I would say Darren McBee is a man who loves God with all his heart, and I relentlessly follow him through prayer, reading my Bible, and just asking God to make me the best man that I can be, so that I can glorify him, and then be an encouragement to as many people as possible, because I know so many people in this world today are suffering, as you know, and they can't find their way out of what seems to be a really dark, deep pit of despair,
because of all the crazy things that are happening in the world right now. So my place right now is to try and inspire, encourage, and try and let people know that there are still heroes in this world that they can look up to, like people you've had on this show, and hopefully, Lord willing, me. Hey, it's another great day to get better. Welcome to yet another episode of Becoming Undone, the podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mightily, and grow relentlessly.
Join me, Toby Brooks, as I invite a new guest each week to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. For Riverside, California's Darren McBee, it was an unlikely journey from a skinny kid
just trying to make his high school baseball team to becoming a world-ranked racquetball player. A self-described late bloomer, Darren eventually discovered the weight room and through years of disciplined training and meal planning he had transformed himself into what he'd later described as 220 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. One day while working out he happened upon a casting call in a trade magazine for an upstart new show called
American Gladiators. He knew right away that he wanted in. He nailed the tryout and audition and became his alter ego, Malibu, a ripped surfer dude with huge 80s hair and one of the original six larger than life, real life superheroes who would soon become cultural icons for an entire generation. My generation. Although the outside world the gladiators were indestructible warriors with bulging muscles and huge personalities. In reality, they were still
just people. Athletic and fit for sure, but far from indestructible. After season one of Gladiators, Darren went on to find success in Hollywood as an actor and a stuntman. But tragedy and loss found him, and eventually he turned to prescription painkillers to try and cope. Following a devastating hip injury, he realized he needed help. And between his faith in God and several trips through dependency and addiction
rehab, he finally found freedom. Listen in as Darren Malibu McBee shares his incredible story of faith over failure in episode 49, Hero. Folks, we got a real treat for the Gen Xers, especially among us. I grew up on a steady diet of American Gladiators and one of my favorites was always Malibu, so we are blessed to have the one and only Darren Malibu McBee today. Thanks for joining us Darren. Hey Malibu's in the house with you Toby. I
can hardly wait to get this rocking and rolling man. Thanks so much for having me on your podcast. So cool. So if you haven't seen the documentary, we'll talk about that, but this is about more than American Gladiators. Darren has an incredible story of resilience and overcoming things that we wouldn't have chosen in our lives. And I just found so much inspiration from what I've heard. So I'm really looking forward to this.
And really, you straddle a lot of the things that show what we've talked about. Athletes, we've talked about entertainers, we've talked about entrepreneurs and how this notion of overcoming things in our path is kind of universal. And our identity can be taken from us, but that doesn't mean that our life has to be over. So I always start at the beginning wherever that was for you.
So, you know for me, I've always been a spiritual person. I've been a Christian since I was 13 years old and I've always wanted to live my life according to the dictates of God's Word instead of the dictates of what the world would have to say. And a lot of times that's put me as an outcast, so to speak, but to me, there's no other way to live my life. And God has taken me on quite a journey. So I would say Darren McBee is a man who, uh, who loves God with all his heart.
And I, uh, relentlessly follow him and try and improve myself daily through a prayer, reading my Bible and just asking God to make me the best man that I can be so that I can glorify him and then be an encouragement to as many people as possible because I know so many people in this world today are suffering, as you know, and they can't find their way out of what seems to be a really dark, deep pit of despair because of all the crazy things that are happening in the world right now.
So my place right now is to try and inspire, encourage, and try and let people know that there are still heroes in this world that they can look up to like you and I'm sure a lot of people you've had on this show and hopefully, Lord willing, me. Now, I'll go ahead and point out to you, my faithful friends and listeners, that Malibu just referred to me as a hero. Now, I was a 14-year-old when American Gladiators first hit the airwaves.
I was in eighth grade, had a ridiculous spiked haircut, spindly little arms, and dreams of athletic glory. Seeing those athletes in their red, white, and blue spandex get-ups with their rippling muscles and their ability to dominate any physical competition, I was in awe. My high school didn't even have a weight room, but my dad had bought me a Walmart special Joe Weider weight bench, complete with the concrete and plastic weights.
