Insight with Chris Van Vliet
Marc Mero On Sable, Stone Cold Refusing To Work With Him, Life After Wrestling, Brawl For All
24 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: How did Dusty Rhodes create the Johnny B Badd persona?
Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Vliet!
Mark, we've been talking about doing this for so long. We're finally here. So thank you for making this happen. Oh man, I'm excited. When I heard you were in town, I said, oh man, we got to make this happen. And here we are. Here we are. Congratulations on the book. Oh, thank you. It did really well.
And I was, you know, it's finding someone, you know, Ben Veal, who co-wrote the book with me, find someone that can take your words and make them into life and where people are reading and going, oh my gosh, I feel like I'm there. It did really well, but it's still doing really well. Yes. Like people are still talking about it.
Chapter 2: What challenges did Marc Mero face transitioning to WWE?
Like your story is so amazing and we're going to dive into it throughout this episode. But I'm curious, do you think that life after wrestling has been more successful for you than when you were in it? By far.
It's like in life, you know, it's not like finding your calling, you know, it's like wrestling was entertaining, but what I do now is life changing and there's no greater joy than helping another person. And I found, you know, that joy through so much heartache and loss and brokenness and stories that people can relate to. And I think that's why it's been so successful.
Well, that Mother's Day video gets me all the time. A mother's love, which is, it's, you know, full circle that we're sitting here in the Diamond Dallas Page Performance Center here, DDPY's Performance Center. His team filmed that video. And if someone hasn't seen this, oh my goodness, pause this and go watch it. It's five minutes long. It's just so powerful.
Talk to me about that story and how... Dallas and his team filming that and putting it out there, how much that changed things for you?
Chapter 3: Why did Steve Austin refuse to work with Marc Mero?
Well, whenever I came to, I was living in Florida at the time. Whenever I came to Georgia, I would stay with DDP, you know, and hang out with him. He said, we've always been great friends. You know, we wrestle each other like 200 times, you know, and he never beat me. But anyways, that's another whole story. Don't look it up.
But anyways, I was, I was staying here in Georgia and I was doing local schools. And, uh, Steve, you who works Dallas's partner said, Hey, why don't we come out and film it? And so Dallas had the crew come out and film it. Cause I get photo releases and video releases at the schools I go to. And they came out and filmed it. And a couple of days later, um, DDP calls me up.
He goes, Hey bro, you mind if we put this video up on YouTube? I said, sure. He sends it over to me.
Chapter 4: What was life like for Marc Mero after wrestling?
You know, I go, wow, that's really Steve. You just edited this video so beautifully. And next thing you know, he calls me back like a day later, two days later, he goes, bro, the video just hit a hundred thousand. I go, did it really? I go, then send it to me. They put it up on my YouTube channel.
Well, anyways, the next thing, you know, this thing just explodes and, and, and celebrities like Charlie Sheen, little Wayne, uh, Damon Wayans, all these celebrities are putting it up on their channels also. Next thing you know, this one's got 200,000, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million. And it just explodes where we looked one day, we just decided to go see how many people have seen this video.
And it was over half a billion people. It's just incredible. Well, it's so easy to relate to it. Yeah. Everybody has a month.
Chapter 5: How did Marc Mero negotiate the first guaranteed WWE contract?
There's a little piece of everybody in this video. For sure. How we may treat someone, how someone may have treated us differently. how we take it granted for life. Life is so precious and sometimes we just don't realize how important it is and how we treat each other is really the bottom line of this video.
There's a line in that video that it gets me and it's, I no longer live in time, I live in moments.
Yeah.
What does that mean to you? Every moment is precious. We're always thinking about the next day, next year, or living in the past, which could be worse than that. Living with bitterness, resentment, or unforgiveness. And I just live in these moments I have. I'm going to be 66 years old. You look great. Well, thank you, brother.
Chapter 6: What impact did the Mother's Day video have on Marc Mero's career?
