“The Weirdo Hero” Randy Myers has always been vocal about his journey with mental health. Whether it be messages embedded throughout his ring gear or cutting a promo on whichever subject he happens to be passionate about at the moment, Myers’ openness with his own struggles is something that not only pro wrestling fans, but anyone can draw inspiration from.
Recently, Myers joined us on the Conversations With Love podcast to discuss the impact professional wrestling has on his mental health, both positively and negatively. The full interview can be found here.
Please credit Spencer Love of the WCSN for any transcriptions used.
Using his platform as a professional wrestler in a positive way:
“I was having trouble with wrestling for a while there a while back. I felt like I was playing a cartoon character, and I wasn’t showing all the aspects of me. I felt there was more. There (were) more aspects to performing that I wanted to show than just the greed for wanting a championship, or the anger of wanting revenge. I felt there’s so many other emotions and aspects and so many other sides of me that I wanted to share with the audience.”
“Fans have shared stuff with me in the past, their true, personal lives. I wanted to un-crack that and start sharing who I really was and be the performer that I wanted and maybe needed in my youth, and the performer that I need still at this time that’s going out there and is championing these issues that are important. It goes beyond just the fight in the ring. There is so much more, and if we have this platform and we’re given this stage to deliver a message, I don’t want to go out there and just grunt and say that I want this championship and you know that I’m better than you and I’ve always been better than you.”
“If there’s any ears that are open to what I’m saying and it gives me an opportunity to get into those ears, that’s what I want to do. That, to me, is the championship. That, to me, means so much that I could maybe make one person feel more comfortable in that audience.”
How professional wrestling has impacted his journey with mental health:
“More and more I realize each day. During this time when we have it off, it’s been hard. It’s been really a struggle for me because wrestling is my therapy. It gets this aggression out in me, that fire, that energy. I look at it like nuclear power. If you can use that nuclear power for good, then that’s awesome and you can get that power out. But that energy’s not going to go away. It’s not just going to disappear. It can go - it can be led in the wrong direction quite easily.”
“Wrestling is so much about control. It looks like extreme, wild violence at times, but it’s so much about control at the same time, and so much about consent, and so much about caring about that person you’re in the ring with. It’s about being able to get that energy out in a wild, frantic manner, but it’s done in the most healthy of ways. For me, when I first got into professional wrestling, I was a 17-year-old kid who was kind of lost and could have easily gone down the wrong path. But then, I found wrestling.”
“I was at a point where I’d broken up with my first love, and I was really heartbroken about that, so I really wanted to do self-harm. Define professional wrestling, which was like a way that I could do a bit of self-harm, but it was therapeutic self-harm. It grew me rather than being destructive. It built.”
Why the Weirdo Hero nickname resonates with him:
“I think because I’ve always - I think was that Mick Foley, that first impression that I saw where I’m like ‘here’s this sensitive person who’s not what you expect to be, but can be the hero.’ It seems like so often it’s like Clark Kent, or your cookie-cutter, John-Cena style that they have be the hero because that’s what you expect and that’s normally what’s cast in that role. I always felt like an outsider, or kind of felt like people were looking at me differently. Not necessarily badly, but differently. Sometimes badly, but sometimes lovingly. It felt like it fit so well. I’m a man of a million monikers, but that’s the one that feels the most in-sync with who I am as a human.
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