Cryme Tyme

Cryme Tyme was an American professional wrestling tag team consisting of JTG and Shad Gaspard, best known for their tenure in WWE.

The team was an over-the-top parody of stereotypical street thugs. The tag team first disbanded in 2010, though reunited in 2014 and continued wrestling until Gaspard's death in May 2020.

Gaspard qualified for the finals of the reality television program Tough Enough 2 in 2002, but was disqualified and replaced after failing a physical. He was recruited by WWE talent scout Tom Prichard and trained with DeWayne Bruce for six months before debuting in Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) under the ring name Da Beast. He acted as part of the stable Bolin Services, acting as an enforcer.

JTG meanwhile had debuted as Just Too Good in OVW and after two matches, he was repackaged as The Neighborhoodie and subsequently placed into a tag team with Gaspard, who began performing under his real name. Collectively, their team was named "The Gang Stars". They won the OVW Southern Tag Team Championship by defeating Roadkill and Kasey James on May 24, 2006, in their first match as a team. After they won the championships, they entered into a feud with CM Punk who teamed up with Kane to defeat them and Simon Dean in a handicap match. Punk and Kane won a title match by disqualification, but they did not win the titles. They retained the titles in a gauntlet match, but later in the month lost the championships to Punk and Seth Skyfire on July 28. The following day, they lost a number one contendership match to The Untouchables (Dice Domino and Deuce Shade). The following year, the team returned to OVW, this time under the name "Cryme Tyme", and regained the OVW Southern Tag Team Championship on July 21 from The James Boys (KC James and Kassidy James). They lost the titles back to them the following day.

In late 2006, WWE promoted The Gang Stars to the main Raw brand roster, starting by having them work live events and dark matches. On the September 4 episode of 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 announcer dubbed their actions "training exercises" designed to work on things like "speed", "agility", "drive", "endurance", and "intensity". Cryme Tyme wrestled as fan favorites at live events and in dark matches, finally making their television debut, defeating Johnny and Mikey of The Spirit Squad on the October 16 episode of Raw.

After arriving on Raw, they were depicted covertly stealing things—such as Jerry Lawler's laptop, and a plasma screen TV—during interviews and while celebrating wins with the announce team.