Rad Hazard
From Bywpedia
| Rad Hazard | ||
| ||
| Statistics | ||
| Ring name | Rad Hazard | |
| Born | April 26, 1988 (age 23) Riverside, California | |
| Resides | Las Vegas, Nevada | |
| Debut | 2008 | |
Daniel Baldwin better known as Rad Hazard, is a backyard wrestling host, wrestler, former Chairman and the current GBYWN United States Champion. He fulfills duties as a host for his internet program, Backyard Wrestling Weekly (BWW), performs and hosts every couple months at GBYWN supershows across the U.S and co-founder of The Global Backyard Wrestling Nation, an integration of federations formed through the merger of territorial alliance Battle Born Wrestling (BBW), where he once operated as Chairman, and Global Backyard Wrestling News.
Hazard was originally a fan of backyard wrestling and had some experience in it as well. When he opted to become involved with it online, he rose to prominence in the community within his involvement as a host of his own created web program BWW, that became a staple show for all backyard wrestlers, federations and fans looking to stay updated with the ongoing stories and happenings. After creating BBW to some success until its merger, Hazard would ignite the known "Radical Movement" storyline, where thereafter, he gained more popularity and began traveling to supershow events.
As the owner of the nation, Hazard has editorial work related to all organizations involved and featuring their videos on his show's YouTube channel. In addition, Hazard also served as an independent wrestler and interviewer and voice-over commentator known as David Weisner in the primary area of BBW.
Contents |
Backyard wrestling tenure
Backyard Wrestling Weekly/World (2008-present)
- Main article: Backyard Wrestling Weekly
Originally going under his real name Daniel Baldwin, a Las Vegas resident, Baldwin had expressed interest in backyard wrestling with prior experience in it. In September 2008, he began promoting his backyard wrestling community online called Backyard Wrestling World and released advertisements on YouTube regarding his new weekly webcast program Backyard Wrestling Weekly (BWW) over two weeks leading to its premiere in October 2008.
Baldwin worried for the insufficient interest he felt the show gained from online advertisements as well as for his obscure identity to the backyard wrestling community. However, the first show attracted attention to a mixed reception, arguably due to his critical views and a partial misrepresentation of modern day backyard wrestling as he showed snippets on his background monitor of a past reckless era in which the sport was trying to move away from. Baldwin countered with the next episode by adopting a backyard wrestling name becoming "Rad Hazard", introducing rather contemporary content with special feature segments, and putting himself out there as the regular face sharing backyard wrestling media.
In November 2008, the broadcast schedule of his show started to become delayed and switched air-dates from Sunday to Wednesday. While this occurred, concern grew for the state of BWW but he had noted on his show about a new Vegas backyard wrestling alliance he was uniting in his area which was called Battle Born Wrestling. Since November 2009 with Backyard Wrestling Weekly having hiatus periods before, the show has continued to air regularly online.
Battle Born Wrestling (2008-2009)
At BBW 1: Battle Born on December 7, 2008, Battle Born Wrestling premiered initially as a local alliance made up of the Lost Souls Division, Loco Lucha Council, Generation X Wrestling, and Top Dawg Championship Wrestling based in its primary area of Las Vegas, Nevada. Hazard announced that he was contacted by the BBW "Board of Directors" to join aboard for a partnership which would convert the audience of his show in a share with BBW and that would see him become a BBW independent wrestler. During the premiere episode, Hazard, a likable but arrogant and comedic heel type in his wrestler role, was involved in a 20 Minute Time Limit 6-Man Tag Team Open Invitational with then-GXW Next Gen Champion Brainstew, then-TDCW Champion Mike Del Lite, El Parko, El Parkay and Brian Rouge concluding with a pinfall victory over El Parko. This, led to a Grudge match at the next show between the two that ended with the same result.
Aside from wrestling, Hazard played other separate roles in BBW including being part-time referee (primary area), voice-over commentator for events, and a dorky interviewer known as David Weisner (primary area). By BBW 3: Unification, Hazard became set out to expand his alliance with the additions of more federations to the lot such as Next Generation Wrestling and international ones known as 2 Xtreme Wrestling, and Ultimate British Wrestling, as in turn, making BBW territorially international featuring many federations from different parts of the world in a multi-cast, which amounted to an original concept in regards to backyard wrestling.
