Considered one of the few acts in the course of the Nineteen Nineties who accomplished the trifecta of working for WWE, WCW, and ECW, and it was within the land of utmost where The Public Enemy really made their name.
After working as opponents for a few years, including a dark match that took place in the course of the first episode of “WWE Raw” in 1993, Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge were put together by Paul Heyman, who claims that The Public Enemy were his first original creation in ECW. They might turn out to be the preferred tag team in ECW on the time, winning the ECW Tag Team Championships on 4 occasions and feuding with everyone the corporate had to supply. Their popularity would make them WCW, where that they had a lot of the mainstream exposure after spending three years with the corporate.
During their time in WCW, while they didn’t reach the heights that they did in ECW, they still managed to bag themselves a brief reign with the WCW Tag Team Championships in 1996, and landed themselves a cope with WWE in early 1999. Nevertheless, things would not work out in WWE as they essentially run out of the corporate by The Acolytes after an infamous squash match, and after a transient cameo back in ECW, The Public Enemy’s time within the highlight was over. They might proceed to team up on the independent circuit, and even held the NWA Tag Team Championships after their departure from WWE, but they’d never get back on TV in any capability, then tragedy struck.
On September 21, 2002, Rocco Rock was traveling to an independent show where he was going to cross paths with fellow ECW alumni Gary Wolfe, higher referred to as Pitbull #1. On the technique to the show, Rocco would suffer a fatal heart attack that killed him on the age of 49, and despite being in locker rooms crammed with steroids and other commonly used drugs, Rocco’s family revealed that the center attack was triggered by a congenital heart defect that ran through his family, and that there have been no drugs present in his system on the time of death. To recollect him, IWA-Mid South, founded by former ECW star Ian Rotten, modified the name of their annual Sweet Science Sixteen tournament to the Ted Petty Invitational (Ted Petty being Rocco Rock’s real name) within the wake of his death. Since then stars like AJ Styles, Chris Hero, and Low Ki have all won the tournament.
As for Johnny Grunge, he would attempt to soldier on together with his kayfabe brother Joey Grunge as The Latest Public Enemy, but things never really worked out for Johnny following Rocco’s death, and on February 16, 2006, Grunge would also pass away on the age of 40 following various sleep apnea complications. While some reports suggest that Grunge died from a coronary artery blockage brought on by his obesity, others claim that he had ingested numerous Soma pills the night before his death.