In 2020, I knew. He was getting better at body surfing along the California coast. He laughed, saying he hoped to be this generation’s Nick Gabaldon. Santa Monica, CA native Gabaldon remains the most recognizable African-American surfer in history.
He broke many barriers and helped train other Black wave riders, including Mikey February and others in the Black Surfers Collective, who formed Global Nick G Day in 2013. S
had was aware of all that. Like him, he was also a student of wrestling history and its idols: Bobo Brazil, Bearcat Wright, Ernie Ladd, Jim Mitchell, Shag Thomas, Tiger Conway Sr. and Jr., and other legends.
I’d always bring up Bearcat Wright, Sweet Daddy Siki, Dory Dixon, and Earl Maynard. He’d counter with Rocky Johnson, ThunderBolt Patterson, and Arman Hussein, who was both a face and a heel in the mid-60s Los Angeles territory I called my home base while shooting for the program.
If it was someone a bit lesser-known, like Norville Austin or Porkchop Bobby Cash/Al Nelson, he’d diligently study them and bring up what he’d learned the next time we met.
Life After The WWE
Post-WWE, Shad was a regular wrestling star, teaming with JTG in main events for Oaktown Championship Wrestling, the Northern California promotion I helped start.
Oaktown stood for Oakland, since most shows were in the Oakland/Alameda East Bay area years back, and it was later renamed Stars of Wrestling.
It had one of the most diverse locker rooms, with lead promoter Icebox Robert Smith. Ice was a longtime African-American powerhouse star roller derby skater for the San Francisco Bay Bombers, after Jerry Selzer closed his worldwide Roller Derby league in December 1973. He said his family’s outfit hadn’t made enough money from two big tours of Hawaii and Japan.
Ice had nagged me to try to get him into wrestling around 1998. I brought him to a Roland Alexander All Pro Wrestling show.
He was trained by one of the best in APW, Robert Thompson, and took his last name from the perennial Roy Shire African-American wrestling machine Ricky Thompson.
Later, he managed the multi-time APW championship tag team of West Side Playaz, whom Shad had seen on Urban Championship Wrestling and later would pull some things from.
Shad helped Icebox’s booking team, including SOW partner Tony “Fury” Hernandez and Bobby Lashley during his years with TNA/iMPACT.
Bound By A Brotherhood
Shad would always call Ice “one of the sharpest minds in the industry,” along with Boogie Man and Godfather Charles Wright. Several big SOW school fundraisers were headlined by Cryme Tyme.
Shad’s old pal Ezekiel (Rycklon Ezekiel Stephens) Jackson drove the long ride from beyond Redwood City just to see them, even though he wasn’t booked on Icebox’s shows.
Around that time, Zeke worked his one season of Lucha Underground as Big Ryck, and Shad, JTG, and I wanted to hear the latest.
You could tell those guys were close and had done some bodybuilding together, as Zeke had won various titles back home in Guyana and said he always loved bench-pressing with Shad and JTG in the back before their matches.
Even if he wasn’t on a card, making an effort to reconnect with longtime friends like Shad and JTG is heartwarming during this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
KTLA-5, the Los Angeles TV channel, has had near-nonstop coverage since Shad was taken down by that wave and, to this day, still has daily updates.
Since the late forties, KTLA had long been SoCal’s biggest non-network channel. It was also SoCal’s first and only pro wrestling channel, airing the celebrated weekly syndicated wrestling shows nationally, from Hugh Nichols and Davies Triad Group days to bigger shows with the Jules Strongbow/Cal Eaton Hollywood/Los Angeles Wrestling Office promotions. From nearly TV’s birth until 1970, when it moved to lesser SoCal channel KCOP-13.
Heroic Shad Gaspard Recalling Childhood Heroes
In the classic 50s and 60s, Jules did the locker-room interviews with Lou Thesz, Baron Leone, Blassie, Mr. Moto, Bobo Brazil, Bearcat Wright, Buddy Rogers, Lord Blears, Sandor Szabo, and other legends. Dick Lane called the action, with Jimmy Lennon Sr. doing the ring intros during those 50s and 60s heydays.
Hollywood Championship Wrestling, which Shad said he watched and reportedly visited at least once with friends in their dressing room, has aired for years on SoCal channel 56-KDOC, which films and helps syndicate Dave Marquez’s weekly program.