Before March, Hazard took some time off producing the next few shows in order to restart a queued Backyard Wrestling Weekly. He also slightly aided former real-life girlfriend Ria Calaway in some form of practicing to do some wrestling of her own. At BBW 5: Centennial on March 1, 2009, he defeated LLC member, Notch-O-Libre, with the assist of Sin City Wrestling wrestler Mike Da Lite and the distraction of the referee, after which they announced their new tag team known as "Better Than You" that went short-lived. At BBW 6: Continental on March 22, 2009, Hazard entered as the first challenger for debutant Ria Calaway (then real-life girlfriend) and her "Sin City Kitty 5 Minute Challenge" match, named as such for her promiscuous nickname "Sin City Kitty". Both would go on to wrestle 5 minutes to a draw with Calaway leaving Hazard on the floor after a slap.
War on Backyard Wrestling and Radical Movement (2009)
- Main article: Radical Movement
Rad Hazard at ICW Midwest Extravaganza 1 on October 24, 2009. |
Due to a real-life split in his relationship with Calaway, Hazard took his genuine heartfelt feelings and applied it to a storyline when he posted a video on YouTube on June 26, 2009, stating his objective to destroy backyard wrestling due to it being a "curse", a "greed for glory" and "self-respect", despite his admiration for it and its benefit to his reputation which ended up causing him to prioritize it over Calaway. Received as a shoot monologue, many submitted their responses online as Calaway was somewhat blamed on account for Hazard's emotional state and was met with ill messages on her Myspace account. This all brewed speculation that Hazard was aborting his creations and leaving backyard wrestling for good. After clearing the air in a non-kayfabe video to explain everything was playing off fiction, in another subsequent storyline video, it became known that the BBW "Board of Directors" allegedly sold BWW for an undisclosed amount to CJ Lennon and his independent Lennon Productions company for going "A-wall" despite Hazard's position as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. However, the transaction appeared to be false, and Hazard decided to keep operating BBW.
The next plot came with Hazard's plan to form a wide resistance group against backyard wrestling known as the Radical Movement, a cause aimed at dominating and terminating the hobby and that depicted Hazard as a savior-like leader. Hazard looked towards financing anyone in a federation who would vacate or cause others to vacate their championship and continuously created videos updating the status of the Movement. Getting declines and approvals for membership, a few such as Zaq Cass, Mike Creston, Primetime Tim Sanders, Grizzly Greif and more followed his voice of reason. Calaway, although the root of the whole situation, was also convinced by Hazard into joining the Movement as co-leader. With this moving forward, FX stepped up to shut down Hazard for supposedly claiming he could defeat him, and both exchanged words online leading to a match at West Fest. Before Day 2 of West Fest on August 22, 2009, Rad Hazard, Brian Rouge and King Murder were involved in a legitimate vehicle rollover on the way to the event. Out of honor, Hazard nicknamed himself the "Warstorm", the name given to his now written off truck after surviving the accident. Despite the accident, Hazard pressed on to surprisingly accomplish defeating NGW members Rich Cross, Randy Cranmer and the LWF World Heavyweight and GBYWN Pacific Northwest Heavyweight Champion Nails in a Four Way match to be crowned the inaugural BBW United States Heavyweight Champion and after signing wavers, went to a 3-3 draw with GBYWN World Heavyweight Champion FX in a title for title 15 Minute Ironman bout (originally to be 30 minutes) due to receiving multiple drops on his neck forcing the referee to call off the match in concern. After the match, Hazard encountered betrayal by Calaway, who turned and attacked him with her GBYWN Women's World Championship to join FX's Darkstar group. He was also betrayed by JLV.
Following his time off from resting for three weeks, Hazard's confidence was boosted from capturing the BBW US Title, praising his own intellect and himself for holding up against FX as well as relishing with a sense of progress that the BWE and AWS federations had closed. Launching "Phase Two" with some hesitation towards his mission of trying to destroy backyard wrestling, Hazard scheduled his next supershow appearance at the ICW Midwest Extravaganza event for October to make an impact, claiming that Movement members were already there. On Day 1 of the event on October 24, new members were revealed in Bonecrusher and Johnny Light, both of whom were seen as leaders of their own in the view of Hazard. Furthermore, Focalin originally against the Movement had also entered the association. In the aftermath of Calaway and her match with Matt Kuhstoss, Hazard saved his ex from an assault from The Pen Name but the effort went unappreciated. Playing a role in helping Focalin against TPN in their match, including hitting TPN with a chair, Hazard revealed a swerve after the match when he turned on Focalin, eliminating him from the Movement for initially turning him down to join. But ultimately Hazard himself was discharged from the Movement for permitting personal issues to interfere with business. Shortly, Bonecrusher and Johnny Light renamed the group takeover, Dangerous Movement. On Day 2 of the event, Hazard lost the BBW United States Title to TPN following a vile chair shot.
