge anyone to watch an entire episode of ‘Lunacy’, the show is called ‘Lunacy’, and see if there’s anything isn’t something you enjoy a lot, not just something you sort of like. You’re going to find something you really like. No matter who you are, all walks of life, we aim to entertain them all.
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“And Bloody Mania takes place in The Gathering. It’s Bloody Mania 19. It’s our 19th time we’ve had Bloody Mania. And it’s like our WrestleMania obviously. It’s like our big thing. It takes place 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 heart of things, to the heart of action. Juggalo Nation It’s cool. It’s a great feeling and you can feel it in the air, even after 19 times, it’s still there.
