Throughout his career, Marc Mero always seemed to get the short end of the stick. First, he got saddled with the infamous “Johnny B. Badd” gimmick in WCW…
…then he was completely overshadowed (figuratively?) by his own wife Sable’s breasts throughout his WWF run.
But despite his misfortune in the wrestling ring, no one could take away his accomplishments in the boxing ring, where he won several titles including the New York Golden Gloves championship. No, no one could take those achievements away, but the wrestling world could still make him look like a total goof as a pugilist.
It seemed that every time Mero got to showcase his skills at fisticuffs, he got embarrassed mightily. Take the Brawl for All tournament: not only did he get absolutely dominated by Steve Blackman in the boxing/wrestling hybrid…
…but after a twist of fate (and Blackman’s knee) put Mero back into the tournament, he got eliminated again by Bradshaw.
And when Mero got put into a worked fight? Well, he still ended up all wet.
In 1992, Mero, as Little Richard impersonator Johnny Badd, was feuding with Scotty Flamingo, the Florida surfer dude who in three years’ time would end up as the sullen cult leader of ECW, Raven. For those of you new to professional wrestling, no, nothing in that last sentence seems particularly odd to me.
Despite the two having so much in common…
…Scotty had sucker-punched Badd with a roll of nickels, knocking him out and prompting a match between the two at Clash of the Champions XXI.
But this match wouldn’t take place in a wrestling ring. Oh no, this match would…
…okay, it would take place in a wrestling ring. But they’d both be wearing boxing gloves and would box for three 2-minute rounds. And who wouldn’t want to pay to see that?
Just about everybody?
Well, good thing Clash wasn’t an actual pay-per-view, then.
For this match, Johnny B. recruited his old manager, Teddy Long, to be his cornerman.
Teddy, after all, once donned the gloves to take on Paul Ellering.
Badd came to the ring and blasted his glitter gun into the crowd. Ironically, the Tutti Frutti Johnny B would soon start dazzling Sable in real life by blasting his “glitter gun” in the bedroom (until it became too much of a hassle to vacuum up all that confetti off the floor). Badd got a good reaction from the fans in his hometown of Macon, Georgia. Not that that was his real hometown; instead, it was that of Little Richard.
As a side note, something has always troubled me about the Johnny B. Badd gimmick. No, not the gender-dysphoric overtones of his effeminate ring persona, who was so pretty he wished he had been born a girl.
And no, not the fact that, in order for the Caucasian Marc Mero to convincingly play a Little Richard lookalike, he had to tan in a crematorium.
I mean the fact that, despite being a Little Richard lookalike, his name was a nod to “Johnny B. Goode,” a Chuck Berry song. It’s not like Richard Penniman had a shortage of songs named after people; “Lucille” or “Good Golly Miss Molly” would have suited Mero just fine.
It’s like if George Ringo, the Wrestling Beatle, had called himself, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” instead.
Perhaps worst of all, we never did get a Chuck Berry-themed pro wrestler, seeing as we never found out who put all those GTV hidden cameras in the bathrooms.
Anyway, his opponent Scotty Flamingo was seconded (and thirded) by Diamond Dallas Page and Vinnie Vegas, who looked just like Kevin Nash, but had an authentic New Jersey-ish accent. And boy, was he excited!
Also prepping him for his match was an unnamed manager with spiky hair. We never saw his face, but I’m pretty sure it was Lucius Sweet.
Dallas, Scotty, and Vinnie then waddled to the ring together in the conga line-equivalent of a short bus.
After the introductions, it was time for round one.
Johnny B boxed circles around Flamingo, until a distraction of the referee let Scotty clothesline Badd and kick him a couple of times.
This was filmed in standard definition, so you can’t tell whether he used The Stinger.
The heel continued his cheating with a rabbit punch (or is that what it’s called?).
Still, Badd recovered enough to knock out Flamingo with a few seconds left in the round, but Scotty was saved by the bell.
Hey, no time for you, kids! I’ve already included too many cutaways in this induction as it is.
After the first round, Dallas spent the whole rest period filling up Scotty’s glove with water. The idea was that he was “loading” it, making it heavier.
Jesse Ventura didn’t know what to make of the unusual tactics, probably because it made so little sense for Flamingo and company to use good old H₂0 instead of that solid roll of nickels he knocked out Badd with weeks before.
Now, I know that water is heavier than most people realize, but for Jesse Ventura’s liberal estimate of an extra pound or two of water to be accurate, Scotty’s glove would have to hold between a pint and a quart of the stuff besides his own hand. When you look at the Vegas Connection’s laughable choice of foreign object, suddenly the comparison of their entrance to a “short bus” doesn’t seem so unfair.
Remember how we all laughed when R-Truth started using a water bottle as his weapon of choice?
Well, laugh all you want, but Scotty’s squishy boxing glove was the key to victory…
…helping him knock out Johnny B for the ten-count shortly into the second round.
I’d say Badd had a jaw of glass, but when’s the last time a glass exploded when you poured water into it? It’s just a good thing he didn’t hit him with a whole water balloon; he could have given Badd brain damage.
It’s also a good thing that Jim Ross’s description of the knockout blow as a “mule punch” was just a Freudian slip out of JR’s deviant imagination.
Flamingo soon jumped to the WWF, where he managed the Quebecers as “Johnny Polo.” Badd would years later sign with the Federation and set out to prove once and for all that
1) he was straight…
…and 2) he could box…
…both of which blew up in his face.
Suffice it to say, while Sable couldn’t wrestle, the fans hated to see her husband box.
Uh, yeah.