BWW Return, GBYWNation, and Feuds (2009-present)
Two weeks removed from being evicted from the Radical Movement and losing his championship, Hazard addressed the backyard wrestling world hoping to redeem himself by going a different path from that of the past few months and hyping a "huge event" which would "change the face of backyard wrestling forever". It soon became apparent with the first of three vignettes that an anticipated return of Backyard Wrestling Weekly was in the works. On November 25, 2009, the very first episode of the revived Backyard Wrestling Weekly debuted announcing the merger between Battle Born Wrestling and Global Backyard Wrestling News to form the Global Backyard Wrestling Nation with Hazard himself as the Chairman of the "Board of Directors" of the alliance part of the whole organization. As expected, a disagreement eventually came up when GBYWN President Cam opposed how Hazard appeared to the public and seemingly portrayed his role as the creator and President of the site and argued the confusion of both entities having the same initials and almost the same name. Hazard attempted to fix this by changing the name of his alliance to Global Backyard Wrestling Alliance (GBYWA) but it was eventually altered back to Nation and continued to operate as the alliance.
The rivalry between Hazard and The Pen Name was to be reignited at the planned supershow for July 2010 named GBYWN Sin City Showdown (renamed GBYWN Revolution), an event Hazard would have hosted and was set to face off with TPN, but the event got cancelled. In August, Hazard began a 28-week Backyard Wrestling Weekly co-host run with Patrick Wade Wilson. Not sanctioning a GBYWN World Heavyweight Championship match involving Wilson due to seeing Wilson as ineligible, this instilled friction between the two. Hazard started to argue over the expenses of covering Wilson's travels to his location to host the show until Wilson subsequently quit. Also around the end of the year, John Keller, a senior backyard wrestler who had won the BBW World Heavyweight Championship (though vacated it due to his medicare threatening his insurance policy) and maintained an undefeated streak using a deadly elbow smash, called out Hazard. Hazard responded by threatening Keller with a secret, giving Keller the chance to rethink his actions and not call him out again. Keller ignored the threat and persisted in calling him out at events and in videos, ridiculing Hazard's past and the way he performs in the ring, leading to Keller challenging Hazard to settle the matter.
Rad Hazard announcing the opening match at CCW Burn This City on March 19, 2011. |
At Day 1 of CCW Burn This City on March 19, 2011, Hazard learned of the authoritative King BW and his perpetration of paying off the GBYWN "Board of Directors" to replace him as the Chairman. Forcing Hazard to face him in a No Disqualification Ironman Match, in which Wilson interfered in to get at Hazard, Hazard and King BW fought 13 minutes to a 2-2 draw. On Day 2, unable to take out Hazard himself, King BW ordered for Hazard to face his arch nemesis and then-Awakening member The Pen Name. However, Hazard invoked his rematch clause for the GBYWN United States Title and defeated TPN in a 17-months in the making Final Battle to regain the title he lost to him two years prior. The match was also nominated as a GBYWN Match of the Year candidate.
Two months later, Hazard issued a final warning to Keller to stop calling him out and declared his plan to use his title as bait to win GBYWN shares and reclaim authority in the circuit as GBYWN "Executive Shareholder". Wilson first accepted the challenge using the shares earned co-hosting BWW. With the match scheduled to take place at Hazard's choosing, the date landed on Day 1 of BXW Paul Kunkle Memorial 2 on June 11, where Hazard also uncovered that when he can regain power, he could erase Keller's reign with the BBW World Title for using the belt in the match he had won the title in without being disqualified. Despite the threats, Hazard was scheduled to face Keller on Day 2. However on Day 1, Hazard was defeated by Wilson to lose his BBW US Title. After the match, the two reconciled their friendship and Wilson agreed to give Hazard his desired rematch anytime and at any place. Not delaying on the opportunity, Hazard hit Wilson with a chair and regained his title. On Day 2, Hazard went through The Junior Dragon with a victory and defended his title to a draw with B Cubed heading towards his Lumberjack match with Keller, who defeated him.
Life Behind Character
Hazard lives a very interactive social life.
He was also the real-life boyfriend of Calaway before they broke up in June 2009.
In 2010, Hazard produced a short-lived series that took a look into his life entitled Hazardous Material.
In wrestling
- Finishing and signature moves
- Biohazard (Double A Spinebuster)
- Straightshooter (Sharpshooter)
- Nicknames
- The Warstorm
Championships and accomplishments
- Battle Born Wrestling
- Founder/Chairman of Battle Born Wrestling until closure
- Global Backyard Wrestling News/Global Backyard Wrestling Nation
- Co-Founder of Global Backyard Wrestling Nation
- GBYWN United States Championship - Originally BBW US Title (3 times, first ever)
- GBYWN Promo Challenge (2009)
- GBYWN Promo Challenge (2010)
- GBYWN Peep of the Year (2009)
- GBYWN Best Promo Cutter of the Year (2009)
