Breaking Badd

Former pro wrestling champ out to ‘slam’ destructive decisions

By John Burbridge sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — Long before former professional wrestling champion Marc Mero dropped down to his knees to submit to God and ask for forgiveness after nearly putting a bullet through his temple, he “was a Badd Man!”

In part, that was Mero’s catchphrase when he was with Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling organization in the 1990s when he went by the name “Johnny B. Badd” while adopting a Little Richard-esque personal.

Mero’s style was high-flying and high-risk, and that wasn’t just in the ring.

A gifted multi-sport athlete who was a four-time New York State Golden Gloves boxing champion, Mero seemed to have it all.

Money — check.

Fame — check.

A big house … or rather houses — check.

A beautiful wife — check.

A big black Cadillac — check.

In fact Mero already told himself he was going to possess  all this when he wrote them down as obtainable goals in a book during his youth.

But one thing Mero didn’t jot down was how he was going to squander it all.

“It was history repeating itself,” Mero said of once again going down the wrong path with the wrong crowd while abusing his body and spirit with drugs.

“Except now I had the money to get all the drugs I wanted.”

Earlier in his life, the same type of bad lifestyle decisions derailed a professional boxing career before it started.

“I would be drunk and high and telling people ‘Give me another year’,” Mero said of his plans of getting back into the ring after a car accident shattered his nose forcing reconstructive surgery only weeks before his pro boxing debut.

“I had a lot of time on my hands, and that’s when I started to surround myself with losers,” Mero said. “Soon, that one year became two, then three, then four …”

Before he knew it, Mero was working construction before the random flipping of TV channels landed on a pro wrestling telecast.

“I told my friends at the time ‘I could do that’,” Mero said. “They all laughed at me.”

But even though Mero’s tax bracket would get much better thanks to his celebrity of being a WCW and WWE champion, bad decisions again derailed his life. And the worst thing about it, Mero told a captive audience Monday at the Old Charles City Middle School auditorium, was that he shunned the love of his mother, and that of his two younger siblings — Andrea and Chris — who worshiped the ground their older brother walked on only to be repeatedly blown off and ignored.

“If I could only have another chance to play catch with my brother again,” Mero wistfully said during his animated and often emotional speech — he had given another free speech earlier in the morning at the Charles City High School new competition gym.

“If I could only have my little sister sit next to me again at the dinner table,” Mero said of Andrea’s penchant for saying “First call … I’m sitting next to Marc” which came to irritate Mero during his sullen substance-abusing stages.

After losing both of his parents to lung cancer, Andrea to breast cancer and Chris to a freak fainting accident at a doctor’s office which led to a coma and brain death, Mero experienced his darkest hour — his mother and brother died within weeks of another — and was on the verge of killing himself.

“I felt I let them all down,” Mero said of his deceased family members.

Mero also lost many of his wrestling colleagues who also abused drugs.

“There are 30 of them listed right here,” Mero said while referencing a projected list during his presentation. “I should be up there, too.”

After experiencing a vision of hell right before he was going to pull the trigger, Mero surrendered himself to God and Jesus Christ and went on to become an ordained minister and motivational speaker.

Though Mero says he’s been living a clean lifestyle for 14 years, he still considers himself a BADD man by way of the acronym of his motivational message: “Be Against Destructive Decisions”.

“I hope I could reach at least someone in this audience — be it a child or adult — that there’s always someone out there who cares for you,” Mero said.