In this video, we'll look at the beginnings of Abyss’ career, and we’ll also look at where the ideas behind the character came from. Then we’ll look at Abyss’ start in TNA.
Early career
Despite Chris Parks getting his first national exposure in 2002, his in ring career goes back longer than you might think. His first match was in early 1995, having been trained by Roger Ruffen, who in his career had some enhancement matches for WWE in 1984. Ruffen was a referee for WWE for over a decade, and in 1998 would take control of the Northern Wrestling Federation based in Ohio, which is still running today. Other wrestlers who Ruffen had a hand in training include fellow TNA alumni Wildcat Chris Harris, and Good Brother Karl Anderson. On a Wrestling road stories podcast with Bodyslam.net, Harris notes that he and Parks started together, and would travel and room together. Once TNA started, you can add James Storm and Slash of the New Church stable to that group. If you saw early TNA and remember those cap guns that Storm used to use in his entrances, Harris told a fun story from the week of TNA’s first show about those same guns. *Clip*
Long before TNA started, Parks would debut in NWF using the name ‘The Original Terminator’, I assume named after the original original Terminator, about whom there had been two films by that point. Parks would wrestle for NWF from the mid-90’s into the 2010’s, though on a less regular basis after becoming Abyss. Knowing Abyss’ reputation for being fiercely loyal to TNA over the years, no doubt he had a similar loyalty to Roger Ruffen, against whom he would even wrestle against in NWF.
By ‘96, The Original Terminator would change his name to Chris Justice, and later Prince Justice, continuing his world record attempt at having the most indyriffic names all assigned to one person. Any 2008 TNA fans who remember the Prince Justice Brotherhood might have just worked out where that God awful name came from. In 2001, Justice, now shortening his name, would arrive in Georgia based NWA Wildside, a former developmental territory for WCW which would become one of the promotions that NWA TNA would look for talent from when it was being planned for in early 2002. Other notable names who wrestled at Wildside include Ron Killings, later known as R-Truth, and a young AJ Styles post WCW closing.
As Justice, Parks would wrestle on NWA TNA’s first ever event, as part of the main event Gauntlet for the Gold match to crown a new NWA World Champion. The list of entrants for this match is long and many varied, which is a nice way of saying that the vast majority had absolutely no business being in a match for the NWA World title, Justice included. Of all the entrants, just two had been World champions of a major US promotion, while most of the rest had been lower card talent elsewhere. In the end the match would come down to the Wall Brother, and the eventual winner Ken Shamrock, who at least had some legitimate UFC success that gave him some credibility as TNA’s first champion. In the match, Justice lasts five minutes forty seconds, making no eliminations but being thrown out by Rick Steiner. Despite not being Abyss yet, he uses what would become known as the Black Hole Slam on Del Rios, who for some reason is cosplaying as Scott Steiner. I can;t imagine Rick Steiner being too happy about that and he was in the match. If you’re curious by the way, in a past life Del Rios was also the short lived mid-90’s WWF character, Phantasio. The one that nearly started a fire backstage, making this assemblage of wrestlers even worse. Speaking about Justice in the match, Jeff Jarrett said on his My World podcast, “his in ring appearance wasn't long, but we all said he's good.” While this makes Parks a day 1 TNA original, he wouldn’t be back for the promotion for the rest of 2002, with Jeff adding that Justice just didn’t fit into any creative plans.
A month after TNA’s first event, Justice would begin working for IWA Puerto Rico, having met the promotions booker Dutch Mantell while working the US indies. It is here a couple of shows in where he would first use the name Abyss, having used the name Cleage initially. I tried to find out what this name actually meant or what it might be in reference to, and all I’ll tell you is that google thinks you mean something else. Abyss would wrestle against many recognizable faces to TNA fans, but not necessarily names they would know. He would wrestle Ricky Banderas, who would later become Judas Mesias in TNA, as well as Glamour Boy Shane, who would later be the referee turned wrestler Shane Sewell. When Dutch Mantell had been booking in Puerto Rico in the 90’s, he’d spotted a wrestler named Doomsday. Dutch would be instrumental in getting Doomsday booked by Jim Cornette for Smokey Mountain Wrestling, playing a vital role in him eventually becoming Kane. That’ll come into play a bit later on. In late 2003, Dutch would arrive in TNA where he would work on the creative team, a little bit after Abyss, but he might well have had a hand in recommending Parks to Jeff Jarrett before that, with whom he has a long history dating back to Jarrett’s early career.
Making the Monster
Now that we’ve gone through Abyss’ route to TNA, let’s take a closer look at how the character was created. When Abyss first arrived in TNA, he attracted some criticism for looking a bit like some kind of hybrid between Kane and Mankind. It’s not hard to see why when you see what Abyss would look like in Puerto Rico, with flames on his gear and mask. By the time he made it back to TNA’s pay per views, he started wearing this Canadian tuxedo, but that only drew more of the Mankind comparisons. It’s fitting then that the person who has been credited with creating the Abyss character, as I hinted earlier, also discovered Kane several years earlier. On his podcast in July 2022, Dutch was asked about this.
Dutch says that he met Chris Parks on an indie some time before TNA, but really got talking to him at the first show in Huntsville Alabama, where episodes one and two of their weekly pay per views were taped. When it became clear that TNA wasn’t going to use Abyss beyond the first night, Parks would call Dutch and ask for work in Puerto Rico. Dutch would tell him he needed a new name, joking with him that Prince Justice wouldn’t sound good in spanish. Dutch then tells us how the mask came about. He told Principe Justicia “you’ll be like a mental patient… …You’re released and all, but to protect yourself from whatever you think you need protecting from, you wear the mask.” It’s hardly Kane’s childhood fire and the psychological scars that left, but it’ll do. One last point Dutch explains about the mask is that he described what he wanted and Parks got it made himself. “He had an idea for it too. Even though he didn’t like it, initially, he did go, actually go out of his way to get a mask.” Dutch stresses the last point, Abyss did not like the gimmick or the name at first, but he did everything he could to make it successful.
Something Dutch alludes to that I hadn’t thought about at all, were the mannerisms of Abyss, the way he would slink around the ring, and his pose that stayed with him in TNA. When James asks Dutch how you get a character that doesn’t talk across to a non english speaking crowd, Dutch says that while Abyss had a manager, he would stand there making gestures to get across that he is some kind of monster. This is similar to something Glenn Jacobs has said about Kane, where he observed his dog tilting his head when listening, and he would use this non-verbal communication as Kane to convey his reactions.
James Romero asks Dutch about the comparisons to Kane and Mankind and whether they were in his mind too, and Dutch says that Mankind was especially, being from a similar “mental patient” origin. Dutch also says that he introduced Abyss by having him run in on a Savio Vega vs Glamour Boy Shane match, and he was over immediately because “here was this big guy, with a mask, they had never seen him before, never seen him on TV, and all of a sudden where’d this guy come from?” One last noteworthy question from the podcast which was asked to start Dutch talking about Abyss was about whether or not he gave him the Black Hole Slam, which Dutch denies. He says that Abyss developed that himself, and that all he gave Abyss was the name and the gimmick. The move has sometimes been compared to the Big Bossman’s slam that he used to do, but when done on much smaller opponents, Abyss would add more rotation. A prefect example of this is when he was feuding with Spud in much like he would do on Spud in UK promotion One Pro Wrestling back in 2006. He would sometimes spin Spud around so many times it looked like he might never stop, Claudio Castagnoli - style. According to a 2019 interview with Sean Ross Sapp, Abyss confirms that he came up with it as “a play on the boss man slam.” He says the more traditional version of the move had always been his finisher, but “as it evolved and as I evolved, I just added the extra spin.” When he was asked who took the move the best, Abyss answered with AJ Styles, and also Matt Sydal.
TNA
On June 4th 2003 but airing later in the week, Abyss would make his official TNA debut. He would have a match on Xplosion, the promotion’s syndicated B-show that complimented the weekly pay per views. His opponent would be Julio Dinero, who despite being with TNA for four months, was only wrestling his third match for the promotion. The match starts in an interesting way, with Mike Tenay on commentary emphasizing the size difference as if he were watching Rey Mysterio vs the Big Show, and while he’s saying all of this Abyss and Julio are chain wrestling. Abyss hits a chokeslam followed by the Black Hole, but Alexis Laree, better known as Mickie James, distracts the referee so there is no count. Twice in the match she attacks Abyss in clear sight of the ref too. While Abyss is erm, ejecting Alexis from the ring, he turns around into a kick from Julio and takes the pinfall loss. Not the most clean of losses but still one in his debut. When asked by Conrad Thompson on My World why Abyss lost on this night, Jeff Jarrett said on My World that it being his first night back he didn’t really need the win, while Julio was a featured act at the time, part of the Gathering led by Raven, and teaming with CM Punk and Alexis.
On June 11th, Abyss would make his TNA pay per view debut in a pretty bizarre way, but he is interjected right into a storyline. We start with an interview conducted by Scott Hudson ahead of a handicap match where Kid Kash is set to face Trinity, Erik Watts and his girlfriend Goldylocks, who is not a trained wrestler. Erik says that he is going to let nothing happen to Goldylocks as long as he is around, which is clearly a foreshadowing statement. In comments that wouldn’t make air in 2025, Scott refers to Trinity being abused by Kid Kash for weeks, which she responds to by asking “does she look abused?”, then telling us, and this is an actual quote, “part of me kind of likes it.” Heard in a vacuum and not in the context of the storyline this reeked of Russo writing. Before she can go any further, Watts is attacked from behind by Abyss, who isn’t named on the broadcast but is referred to as a monster, forcing Goldylocks and Trinity to face Kid Kash by themselves. Trinity actually looks like she might beat Kid Kash, until Abyss runs in and hits a Black Hole Slam, allowing Kash the win.
Over the next few weeks, it would become clear that Kid Kash has some sort of control over Abyss, keeping him locked behind a fence until he is needed to help him win matches. He would have his own in-ring return to pay per views on July 2nd, defeating Erik Watts decisively in a short match. From there he was a regular fixture on Xplosion and the pay per views. In return, Abyss would become a loyal soldier for TNA, sacrificing his body in ever more insane matches, going through boards of tacks, barbed wire and even tables that were on fire. He even turned down an offer to head to WWE as early as 2006, where according to Abyss in a podcast interview with Jim Ross, he was set to be the Undertaker’s opponent at Wrestlemania 23. When the time came for Abyss to slow down the hardcore matches, he managed to in a rather creative way, reinvent himself from the ground up as the mild mannered lawyer brother of Abyss, Joseph Parks esquire. I’ll be totally honest with you, the first appearance of the bumbling Parks who arrived in TNA looking for his brother was the final straw for me, and actually made me stop watching impact. Looking back though, the range that Parks showed is actually quite impressive, having played the typical intimidating big man for most of his career by that point. I’m willing to admit that I was wrong there. In 2020 during the pandemic era of shows, while working for WWE as a producer, we briefly saw Joseph brought back to life as AJ Styles’ statistician, though sadly this didn’t last long. You could say, that Abyss’ loyalty to TNA cost him in the long run, as you don’t often hear much of his legacy in wrestling. He is though, still employed, weirdly about to be part of the dlc for WWE 2K25 having never wrestled a match for the company, and a TNA Hall of Famer, honoured in the company he remained loyal to for so many years.
End
In the episode of My World that I've cited in this video, Jeff Jarrett calls Abyss, “a guy who really put his roots in. Did nothing but produce week after week, year after year.” He later adds, making note that Abyss is one of the more famous TNA names that didn't work for a major promotion beforehand, “I'd put him at the top of the list of success stories of TNA wrestling.” It's not hard to argue that given Abyss’ longevity in the company, and as a character. Speaking to Ring Rust Radio in 2015, while still an active wrestler, Abyss said “longevity in this business is not something that a lot of talents get the privilege to experience. I've been very fortunate and very lucky.”
In 2018, Abyss became the eighth inductee in the TNA Hall of fame. In his speech, he described the honour as something he would “cherish for the rest of his life,” and he made special note of being the first “impact original” to be inducted. To date, the only Impact original until Don West's induction in 2023. It takes a whole lot of loyalty and dedication to achieve such a distinction. It also takes a screw loose, no sense of self preservation, and a metric shitload of willful blindness to the madness that is TNA’s history, but it's still a distinction nonetheless.
Sources:
My World with Jeff Jarrett #178, October 1st 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK3wgAEiDl8
Storytime with Dutch Mantell #11, July 28th 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdtnQ0kRTA Making a finisher: Abyss’ Black Hole Slam, Fightful September 29th 2019: https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/exclusives/making-finisher-abyss-black-hole-slam
