A pair of noteworthy updates in the ongoing story about an independent wrestling show in the Los Angeles area put on by WWE Hall of Famer Rikishi’s school/promotion KnoxK Pro last Saturday night (Aug. 23) where MMA fighter Raja Jackson, son of UFC legend Rampage Jackson, assaulted wrestler Syko Stu in a storyline-gone-wrong. After an apparently unscripted moment between Jackson and Stu outside the venue prior to the show saw Stu smash a beer on Raja’s head, the 25-year-old was encouraged to interrupt
Stu’s match later. When he did, Jackson knocked the larger man out with a slam, then proceeded to deliver multiple punches to his head until he was pulled off.
In a video live streamed from a bowling alley last night (Aug. 26), Rampage offered his first comments on the incident since his initial statement over the weekend:
“I feel bad about what happened to Syko Stu.
“I don’t condone what my son did, very unfortunate… I wasn’t there. I’m a father, I gotta have my son’s back. I’m gonna let justice play out, take this to court. Ain’t much I can do on that side but be a father…
“I can’t talk about any details and stuff like that. I can’t really go into nothing. I hope y’all can respect that… This shit has put me in a bad mood. I feel bad about Syko Stu and his family, his family had to see that shit. I just wish I could have been there. But I couldn’t…
“I’m not taking up for my son or anything like that… I’m doing what any father would do. Being a father in moments like this — sometimes you’re proud of your kids, sometimes you’re not proud of your kids. But at the end of the day, you’re still a father…
“Hopefully one day I can meet Syko Stu and shake his hand and have a man-to-man with him and stuff like that, but who knows… I don’t got the right words to say — and I know whatever I say, the haters are gonna try to twist my words and say whatever they’re gonna say. But I wasn’t there. I was learning at the same rate as everybody else. Then I got down to the bottom of it, and I learned there’s a lot of misinformation out there. So guys, don’t believe every edit and stuff… Y’all need to know I don’t condone Raja’s conduct. And I hope Syko Stu can forgive me — myself, as a dad — for not understanding everything.
“I’m not talking about that shit no more… I’m done with that. I’m movin’ on.”
The incident sent Stu, real name Stuart Smith, to the hospital and led to an LAPD investigation of Raja Jackson and Saturday’s show. You can join Mr. Beast and others in helping Smith’s family cover his medical costs at this GoFundMe page.
AJ Mana, real name Andre Hudson, has become a focal point for anyone looking to assign blame for what happened at KnoxK Pro on the 23rd. He is the wrestler seen telling Jackson to give Stu “a receipt” and to “tag his shit” before his run-in on Stu’s match. A KnokX Pro talent who helped pull Jackson off Stu in the ring, who to this point has only identified himself as “Doug” but whose name is Douglas Malo, went so far as to intimate that Mana “attempted murder” by riling Jackson up before he attacked Stu.
On a live edition of CT Fletcher’s F Y’all Podcast streamed Monday night, Mana sought to tell his side of the story.
“I’m not dealing with anything in regard to speculation, rumor, heresy, anything of that nature. I will deal only with my personal experience and the facts as I witnessed them and as I acted and whatever came out of my mouth and whatever I was involved in
“In a video, that was over an hour long, in that entire video, you only see my ass for eight minutes. I had the least amount of involvement in this shit. However, I’m taking most of the heat for it. What’s happening….I won’t get too much into family ties, but it’s very obvious and easy to throw me under the bus.
“One thing I will not do is set up or double-cross another man.”
Not double-crossing another man seems to refer to both what Doug alleges he did to Jackson & Stu (“gassing up” Raja “to hurt somebody that AJ also has a problem with”), and to the person Mana does blame for what happened — an “owner/promoter” whose name he wouldn’t specify.
“Raja is a [MMA] teammate of mine, the son of Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson. The man, not a character.
”Let’s deal with the facts. He was a guest. I didn’t bring him to the show. I was part of the show. I am not a promoter. I am a talent. It wasn’t even my idea to have a storyline with Raja. I have no creative control. I don’t own the fucking company. I carry out what was told to me to do. I was unaware by carrying out what I was told to do that I would be scapegoated to protect them.“
Mana talked about some miscommunication around Raja being comped to attend last Saturday’s show, and alludes to money owed to him by KnokX Pro before continuing:
“Unbeknownst to production, a day prior, there was a meeting with me, Raja, and his pops about beginning a collaboration with [live streaming platform Kick]. They have millions of followers.
”Rampage says, ‘You’re working hard to get your name out there, but something isn’t clicking. If you get on this stream with us, people will talk shit.’ They did. ‘People will ragebait you. Just be cool about it and your following will do it up.’ It did. It really did. Then we started talking, ‘What if we bring this stream to KnokX Pro. It’ll be good for them and you.’
“Raja was there on business. Y’all out here trying to say this whole thing was a work and part of a storyline that went wrong. That’s bullshit.”
He introduced the 25-year-old to the unnamed owner/promoter:
“He was there for business. Not to do business on the show, but to promote the show, to promote me, to promote himself. It was a cross-collaborative agreement.”
Mana passionately defends himself against the allegation he set Stu up, pointing to a tattoo he says they share and calling Stu his “brother”. He does admit that the scene of wrestlers drinking outside the venue is common, and that what happened between Stu and Raja there (the “beer can incident”) was a shoot the owner/promoter then decided to use for the show:
“Promoter says, ‘Since this is already on camera, let’s use it and make it part of the show.’ ‘How are we going to do that?’ ‘I’ll give you a chance to roll in on his match and get your lick back.’ I said ‘receipt.’ I didn’t say ‘lick back.’ [pretends to punch himself in the jaw]. That’s a receipt. That’s all the fuck I told Raja to do!
”The only thing I told him to do was give him a receipt because that’s what the promoter wanted done. The promoter sent me away with Raja to work out the details. I didn’t tell him to go beat that man. One punch.
“Someone pulled him aside afterwards — some jabroni from the bullshit production team, says to him, ‘Don’t just throw one punch. Slam him and keep hitting him until we come in there and pull him off.’ Who the fuck set that up? Guess where I was? Nowhere in the building. I was getting ready for my match.
“‘Get in there and fuck that motherfucker up.’ Did that come out of my mouth? No. It came out of the promoter’s mouth. I’m not the promoter. I carried out orders. That’s all.. I was given a script to work out and implement into the show and later pulled from that segment. It’s not my fault. I’m a piece in this puzzle. I was carrying out the order of the promoter.”
He later referred to what happened outside as an assault as well while again pointing the finger at the promoter:
“There was no time to train [Raja]. He wasn’t there to be part of the show. He got attacked. He got assaulted, too. He got assaulted. They wanted to make it part of a storyline. There was no time to train him. This was a live show. One person assaults a guy, two hours later, another person assaults the same person. They assaulted each other. Yeah, he had permission. From the promoter, not me. I’m not the promoter.“
Mana says he did go to the hospital in an attempt to see Stu, but was turned away:
“They wouldn’t let me in. They don’t fuck with me because the world thinks I tried to unalive somebody. I did apologize for what happened. I was not admitting to anything, there was nothing that I did wrong, but I apologized because it was a work that went totally off the rails.”
At this point, we’ll likely have to wait for any results from the police investigation, and even then there will be doubts — especially considering allegations by Malo and fellow KnokX Pro wrestler Ian Morgan on the Scaling Up Podcast that the school/promotion, and specifically someone in management named Kevin Thomas, are asking wrestlers to not cooperate with police and to coordinate any response to the situation with them.