Shad always said he appreciated Icebox’s super diversified locker room of talent. It included Carlito Colon, Spanky Brian Kendrick, whom Shad knew from SoCal, along with longtime APW talent JR Kratos and Jeff Cobb.
After his passing was confirmed, I was a guest on various radio shows, talking about what a great person Shad had always been.
He’d been a hero to many long before asking lifeguards to rescue his son first last week, in advance of that massive Venice Beach/Marina Del Rey area rip tide curl that tragically and unexpectedly took him down.
Shad also was one of the primary stand-up helping guys during the infamous 2007 three-day Cow Palace Wrestle Fanfest ripoff fiasco.
When he heard that the husband-and-wife scam-artist promoters had fled with the cash boxes meant to pay the wrestlers and MMA fighters, he immediately stepped up and repeatedly asked how he could help.
Over the following few days, he helped by organizing rides for many of the talent stranded at the hotel, with no rides to the hours-away airports they were booked out of, just to cut costs. We’re talking legends like Harley Race, Nick Bockwinkel, Snuka, Nicolai Volkoff, Iron Sheik, and many others.
A Need To Right A Wrong
Shad also watched in horror, as we all did, that many older wrestlers, like One Man Gang/Akeem, Brutus Beefcake, and Greg Valentine, got the runaround on their still-owed money on Saturday but soldiered on those next two days for the tons of fans who’d prepaid for signings, polaroids, and one-ons. They all made the news on TV and other media.
After the promoters grabbed Saturday night’s cash boxes and fled in their car across the state line into Reno, Nevada, police from the three counties the Cow Palace property sat on reported they’d cancelled everyone’s last-night hotel rooms at the SFO Marriott, as well as all promised transportation to their airports the next morning.
To save even more money from the start, they’d even booked the boys out of hours-away, cheaper and lesser-known airports like Sacramento and San Jose.
Rather than the more expensive, larger SFO international airport, which was just miles from the Cow Palace. Shad helped further by sticking around late that night and giving statements to the police who arrived after we all learned that the promoters had fled.
He organized volunteer fans and others, including himself, to drive the older and extremely depressed legends to the airports.
Heroic Shad Gaspard
I’ll never forget Shad that morning with JTG saying, “I knew those guys didn’t seem right. Something just wasn’t right about them, and we’ve met some real scumbags before.”
Earlier that Monday morning, Shad said he’d “never seen a hotel lobby full of wrestlers sleeping on all the floors, the chairs, and sofas, filling the place up like that because the promoters had cancelled their hotel rooms.
It’s a tragedy.” Around the tons of super-depressed old and young wrestlers during that dark period, Shad stayed upbeat and positive to help get the others through it. Just ask Bill Goldberg. Or Shark Boy.
Even more big names beyond the 97 others had been booked for that Sunday afternoon on Fiasco Day Three, after everyone knew police were still trying to locate the promoters in Nevada, where they’d reportedly fled.
Steve Austin, Bill Goldberg, and the late Chyna/Joanie Lauer were only going to do signings and photo ops. Shad and I met with and forewarned all of them separately in their limos in the private parking lot area.
At least that transportation wasn’t cancelled because the limos were paid for by a local eye doctor and wrestling big-money fan who’d promoted similar wrestler signings at his optometry shop on Mission Street in the heart of SF’s Hispanic area, next door to a magazine shop that sold Box Y Lucha and AAA’s lucha mags.
A Stone Cold Bite
Austin looked at us and said, “Are you guys shitting me? It figures with first-time, mark promoters. And no one had ever heard of them before?”
These three big stars showed their own heart by going through with it rather than distancing themselves from the Cow Palace mess, so as not to let fans who’d already prepaid down. “It wasn’t the fans’ fault; they’re victims just like everyone else is,” Goldberg said. Austin and Joanie echoed that.
Just a few months before the COVID-19 national lockdown, Shad was one of the lead speakers on a wrestler’s panel at the LA Comic-Con. He’d emailed me to come to take photos of him at the podium.
I said I’d promised GLOW legend and longtime pal Jeannie “Hollywood” Basson I’d take pictures at her GLOW booth.