I got the memo on wearing black. Thank you. This is a uniform. But I realize that time is so important to me now. And I just got married in December to my beautiful wife, Melissa. Congratulations. And we just... Every day is so important.
Like we wake up and meeting someone that's happy all the time and realizing that we're going to, you know, travel more and do things and not look back on life and say, oh, I wish I would have done this or done that. I'm doing it now. Yeah. You're speaking to something that I love so much and it's gratitude.
Yeah.
And there's this quote I always come back to. It's, no amount of anxiety will change the past, or no amount of anxiety will change the future, and no amount of regret will change the past, but any amount of gratitude can change the present.
Chapter 7: What lessons did Marc Mero learn from his struggles with depression?
You know, it's the attitude of gratitude. It's living in the moment and preparing for the future, but living in the moment. It's very important for me. You've had so much loss. You've had so much pain, but you show up with a smile on your face and you live in such a spirit of joy all the time. Where does that come from? Well, first and foremost, my faith in Christ.
I'm a Christian, and he has changed my life. When I gave my life to—you know, I grew up Jewish. A lot of people don't know this, but I grew up Jewish. And my last name used to be Merowitz, and it was shortened to Merrow. But when I gave my life to Christ, everything changed. But I went through—I backslid. I went through some hard times, brokenness and divorce and death.
Chapter 8: What is Marc Mero's message of gratitude and positivity?
And my little brother and sister, they both died at 21. My mother died at 58. My dad died while I was holding my arms from lung cancers looking right at me. And losing, of course, all the guys we wrestled with and against in the business that passed on. So many hit me hard.
You know, Eddie Guerrero was just such a light in the world, you know, and having so many great matches with Eddie and some of the guys that Brian Pillman and guys that we just traveled with and were with all the time that next thing they're gone. It's just, you realize how precious life is. So you show up with a smile on your face all the time. Well, I look at what's the alternative.
there's a lot of people living in that alternative. Yes. A lot of people, you know, that are just upset about what they have or what they don't have. And they're focused on a lot of people focus on the things they don't have. Right. Yeah. But you're, you just have this, like, you're just this light. Well, thank you, man. I,
I, you know, I realized that, you know, because I do so many schools and so many presentations, you know, you feed off the audience, but the audience also feeds off of you. And you got to come out there and you just got to have a lot of energy and positivity. And when they hear my story, they think, Maybe my life isn't so bad. Maybe I should start spending more time with my family.
Maybe I shouldn't bully those kids or do this or do that. And it's really changed a lot. After a presentation, we often see kids hugging each other, which is like you know you've touched their heart in some way. So for people who don't know, where did this start for you? Where did you start speaking to students? Well, what happened was I opened up a gym in Florida, in Altamont Springs, Florida.
And I became a trainer. This is post-wrestling? Yeah, post-wrestling. Well, let me take a break just for a second. Yeah. Because this story is going to get... What happened was after I lost everything, okay? When I say I lost everything, we were at a point where we had millions of dollars at one time. And after wrestling, divorce, I just started squandering my money.
I mean, taking trips to Vegas and gambling and just living a horrible life. And the next thing I know, I'm running out of money. I'm down to my last 200 grand, which when you have millions of dollars, 200 grand is not a lot of money, especially living that lifestyle. And I remember... just to have something. I bought this little office building in Maitland, Florida, a little office building.
But I opened up a gym. Well, no, I'm sorry. I started working at Gold's Gym. And I'll never forget, Chris, people would come in Gold's Gym and go, oh my gosh, Mark Merrill, what are you doing here? I go... I work here. It was like, you work at Gold's Gym? And it was a humbling experience, but I love training people. I love inspiring people. And that's where it kind of started.
But what happened was I got a call from Melbourne high school football coach, and he asked me if I would come to speak to his players. I thought, well, that'd be cool. So I go and speak. They had no plan, no presentation, nothing. Just spoke from my heart. And back then, Facebook was real popular with the kids.
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