One of the few acts during the 1990s who completed the trifecta of working for WWE, WCW, and ECW, and it was in the land of extreme where The Public Enemy really made their name.

After working as opponents for many years, including a dark match that took place during 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 would become the most popular tag team in ECW at the time, winning the ECW Tag Team Championships on four occasions and feuding with everyone the company had to offer. Their popularity would lead them to WCW, where they had most of the mainstream exposure after spending three years with the company.

During their time in WCW, while they didn’t reach the heights that they did in ECW, they still managed to bag themselves a short reign with the WCW Tag Team Championships in 1996, and landed themselves a deal with WWE in early 1999. However, things wouldn’t work out in WWE as they essentially run out of the company by The Acolytes after an infamous squash match, and after a brief cameo back in ECW, The Public Enemy’s time in the spotlight was over. They would continue to team up on the independent circuit, and even held the NWA Tag Team Championships after their departure from WWE, but they would never get back on TV in any capacity, 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, better known as Pitbull #1. On the way to the show, Rocco would suffer a fatal heart attack that killed him at the age of 49, and despite being in locker rooms filled with steroids and other commonly used drugs, Rocco’s family revealed that the heart attack was triggered by a congenital heart defect that ran through his family, and that there were no drugs found in his system at the time of death. To remember him, IWA-Mid South, founded by former ECW star Ian Rotten, changed the name of their annual Sweet Science Sixteen tournament to the Ted Petty Invitational (Ted Petty being Rocco Rock’s real name) in 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 try and soldier on with his kayfabe brother Joey Grunge as The New Public Enemy, but things never really worked out for Johnny following Rocco’s death, and on February 16, 2006, Grunge would also pass away at the age of 40 following a number of sleep apnea complications. While some reports suggest that Grunge died from a coronary artery blockage caused by his obesity, others claim that he had ingested a large number of Soma pills the night before his death.