I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew what I wanted to look like when I got done. I wanted to look like a gladiator. To hear Malibu refer to me as a hero, well, that's otherworldly. Now I get it, we've never met. He's never seen me try and bench press three plates or sprint 40 yards. But it's part and parcel of the man Darren is. He's an encourager. And he isn't just blowing smoke. He's the kind of person you always leave feeling better than when you first saw him.
Like a warm summer day in Malibu. I remember watching the show and I knew in that moment like I'm going to reach out to this guy, I would love to have him on. You talked about your identity early on, being tied to sport and how your relationship with your dad was really kind of the impetus behind pursuing athletics and ultimately that led to a career in entertainment and kind of athletic entertainment at that. So talk to me a little bit about that upbringing and the role that sport played
in your identity. Sure. I'll start with my father because he was my hero growing up. I mean, six foot four. He was destined to be a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. But fortunately, he got injured badly, hurt his shoulder when he went into the Marine Corps. And when he came out, he could not throw the heat like he did going in.
He had a ninety five mile an hour fastball in high school, so they probably would have brought that up to who knows, you know, how much in the pros, but anyways, turned around and became a success in business and always was there for me. He was the kind of dad that always put his arms around me. He told me he loved me. He hugged me goodnight, kissed me goodnight, and he was always there for me during my games, my baseball games, and was an encouragement throughout my lifetime.
So that was a big inspiration for me growing up in a lot of ways. And so I got involved in a sport that he introduced me to called racquetball, which was huge in the 70s and the 80s. And I just took to it like a fish in water. And the next thing you know, I was one of the top 10 players in the world and just loving it. And so that's kind of how it started with me was the whole racquetball thing.
And then I found such a love for sports, played baseball of course in school, but to be honest with you Toby, I was a really skinny, scrawny little kid in high school. So I really didn't mature until I became a senior in high school. So nobody was really taking a serious look at me from a coaching standpoint, even though I could go toe to toe with the best of their ballplayers out there.
So I kind of got looked over and that was the point in my life where I decided, okay, I can either give up and quit or I can just push forward and be the best you know athlete I can be and my dad was always there helping me out. Yeah so for our listeners that that are familiar with your work on American Gladiators the thought of Malibu being a scrawny high school athlete is is surprising so talk me through how you transformed from that to
what we saw on the show. The Gladiators were characterized as kind of these superhuman athletes-athlete and certainly you had that look and you performed like that. So how do you get from there to there? That's a great question. Well, of course, a lot of determination. When I got out of high school, I always felt insecure. I was bullied in high school, as a lot of young people are. And so I had an insecurity complex and I thought, well, what can I do?
Instead of sitting around and complaining and feeling sorry for myself, I said, I'm gonna get to the gym and I'm gonna see if I can build my body into something fantastic. And of course, I never knew it would turn out to be the way it did, but as God would have it, I just happened to have really good genetics, not to be super big, but to be able to put on a physique that I felt like really kind of like a cartoon character.
One of these guys you see in these movies, these superhero movies and stuff, and that's kind of how I wanted to fashion myself after. And so I spent a good seven years in the gym, training hard, you know, four to six hours a day, every day, relentlessly eating well, trying to get enough rest. And before you knew it, I mean, I started really putting on some size and muscle. The next thing you know, I saw this ad for the show called American Gladiators in a trade magazine.
I was riding a life cycle and I said, well, I got to try out for this. And the next day I tried out. It was a obstacle course that I ran and aced the obstacle course. And they had to do push ups and sit ups. And I think I did like 83 sit ups in 60 seconds. So I was smoking that. And then and then from there, I did the the oral audition. And the funny thing was that they originally wanted to call me Domino, like Domino's pizza.
And I remember jumping up on the desk in front of all these producers and directors, and I cleared the desk off that was across from them and I sat on it and I said, bro, my name isn't Domino, that's a pizza dude, I'm Malibu. So from then on, Malibu was born. This is Malibu, the cool laid back surfer. You're never gonna defeat 220 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal.
That's hilarious because it's like an alter ego hearing your story and not that Malibu was this, you were never like a wrestling bad guy by any stretch. You were always kind of that surfer dude, but hearing your story, and it certainly was a role you played, but it was a physical role you played. I mean, you couldn't just pretend to be this competitor. Your exploits were put on display for all the world to see.
