Labazanov was born in internal exile in Kazakhstan in 1967 in the Chechen family of a teyp Nohch-Keloy (clan). He became an Eastern martial arts expert and served in the Soviet Red Army as a physical training instructor. After leaving the army, he became known as a flamboyant, charismatic and extremely violent gangster. In 1990, he was convicted of murder in Rostov-on-Don and sentenced to death before escaping from prison in 1991. According to himself, he actually escaped from Grozny pretrial detention center: "During the 1991 coup, I freed the whole prison, nearly 600 men, ahead of time. They obeyed me."