[3][4][5][6][7] Raised in the Richmond suburb of Midlothian, Virginia, the young Harnsberger was described by his mother in a 2017 interview as a child who "always demanded our attention" and someone who "never quit".
Harnsberger played basketball in high school, and after graduating from Concord University in southern West Virginia in 2003, started training in wrestling.
During his training, he supported himself as a reporter with the Daily Telegraph of Bluefield, West Virginia, but left the newspaper at about the time he made his wrestling debut for an independent promotion run by Beau James, who went on to establish AMW and serves as a mentor to Harnsberger to this day.
While he tried several gimmicks, he was unable to develop a memorable character; he moved back to the Richmond area in 2005, and left wrestling in 2009.
[3] In a 2017 interview, Harnsberger recalled that he began to turn toward the political left during a 2011 trip to Cambodia, with the main catalyst being reports by Al Jazeera and the BBC on the debt-ceiling fight between Barack Obama and United States Congress.