AEW's MVP Grew Up In Miami's 'Cocaine Cowboys' Days

Before he was Montel Vontavious Porter, better known as MVP, the mastermind of The Hurt Syndicate in AEW following his WWE departure, he was Hassan Hamid Assad, who grew up in Miami, Florida in the early 1980s. Over the years, MVP has been open about his rough start in life, including his time behind bars for armed robbery of a cruise ship casino when he was a teenager, and how his time behind bars actually led him to the world of professional wrestling.

MVP opened up even more about his early life growing up in Miami's "Cocaine Cowboy" days on "Marking Out with MVP & Dwayne Swayze." Swayze asked him to tell the story of MVP and his brother selling cocaine as kids, and MVP shook his head, saying his life "is a movie."

"For those of you that have seen 'Cocaine Cowboys,' that's the Miami that I grew up in," MVP explained. "Early 80s, cocaine was literally falling out of the sky. It was washing up on the beach. Cocaine was everywhere. My father was a cop and he had a plate of cocaine in his house all the time, with lines chopped up on it. He had us on the weekends and he'd have his cop friends over and I'd see them smoking weed and snorting coke."

MVP said the first time he heard the term "cocaine cowboy" was from his mother using it to refer to guys who used to hang out by the payphones in their apartment complex. He said, adamant that it was no exaggeration, that he used to find small baggies of the drug "all the time." He said he knew what cocaine was because "Miami Vice" was his favorite show. MVP explained he knew who to take those bags to.

MVP explained that he once found a bag and took it to a guy who lived in the complex, who gave him a few dollars. The star said he was only around 8 or 9 years old, in third or fourth grade.

"I remember, I'm asking him about cocaine and it's a grown a** man," MVP laughed. "He was in his mid-20s. 'Yeah, you know, you give yourself a little bump in the morning, get up like that, you're ready to go...' And he gave me like two dollars. Candy money for me, I'm going to get some Now & Laters. That's kind of when I realized like, 'Oh. Grown ups will pay if I find these little bags. There's certain people I can go to and give it to them and they'll give me some money.'"

MVP said that crack was also "ravaging" the community at the time. He remembered being a kid walking home from school and described the "dope stroll" of cars pulling up with guys running out to sell rocks or "whatever you wanted."

"I'm telling you, I was eight or nine, and I saw kicks smaller than me that were playing dope stroll," he said. "They had leaves from the trees and little pebbles and they were playing. They're emulating what they're seeing growing up. If I was eight or nine, they had to be four or five."

The AEW star confirmed he's been in contact with Dave Bautista and his production company to possibly create a movie about his wild life, but he knows it won't be rated PG. The pair reportedly started talking about the potential movie back in October of this year.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Marking Out with MVP & Dwayne Swayze" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.