And the thing I was really impressed by, and as an athletic trainer working with sports teams throughout the years, you're an athlete and it's almost the equivalent of you're playing multiple games per day, day after day after day. So talk me through the physical toll that the show took on you and your colleagues as you continue to compete and the show continued to grow in popularity. Yeah, you touched on something that was really very true.
What a lot of people didn't realize, because they always say, well, you guys are going against these smaller contenders. Well, first of all, the contenders were vetted out against hundreds and hundreds of other contenders. And so these guys were the best of the best. A lot of them were ex-pro athletes or college athletes, and they're in great shape, number one.
Number two, we would play like five or six games of Powerball in a day against a new fresh contender every single time So what people didn't understand was that I'd I'd play five games of Powerball by the fifth game We're just dog tired and beat up from these guys And that went on for three weeks straight as we did 13 episodes So, you know the toll of the injuries just started cranking up and mounting up and of course You probably saw the wicked hit I took.
Welcome back to Universal Studios Hollywood and the American Gladiators. Now, last time we saw our gladiator Malibu, he was flying through the air from a tremendous kick delivered by Brian Hudson. And the last time he landed, we weren't sure where he wound up. That was the literally the first day that I was filming American Gladiators that's on that human cannibal. And this guy came swinging down and hit me with the force of, they say, Harley Davidson driving about 10 miles an hour.
And I literally launched off the back of that pad. And when I hit the pads underneath me, my left knee came over, hit me right in the face, or in the forehead, actually, split my forehead open where I had to get plastic surgery. I think it was like 24 stitches, inner and outer. So to stitch that up, it was so bad.
But also I had a major, major concussion and the doctors, two of them, emergency room doctor and the plastic surgeon kept saying, hey, listen, Darren, you go back to work and you get hit like that or close to that again, you could spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair or worse because this is a really bad severe concussion. Hey Malibu, after you got drilled by that human cannonball, I thought, hey, there is no way this guy is going to live to play another day.
You're alive. You're well. What happened? Did you go to the hospital? Did you get x-rays? Well, dude, it's like this. I saw this guy coming and I took the most excellent hit of my life. The next thing I knew, I was on the beach, taking in some cosmic rays getting healed by Mother Nature Taking a little brew ski holding on a beautiful, babe, and I'm fine today, so no hospital. No doctors just Mother Nature Oh, I'm a child of Mother Nature. What do you expect? sweet
You know me. I just never say never I just begged these guys to let me go back to work and the next thing you know is back up there again, getting knocked off that human cannibal again. But I had a very, very big respect for the games after that, let's put it that way. And much like a professional athlete, you're always concerned that there's somebody waiting in the wings to take your spot. Your performance today determines whether or not you come back tomorrow in some instances.
And so that can create a really challenging environment for you mentally. And so I'm sure the temptation, you talk about it in the show how you've had to overcome addiction and painkillers. We know opioid addiction is a credible problem for competitive athletes. So talk me through how that started and ultimately how you overcame that. Sure. I really appreciate you asking this question. The reality was, you know,
after I left the Gladiators, I was doing stunt work and movie, big movies. I've worked on two of the big Batman movies, Mortal Kombat Annihilation. I've done shows like Walker, Texas Ranger, and a bunch of physical roles. So I did a lot of action movies and got injured throughout my life.
I had never taken a painkiller and I never drank alcohol, never smoked a cigarette, never smoked pot, never drank a beer in my whole life going up until I was 45 years old and I kept getting these injury after injury. Well, I got this last injury doing a stunt job where I literally crushed my hip. I jumped into a room and my femur bone just jacked up into my hip socket and obliterated it.
And the pain was excruciating. I couldn't step into a shower, but you know, that wasn't the thing that got me taking the painkiller so much as what had happened in my life prior to that. I had a very bad tragedy where I lost my young wife when our kids were just two and five. She had a heart attack and died, which was devastating to me. And about three years after that, I went to visit my mom and I found her on the floor dead from a heart attack. So I was
suffering a lot of extreme emotional pain as well as the horrible physical pain I was in. And I'd finally seen this last surgeon and he said, why don't you try this wonder drug called Oxycontin? And I said, doc, I don't do drugs and I really don't do this. And he said, listen, Darren, it's not addicting. And he said, you may become dependent on it. And I said, doc, that sounds an awful lot like addicting to me.
