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Cryme Tyme (also spelled Crime Time) was a professional wrestling tag team consisting of Shad Gaspard and JTG. They wrestled on the Raw brand of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) from October 2006 to September 2007. After their release from that company, continued working as a team on the independent circuit.

History[]

The team was first put together in the summer of 2006 in the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) developmental territory Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW). They originally simply went under their ring names—Shad Gaspard and the Neighborhoodie—before adopting the team name The Gang Stars. In OVW they held the Southern Tag Team Titles for two months, taking them from Roadkill and Kasey James on May 24, 2006, and dropping them to CM Punk and Seth Skyfire on July 28.

World Wrestling Entertainment (2006–2007)[]

Raw (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. Before the vignettes aired WWE placed a statement on their website, WWE.com, stating: 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. 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". 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 as such on the October 16 Raw.

After arriving on Raw they were depicted covertly stealing things such as Jerry Lawler's laptop, 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. Later that same month they were featured in a Raw segment that parodied Michael Richards's "Laugh Factory incident". 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.

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. 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, 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. 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. This led to a program with the World Tag Team Champions Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch, but both JTG and Shad were released from their WWE contracts on September 2, 2007 before the feud was resolved.

Independent circuit (2007–2008)[]

After leaving WWE they continued teaming together on the professional wrestling independent circuit, using the alternate spelling "Crime Time". They appeared at Jersey All Pro Wrestling's 10th Anniversary Show, defeating the Dirty Rotten Scoundrelz. They left the promotion undefeated after defeating Style & Finesse (Mike Donovan and Rob Vegas) in January 2008's Reclaiming Hudson.

The duo also made several solo appearances on the solo circuit. Gaspard lost to Psicosis at a Pro Wrestling Alliance event in September while his partner, appearing under the altered name Jay-TG made several appearances on the Derby City Wrestling television program.

Return to World Wrestling Entertainment (2008–2010)[]

JTG and Shad returned to WWE under the "Cryme Tyme" name on the March 31 edition of Raw in 2008, defeating Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch. Cryme Tyme began working with John Cena on the June 30 edition of Raw when they helped him interfere during John "Bradshaw" Layfield's match. The following week, they again appeared together in a segment when they vandalized JBL's limo. After a live event match, Cena confirmed that they had created a faction and announced that it was called CTC or "Cryme Tyme Cenation". Separately, Cryme Tyme started a feud with the World Tag Team Champions Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase, stealing their championship belts for a time, then losing a title match to them at Unforgiven. The CTC quietly separated after Cena's injury.

On April 15, 2009, Cryme Tyme were drafted to the SmackDown brand as part of the 2009 Supplemental Draft. Eve Torres later became their Valet, accompanying them to the ring and appearing in backstage segments with them. Later, Eve and Cryme Tyme got into a feud with The Hart Dynasty. They competed in six person mixed tag team, singles and tag team action. On the July 31 episode of SmackDown, they became the number one contenders to the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship by defeating The Hart Dynasty, but tag team champions Jeri-Show (Chris Jericho and Big Show) beat them at SummerSlam.

Cryme Tyme was supposed to compete for Team SmackDown at WWE Bragging Rights. However, due to health concerns regarding Gaspard, Cryme Tyme (along with most of the SmackDown team) was replaced by Matt Hardy, R-Truth, The Hart Dynasty and Finlay. On the March 5 episode of SmackDown!, they had a No.1 Contender's match to wrestle The Miz and The Big Show for the Unified WWE Tag Team Championships against John Morrison and R-Truth and The Hart Dynasty, however they failed to win the match. The following week on SmackDown, Cryme Tyme were facing Hart Dynasty but were attacked by The Undertaker.

At WrestleMania XXVI, both members of Cryme Tyme competed in the dark match battle royal, where JTG would be eliminated by Shad. Just days later on SmackDown!, after a quick loss to R-Truth and John Morrison, Shad was enraged and attacked JTG for not coming to his rescue in the match turning Shad Heel for the first time in his WWE brand career and second time in his wrestling career. (The first being his debut in OVW). Backstage after the match during an interview, Shad told Josh Mathews, "No more Time... no more Cryme Tyme...this is my time." The next week, Shad came to the ring and announced that he was done with Cryme Tyme and announced again that it was his time. Afterwards, an enraged JTG came out ready to fight Shad, but got kicked in the face by Shad for his troubles. The week after that Shad attacked JTG again, after his match with Caylen Croft, though JTG would get the upper hand on Shad. Five days later, they faced each other at Extreme Rules in a Strap match, which was won by JTG. The two had a standard rematch on the May 6 edition of WWE Superstars, which Shad won by pinfall, thus ending their feud. Shad was then sent to FCW developmental territory, while JTG stayed on Smackdown. Shad was later released from his WWE contract on November 19, 2010 along with five other wrestlers.

After disbandment[]

A few months after he was released from WWE, Shad Gaspard signed with Japanese wrestling promotion IGF in February 2011. He is also focusing on his acting career, having shot his part in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was released in March 2013. He also appeared on episodes of The Game. He is also set to star in other upcoming projects. Besides wrestling and acting, Gaspard also does modeling and works on a comic book. JTG appeared sporadically until his release in June 2014. In 2012, it was rumored that he would star in the upcoming film The Marine 3, but this was not true.

In June 2012, Gaspard accused the Prime Time Players (Titus O'Neil and Darren Young) on Twitter for ripping off the team's gimmick, Gaspard would bash the team via a rap due to their gimmicks basically consist of stereotypes presented as young, disrespectful, jive-talking, culturally insensitive showboats.

JTG was released from WWE on June 12, 2014.

Independent Wrestling (2014–2020)[]

It was announced on June 19, 2014 that JTG and Shad were looking for booking interests labeled now as the slightly altered "Crime Time". JTG and Shad would continue to wrestle under this name until Shad's death on May 17, 2020.

In wrestling[]

Championships and accomplishments[]

External links[]

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