As well as a separate panel group I believe she and fellow GLOW star “Lightning/Little Mo” Cheryl Rusa were going to speak at about the same time.
Shad bugged me and said, “I know you’ll want to come to see Bill Watts’ son who’ll be there speaking with me too”.
So I brought all my Nikons, and I got to Shad’s panel. He laughed when I saw it wasn’t Cowboy Bill Watts’ son Eric there alongside him and some of the others.
Heroic Shad Gaspard Bringing A Smile To Your Face
In fact, it was the far younger, African-American star from Championship Wrestling (now their champ), also named “Eric Watts.” He laughed when he introduced him to me.
But it was all good. He learned to play gentle ribs from the late Bill “Paul Bearer/Percy Pringle” Moody. Especially if one were a green “young boy.
Bill would often come back from “Gorilla”(position) to the empty dressing room with everyone either in the ring for a battle royal or watching from Gorilla.
He’d take the wrestler’s luggage, put them in giant Hefty bags. Then deposit them in the very back of the shower area and turn on every showerhead!
When the young boys returned, they had to get soaked. They’d turn off all the showers just to retrieve their bags. Since everyone knew that was Paul/Bill’s recurring gag, they’d confront him ASAP. And always give them the “why the hell are you accusing me,” he’d say with a grin.
The Pain Felt At Losing Shad Gaspard: His heroic Nature
I apologize for “going long” here since this is my first column on this site, but a lot to say. The thing that hurts greatly is hearing that Shad (just 39) and his ten-year-old son, Aryeh, reportedly felt they just wanted to get out in the water.
To just get some fresh air. Gavin Newsom finally opened LA County beaches, including Venice Beach, and people immediately went body surfing. At the same time, Shad’s wife stayed on the sand. Then this nightmare.
It’s a comfort that his heartbroken wife Siliana, father Ben, and other family and friends paid such loving tribute to him at that beautiful beach memorial.
And wrestlers like his longtime partner and brother JTG. As well as Mark Henry, John Cena, and many others, who lent financial aid for service costs.
Plus assorted bills as well as the necessary college fund for Aryeh. And the many who thankfully contributed to the GoFundMe.
It garnered a massive amount in just two days to help the Gaspards at this tragic time. A Maui-styled flower wreath spelled out his name amidst blazing candles. Plus 15 photos of Shad wedged in the sand, as the sunset at last Friday night’s memorial.
Heroic Shad Gaspard | Fanfare For An Uncommon Man
There was also an incredible, painting-like, giant photo of Shad kissing his then-newborn baby son Arye. Plus another of Shad and his family as well on a lean-to wood frame pitched in the sand.
The riptides were dangerous that day. Surfers there later told television station KTLA-CW5, which had non-stop coverage.
Few had any knowledge that morning, however. When rescuers first rushed out there hearing the screams, Shad and Aryeh were only 30 yards out from the shoreline. I just learned Shad threw his son to the lead lifeguard, saying, “save my son first.”
When lifeguards went back to rescue Shad, the riptide currents had pulled him out an extra 65 yards. Being nearly 100 yards from shore is very scary at any time of year, even with calm tides.
The LA Coroner’s office said Shad washed up along the Surfline of 2600 Ocean Walk. About one mile north of where the waves took him down that Sunday.
Heroic Shad Gaspard Emblazed with an eternal S on his Chest
If you can help donate to his GoFundMe, please help the Gaspard and Chittick family. My lingering image of the service is of yet another large photograph of Shad with an airbrushed giant S on his chest. And a Superman Shad was and will forever be.
It seems like it was just yesterday that he talked about plans for more films beyond his roles in Think Like A Man and his co-starring alongside Kevin Hart in Get Hard.
And Siliana, saying aloud to her late husband, “I love you more, my love.” And that he “was a bright force of nature, who brought joy to many through his joyous and gracious nature”. Heroic Shad Gaspard always remembered.
Written By:Dr. Mike Lano, DDS (West Coast equivalent degree to Britt Baker’s East Coast DMD) Nationally Syndicated Radio Host and Print Columnist Wrestling /Boxing/MMA Professional Magazine Photojournalism Since Time Began(Globally Shot & Published) Cauliflower Alley Club’s Photographer For Decades
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