And he says, no, no, if you've never used drugs before, then you'll just get right off of this drug. And to be honest with you, I just gave in in a lot of ways because I was emotionally beat up, I was physically beat up and that's a bad, bad time to make a decision to take a drug like that. And to be honest with you, worst mistake I've ever made, but within two months I was horribly addicted to that drug. It was like I couldn't live without it.
And then after a couple of years, you're to the place where it's not even working anymore. The more you take, the less it works for you. And it just has this effect where it just works less and less. And my pain started hurting more and more. And then I was just taking it just because I was dreadfully fearful of being sick. It's just a horrible, horrible, evil cycle.
And I'm actually in a lawsuit against Purdue Pharmacy right now for the lies that they were telling about this OxyContin and how it was not addicting and all the things they told a lot of people. So, even including doctors, they were telling the doctors that. So, at any rate, I got to a place, honestly, where I was on my living room floor one day and I was in tears, I hadn't looked at my face in the mirror in a year.
I hated myself, I hated the kind of father I became to my children because I literally walked away from a lot of acting just to take care of my two girls after my wife died, but the way I looked at that, I said, you know what, the last two years of my life, I've failed horribly and miserably as a father and I walked away a lot from my friends and the people in my faith. And I just, I got on my knees and I just prayed. And I just said, God, listen, I can't do this.
There's no possible way I can stop this drug from ravaging me and tearing my life apart. And my life is yours. You can either take me to heaven right this moment, or you can help me get through this. I said, God, I'm too much of a chicken to commit suicide.
So I'm just begging you to please help me and the next thing I knew I finally called a rehab place and I said listen I want to come in and then they said well do you have any upcoming surgeries or that stuff I said yes I have to have a hip replacement they said don't bother stopping until after your hip replacement so I went in I had the hip replacement surgery and a month
after it I was feeling great I was taking what amounted to four pain pills a day as opposed to upwards of 70 pain pills a day. Wow. And I was doing great. I mean, I was going to go into rehab and get off the rest of it. Well, I woke up one morning about a month later and the entire right side of my hip had swollen up to the size of half of a football.
It was red, hot, and the area where they'd gone in to suture me up had ripped open and there was this viscous fluid that was pouring out of the side of my hip. I went to the emergency room and immediately they set me up for surgery the next day because I had a systemic infection that was a streptococcus infection and it attacked my whole system to the point where the doc said, listen, Darren, we got to give you a new hip replacement.
And with this, even with this, there's one chance you're going to die from the infections, another chance you're going to lose your leg, and thirdly, you may come out of it. And so, these are the options I was told by the doctor. I began weeping in his office because, you know, those two out of three were terrible. And so, I spent the next five months in and out of a nursing hospital.
I was three months in a nursing hospital and two months at home with a wound care specialist that came to my house every day. And then every, just about every other month, they were giving me a different type of very powerful antibiotic, hoping that it would kill off this infection. And nothing worked and I was praying and praying and then after four months, finally by the grace of God, that hole in my leg healed up and I was healed.
I mean, it was, I want to say a miracle from God because the infection was truly devastating and I'd heard stories of people that went and got a toe amputated and got the same kind of infection on their toe and died. So I know God had a hand in this and so after I got my second hip replacement I went into rehab and I wish I could say when I got out of rehab I did stellar and I quit but I quit my drugs I didn't, I failed.
I got addicted again really quickly and I went into rehab again and I failed and I got out of it, get out of there and I failed honestly about four times. But what I learned, Toby, through that is as I was failing, I was always failing forward, meaning each time I was getting stronger, each time I was saying, okay, I can do this, I can do this, and each time I was praying, God, give me the strength, and so the fourth time was a charm. I got out of there
I got off the drug. I spent five months in an outpatient program learning about alcohol drug addiction and the effects of All these things and I came totally fascinated with that and decided you know God I can I can use what I've learned what I've been Through to help other people You have to admire the perspective that Darren has chosen to view his life through.
His young wife, a promising professional bodybuilder in her own right, dies suddenly, leaving Darren widowed and doing his best to balance the possibilities of a movie career with the responsibilities of raising his two young girls alone. Then a few short years later, he finds his mother dead as well.
