Marc Mero has some fond memories of playing Johnny B. Badd in WCW.
During a recent interview on The Ten Count with Steve Fall, Marc Mero spoke about working with Dusty Rhodes to develop the Johnny B Badd character. Mero shared how Dusty influenced the character, with Mero noting that he appreciates the time he got to spend with Rhodes.
“The reason why I enjoyed the Johnny B Badd character so much was it was so far from who I really am,” Marc Mero admitted. “It was like a total acting job, so it was kind of fun. But the reason why I enjoyed that so much was Dusty Rhodes created that character. And he was my mentor. So many times Dusty would get to the arena early with me, and he’d show me how to walk and talk, and I’d say that one-on-one time I would have with Dusty was some of the funniest — I wish there was cameras back then because Dusty was doing the Johnny B Badd, and you know how flamboyant Dusty was. He’d walk up and go, ‘This is how I want you to do it. I want you to walk up to the microphone. You grab it, and you say I’m so pretty I should have been born a little girl.’ And I was laughing so hard because, like how am I going to do this? But obviously, eventually, we pulled it off, and Johnny B Badd became a very popular character at that time. But those are the memories I have, and I think about Johnny B Badd was the time I got to spend one on one time with Dusty Rhodes my mentor.”
Mero then spoke about transitioning the Johnny B Badd character from the more flamboyant Little Richard influences to something with a different swagger like Muhammad Ali.
“When they first did this character, Dusty because he saw it as the Little Richard character and he had me wearing a lot of makeup but as the character progressed and kind of switching to a fan favorite as opposed to a heel. I started dropping the makeup more and more, and I remember going into the gorilla position right before you go out into the audience and go through the curtains, it’s called the gorilla position. And I remember Dusty would be sitting there at the monitor because he was running the show, kind of. So I’d be back there, and he’d look at me and goes, ‘Where’s your makeup?’ And I go, ‘Aww Dusty, I gotta wear it?’ He goes, ‘Go get some color on right now.’ So I put eyeliner on or whatever, and then come back out but I kept doing it more and more. And finally, he just didn’t care. He just let it go because at the time some of us were going to schools and stuff like that. And it was kind of a stumbling block for a lot of kids when they go, ‘Why do you wear makeup?’ So I was able to finally drop and kind of make it more of a fan favorite and more of a switch because it was based on Little Richard Muhammad Ali type thing. And that switched more from Little Richard to the Muhammad Ali character, ‘I’m a bad man.’ So it was a lot of fun.
“The last couple of years of Johnny B Badd were some of my favorite times in wrestling. And then gosh, wrestling. Oh my gosh, even Lex Luger, he worked so hard with me. Because I did a lot of stuff like flying over the top rope and stuff and he never complained. He was like, ‘Okay, I’ll catch you.’ And sure enough a guy that strong, he’s able to catch anybody. And then, of course, William Regal, Steve Regal at the time. I learned so much from that guy too Guys that they had me working with to learn from and I owe those guys a lot of gratitude. Oh my gosh, I’m working more Ricky Morton, and even Raven really helped me out a lot because they were so far ahead of me in ability that they say oh try it this way or sell it this way and stuff and you look back on your career at the time you don’t think of the gratitude you have. But now as I look back on my career, I have so much gratitude for the guys that helped me come along. Helped me be a better wrestler, better performer, better on the mic, or whatever it was. And I only wish I was as good on the mic as I am right now in front of 1000s of students if I can only take this character now and go back and have a lot of fun with it.”
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