Shad is the son of Benjamin Gaspard, a former street enforcer for street gangs and personal security guard in the early 1970s, who now owns Mcfay Contracting Inc. Shad is the third of six siblings.
At five years old Shad’s father began training him in boxing, and at age eight, he began training in a mixture of different martial arts. As a student, Shad loved to fight and quickly developed into an aggressive fighter, winning many fights as an amateur. His mother gave him the nickname “Beast” as a result of his aggressiveness. At the age of sixteen, Shad began prize fighting for promoter “Hardbody Harrison”, a former World Championship Wrestling wrestler and FX Tough Man Champion, in bar fighting tournaments such as Boxing, Kickboxing, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), and tough man competitions. Even though Shad was only sixteen years old, he competed against adults who were older than him by five to twenty years. Gaspard holds won-loss records as a No Holds Barred fighter (35-7) and an amateur boxer (57-26).

Gaspard was extensively involved in athletics during his high school years, specializing in wrestling, track, and basketball. After high school, he continued to play basketball at Georgia Perimeter College, and after leaving, he became a bodyguard for several rappers and actors, including Puff Daddy, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Mike Tyson.

Though the Cryme Tyme gimmick was mostly parody, Gaspard has been arrested numerous times, including arrests for assault in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, and California; looting and robbery in New York and Georgia; and drug-trafficking in Atlanta.

Gaspard then decided to become a professional wrestler. He qualified for the finals of the reality television program Tough Enough 2 in 2002, but was disqualified and replaced after failing a physical.

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