On this episode of 10 Bell Pod, Nickohlessa, Tyler Wood, and The Man Scout Jake Manning break down the full, chaotic story of The Public Enemy: Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge
We discuss this table carrying, crowd igniting tag team that helped define ECW’s identity in the 1990s.
From their roots as Cheetah Kid and enhancement talent grinders, to becoming the heartbeat of early ECW hardcore chaos, and then struggling through awkward WCW and WWF runs, this episode looks at how fast they rose, why the magic didn’t always translate elsewhere.
We also define why their impact still echoes through modern wrestling. It’s a funny, tragic, and overdue appreciation of a team you can’t tell ECW’s story without.
Also, Nah, na-na-na-nah, Na-na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na, Na-na-na-nah, Nah, na-na-na-nah, Na-na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na, Na-na-na-nah
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EPISODE NOTES
Public Enemy: Chaos, Credibility, and Why the System Rejected Them
This episode repositions Public Enemy not as ECW crash-TV novelties, but as a tag team that broke the unspoken rules of how wrestling was supposed to look, sound, and function in the mid-90s.
Tracing Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge from the Northeast indies through ECW superstardom and into hostile runs in WCW and WWF, the episode treats Public Enemy as a stress test for wrestling systems unequipped to handle real chaos.
They were over before they were polished. Public Enemy connected instantly with ECW crowds through energy, danger, and attitude, not traditional structure.
They exposed promotional values. ECW embraced their chaos; WCW and WWF revealed their rigidity by trying to punish, flatten, or ridicule them.
The style was the product. Tables, brawling, and crowd immersion weren’t shortcuts. That was the act.
The backlash was institutional. They weren’t rejected for being unsafe, but for breaking hierarchy and ignoring how respect was “supposed” to be earned.
Coming out of the Northeast indie scene, Public Enemy thrived in environments where proximity, hostility, and unpredictability were features, not bugs. In ECW, Paul Heyman recognized that their value wasn’t precision, but controlled mayhem.
They weren’t technicians. They were a bookable riot, and the reactions proved it.
A key correction in the episode is dismantling the idea that Public Enemy lacked skill. They could sell chaos, structure brawls, time disorder, and protect each other in violent settings.
What they didn’t do was wrestle politely, a distinction that mattered deeply to locker rooms that confused tradition with professionalism.
Their WCW run is presented as a textbook case of institutional rejection. They were placed in deliberately hostile matches, most notably against The Nasty Boys, meant to embarrass and punish them.
Instead, those segments exposed WCW’s dysfunction more than Public Enemy’s limits. This isn’t framed as gossip, but as a cultural clash: a company claiming to want edge recoiling the moment it lost control of it.
WWF didn’t punish Public Enemy physically. It erased them creatively.
The episode argues this was worse than WCW’s hostility. They didn’t fail. They were never allowed to exist.
Public Enemy’s influence is clearer in hindsight. They helped normalize hardcore tag wrestling, crowd first energy, and chaos as spectacle rather than accident. Modern wrestling borrows heavily from their DNA, often without acknowledgment.
They didn’t ask permission.
And wrestling never quite forgave them for it.
