Combatant Profile: Marv Won Respect
Earlier this year, Grantland ran an excellent piece on the oral history of 8 Mile. In it, we learn the crowd for the battles was filled with well-known local rappers, and one of them was invited to battle Eminem on stage. Since it was only for B-roll footage, they were told to pantomime, but this guy said fuck it and spit some bars that got the best of Marshall. Though he had a bad case of laryngitis and was told not to speak, Em felt compelled to answer, as the crowd began taunting him after the first guy’s rhymes. He turned on the mic and taught dude a lesson.
That dude was Marv Won.
Growing up in Detroit, Marv knows about getting scrappy. He started rapping because he wasn’t good enough to ball, and sh–t, he needed to do something to get attention from the ladies. He allegedly began battling when he was 14 and never stopped climbing, eventually showing up on MTV and at New York’s infamous Fight Klub. But while he’d cut his teeth against some of the D’s nicest MCs, it was his battle with Canada’s Pat Stay that gained him international notoriety.
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