Marc Mero (Professional Wrestling, Overcoming Addiction and Combating Bullying in Our Youth) - Episode 13
Behind The Shield
James Geering
4.9 • 695 Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Marc Mero was a WWE wrestler, who became a motivational speaker, touring schools around the country. We talk about his early life, career, journey through substance abuse, mental health and his transition to teaching children about bullying and suicide.
Marc Mero, who found global fame as Johnny B. Badd in WCW and alongside then-wife Rena ‘Sable’ Mero in World Wrestling Entertainment, played an instrumental role during wrestling’s hottest period. Sharing the squared circle with Hall of Fame stars including Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H and Ric Flair, Mero’s fast-paced wrestling style and charismatic presentation made him a big hit with fans, en route to winning three WCW Television Titles and the coveted WWE Intercontinental Championship.
Yet Marc Mero’s life after wrestling has been even more prolific than his time performing as a sports entertainer. For almost two decades, Marc has inspired young people globally through his motivation ‘Champion of Choices’ talks, changing many lives for the better.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Behind the Shield. My name's James Gearing and this is episode 13 of the show. |
| 0:05.3 | And my guest this week is professional wrestler turned motivational speaker Mark Miro. |
| 0:11.1 | Now Mark is probably best known aside from his wrestling career for some of his viral videos that have gone around on the internet, |
| 0:19.0 | where he's touring high schools and giving presentations |
| 0:22.2 | about depression, suicide, anti-bullying, that kind of thing. |
| 0:27.8 | The reason why I really wanted to talk to Mark was twofold. |
| 0:33.0 | Firstly, we have an issue in our professions, in the police and fire, in EMS, and then the |
| 0:39.6 | associated professions, medical examiner, CSI, you know, whatever you're dealing with, if you're |
| 0:44.2 | dealing with trauma, he has some great insight into depression, into suicide, what we |
| 0:52.7 | would call PTSD, all these different areas. And we really delve |
| 0:57.4 | into that a little bit. The other side, though, is most of us are also husbands and wives and |
| 1:02.8 | parents. And a lot of us are raising children, our own children, stepchildren, foster children, even. |
| 1:09.4 | And the side of it where we address bullying, whether it's, |
| 1:14.4 | are you raising a bully? Are you raising a child's victim of bullying? How do identify that? |
| 1:20.0 | I really want to expand more in some of my interviews on the family side, not only specifically |
| 1:26.0 | pertinent to husband and wives of first responders, but also |
| 1:30.1 | just in general, being a dad, being a husband and a wife, and how that affects us as human |
| 1:37.1 | beings as well as first responders. So the interview was a little bit shorter than some of my |
| 1:41.8 | other episodes. There was a slight miscommunication |
| 1:44.7 | between us, but also Mark was about to embark on a huge national tour. So again, I am |
| 1:50.5 | extremely grateful that I got the time that I did with him, but I will definitely hunt him down. He's in Orlando, |
| 1:56.0 | so we will do a part two to this interview as well. So we start off talking about his early career. |
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