The team was first put together in the summer of 2006 in the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) "developmental territory" Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW).[1] They originally simply went under their ring names—Shad Gaspard and the Neighborhoodie—before adopting the team name The Gang Stars.[2] In OVW they held the Southern Tag Team Titles for two months, taking them from Roadkill and Kasey James on May 24, 2006,[3] and dropping them to CM Punk and Seth Skyfire on July 28.[4][edit] 2006-2007
In late 2006, WWE promoted The Gangs Stars to the main Raw brand roster, starting by having them work house shows and dark matches. On the September 4 Raw, vignettes began airing to promote the debut of the team, now dubbed Cryme Tyme, showing them "training" for their pending debut on the show.[5] Before the vignettes aired WWE placed a statement on their website, WWE.com, stating:[6]“ Tonight a new tag team, Cryme Tyme, will be introduced to the RAW audience. In an effort to humor and entertain our fans the tag team known as Cryme Tyme will be parodying racial stereotypes.
Shad Gaspard and JTG do outlandish, outrageous "stunts" to ready themselves for tag team action on RAW. This attempt at Saturday Night Live-like humor is bound to entertain audiences of all ethnic derivations.We hope you enjoy the weekly adventures of Cryme Tyme.
â€The vignettes, which aired weekly, featured Cryme Tyme robbing people while an (overly and stereotypically uncool sounding) announcer dubbed their actions "training exercises" designed to work on things like "speed", "agility", "drive", "endurance", and "intensity".view Cryme Tyme wrestled as faces in their house show and dark matches, finally making their television debut—a win over Johnny and Mikey of the Spirit Squad[7]—as such on the October 16 Raw.After arriving on Raw they were depicted covertly stealing things—such as Jerry Lawler's laptop,[8] and a plasma screen TV[9] —during interviews and while celebrating wins with the commentary team.On November 5, the team made their pay-per-view debut at Cyber Sunday, defeating Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch, The Highlanders (Rory and Robbie McAllister), and Charlie Haas & Viscera in a four team tornado tag team match.[10] Later that same month they were featured in a Raw segment that parodied Michael Richards's "Laugh Factory incident".[11] In the skit, a wrestler (Nick Berk)—acting as a stand in for Richards—recreated the scene of the incident by using racial slurs and insults until Cryme Tyme confronted him on stage. Nervous, he offered an apology, but Gaspard kicked him in the head and JTG made a Seinfeld-esque joke, saying "What's the deal with the Bloods and the Crips? Can't they all just get along?". This event was the beginning of a series of vignettes and skits featuring Cryme Tyme interacting with different, unexpected audiences.[12][13]Around the same time they began a program with the reuniting World's Greatest Tag Team (Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas), during which Benjamin began to express disgust with Cryme Tyme's antics, calling them offensive and harmful to the black community.[14] During the storyline Haas started "acting black", but after the World's Greatest Tag Team handed Cryme Tyme their first loss on the January 29, 2007 Raw,[15] the program was dropped, with Cryme Tyme appearing mainly on Raw's sister show Heat, only appearing on Raw in backstage segments.On July 21, 2007, Cryme Tyme appeared at an Ohio Valley Wrestling event and wrestled the OVW Southern Tag Team Champion James Boys (K.C. and Kassidy James), taking the title.[16][17] At the next weeks television tapings the James Boys were again announced as Champions, with no explanation of how they won the title back being offered.The duo returned to Raw in July and started a gimmick where they would take items and auction them off to the crowd.[18] This led to a program with the World Tag Team Champions Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch,[19][20] but both JTG and Shad were released from their WWE contracts on September 2, 2007 before the feud was resolved.
