Baron Black: Lee Moriarty Is A Natural Fit For Battle Slam; Picks His Own 'Def Jam Vendetta' Starting Five

On April 24, hip-hop and pro wrestling will collide once again as Baron Black and his home base of Atlanta will be playing host to Battle Slam: Vendetta. Black has accrued a roster of pro wrestlers all with hip-hop ties to duke it out. In addition, live performances will be going down which includes Josiah Williams and Atlanta legend, Pastor Troy.

Black spoke with WrestleZone’s Dominic DeAngelo following the announcement of the event and talked about how his eventual opponent for the show, Lee Moriarty, was a perfect choice to compete on the card.

“Lee Moriarity as you know has been to Atlanta to wrestle for TERMINUS before,” Black told DeAngelo. “A lot of people kind of do know he’s a very big hip-hop head. He loves hip-hop music, that’s his thing. The new song he has on the AEW: Who We Are album is pretty dope. He loves that and if you ever seen the episode of Dark where he debuted to come out to that theme song he talks about his love for hip hop and everything that comes together with him and wrestling so being the great wrestler taht he is it was once again it was a no-brainer to have Lee Moriarty at this Battle Slam event.”

As for getting an artist like Pastor Troy, Black’s goal was much easier at achieving than expected.”

“Here’s the thing, you really can’t pull of this event unless you get some real people who are authentically engrained into hip-hop community. Pastor Troy, a legend in his own right, is very synonymous with Atlanta and very synonymous in the state of Georgia. So having this event here in Atlanta, Battle Slam, hip-hop meets professional wrestling, it’s only right that Pastor Troy has to be a part of it cause Pastor Troy as everybody would know is a major pro wrestling fan as he carries around big gold everywhere that he goes. And to top that off, I was always a Pastor Troy fan growing up, especially through middle school and high school because he was really a guy that was really killing his scene.”

“Once I told him what it was about and what it was for, he was all for it. He was all for it. He was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m definitely down to do that,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, this is a whole lot easier than I thought.”

“The EmpBruh” is a huge video game aficianado and as the Battle Slam imagery would indicate, the event has been heavily influenced by the classic EA Sports BIG hit, Def Jam Vendetta. DeAngelo asked Baron if he had to pick five new hip-hop artists to become new fighters on a sequel game, who would he choose?

“Sometimes when rappers are beefing, it’s very entertaining. If it ends, you know, very positively,” Black said as an early disclaimer. “We’ve seen Nas and Jay-Z, we’ve seen Drake and Meek Mill go at it, you know what I mean? At the end, everything turns out. Gucci and Jeezy was at each other for awhile, but now we just recently seen them do a Versus together so everything is gonna be smoothed out. We’ve enjoyed a little back and forth.”

“With that being said the first one I’d want on there is T.I. That’s my guy. I’m a huge T.I. fan of course I’d have to see Kanye [West] cause Kanye is going to stir up so much drama with that stuff. You have to put Kanye in there. We’d gotta put someone like Lil Nas X in there as well.”

“We gotta get a legend up in there so we gotta do Jay-Z. Gotta do Jay-Z. Gotta put a legend up in there. Plus it wouldn’t be an interesting game if we didn’t have a female representation of today so someone like a Cardi B or Nicki Minaj.”

For the record, Black has the following as his re-imagined Def Jam Vendetta Starting Five: