The monster known as Abyss was born Chris Parks in Washington, D.C. in 1973. He is well known for his work with TNA Wrestling and for being involved in some of the most violent matches in wrestling history. He began his training at Northern Wrestling Federation under Roger Ruffin, and eventually moved to NWA Wildside where he won the Wildside Tag Team titles with AJ Styles. He also wrestled Jerry "The King" Lawler in Memphis Power Pro Championship Wrestling. Former TNA booker Dutch Mantel discovered Abyss and had him on the first TNA show in 2002, where he appeared in the Gauntlet for the Gold match. After that, Mantel brought him down to IWA Puerto Rico where Abyss had some sucess for a year before moving back over to TNA full-time.

Most of his early feuds in TNA  were short-lived and featured brief rivalries with Raven, Kid Kash, and Erik Watts. He also started to occasionally work in Ring of Honor.  In TNA, he started a program with AJ Styles where they were forced to team together and won the NWA Tag Team titles. Abyss won a match the following week to take contol of the titles and beat Styles in a ladder match for a shot at the NWA World Championship. Following his feud with AJ, Abyss was managed by Goldylocks for a short time.  He got into an intense feud with Raven and Monty Brown, resulting in the first-ever Monster's Ball match which Brown won.

Abyss began to focus on the NWA World Title and faced off against Jeff Hardy in a series of matches which both men won.  Abyss was then put in the King of the Mountain match but was defeated. After Raven became champion, Abyss got Raven's old nemesis James Mitchell to manage him.  He was unsuccessful going after the title again, but a new feud began with Sabu. That feud produced Barbed Wire Massacre which Sabu won. After this match, Abyss was featured in a few different storylines but he was taken out of the title picutre.

In 2006, he started the year by defeating Rhino but wanted to try once again to win the NWA title. He went after Christian Cage, the champion at the time, but came up empty twice. He continued his efforts and finally won the title against Sting at Genesis. He lost the title in a Triple Threat Elimination match.  Sting decided to help him, resulting in a few matches among the two. After turning on James Mitchell, Abyss became a fan favorite.  He has feuded with some of the biggest names in the business such as Kurt Angle and Kevin Nash, to name a few.