In the midst of crippling emotional pain, he suffers physically too, with not one but two hip replacements, and eventually an addiction to prescription painkillers that would require multiple trips through inpatient rehab and boatloads of prayer to eventually kick. But you heard him say it. His view is that he suffered through these tragedies for a purpose. And that purpose, as he sees it today, is to help others cope with their own trauma and loss.
So now what I do, among other things, is I manage a sober living house. We've got 10 guys living here. I'm the manager. I drug test them. We talk all the time about issues having to do with drugs. We have meetings. And to me, it's just been another form of ministry that where God has taken something that was so negative and turned it into an amazing positive experience. So, you know, I just want to give God all the glory for all this to tell you the truth, man. Yeah, that's fantastic.
Part of the genesis for this show came last year. I spent a week as part of an intensive at Hazleton Betty Ford in Rancho Mirage, and we're actually embedded in that program. So we get assigned to a group of – I was with males who lived in a certain house, and I got to sit in on the group therapy sessions, and I got to talk to one-on-one with them and it really changed my entire perception of addiction. Society wants to ostracize and stigmatize and it's so disingenuous.
I feel like honestly, if we're going to go there, it's a trick, it's deceit. Because we see celebrities living this party lifestyle and as soon as they succumb to addiction, addiction like we kick them out to the curb. That's exactly right. You're less of a human being because you can't handle that.
Right. And what I emerged from that realizing was these people, yeah, they succumb to addiction but how much strength does it take to put your life on hold, the financial, you know, your family is essentially suffering financially as well as you're not there and you're in this 30 days of recovery.
And then I used to think like, Oh, that guy's been in and out, you know, in your case four times and society's so quick to judge, like, you know, you're never going to learn your lesson, but you're right. Recovery is a process. And hopefully you're making incremental steps toward recovery every time. And I just want to applaud you. Congratulations on your sobriety. Thank you for the ministry that you're providing to these men who have also had their own struggles.
I think it's so powerful what you said and how you said there were failures along the way. The loss of your wife certainly had to be devastating. What did failure teach you that smooth sailing success wouldn't have? That is such a great question. I could talk about that forever. I mean, let me just start with sports, okay? When I was playing racquetball, you know, I failed, I lost 10 times, 100 times more games than I ever won on my road to becoming one of the best players in the world.
So I failed way more times than I ever succeeded. But each time I was failing forward, I was learning a little bit more, getting a little bit stronger. And then the same thing with acting. When you go on auditions, you're a piece of meat to these people. They don't really care about anything unless you have the right look, you say everything's perfect. They don't care about you as a human being. So you hear some ruthlessly wicked criticism when you're going on auditions and stuff.
But again, I failed and failed and failed and then all of a sudden I started booking jobs and then pretty soon I started hitting big movies.
But again, I've failed 100 times more than I ever succeeded and I think the takeaway is that you just you just don't quit you persevere you move forward and it's just like anything else I mean if you look at the Bible every one of the people that God used in major ways were were flawed men I mean these guys failed miserably in life a lot of times David was an adulterer and a murderer but God turned around and used his life in the most magnificent way we could imagine. I mean you just go through
look at Peter. Peter denied knowing Jesus Christ after he walked with him for three years watching him do miracle after miracle and loving on people and then he denied even knowing him three times but that wasn't the end of the story. The end of the story was Peter after weeping bitterly got back with the Lord and he became one of the most powerful spokesman for Christ since the New Testament. So, same thing with Paul. I mean, I could go on and on and on with all these people.
So, a lot of times when you fail, you just don't quit. You fail forward, you learn. And I believe that some of the most rich personalities and some of the most wonderful people I've ever met in my life have gone through some of the most incredible tragedies, trials, tests, and tribulations that you would ever meet. And I'm sure you can relate to that, Toby. I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important for people to realize, I teach grad students a lot, and they're struggling through some of the hardest coursework they've ever taken, or they'll graduate and they get that first job, and maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't. But, you know, what do you tell yourself in that moment? It's easy for us as old lions to the pride to look back and realize where the lessons were.
But for a young person who's in the midst of that season of rejection, my daughter is a vocal performance major, and she said one of the first things they taught her as a vocalist is your job isn't to sing. Your job, your career is to audition and to recognize that failure is baked right in. It's an expectation in this role. If you're not comfortable with failure, you're in the wrong line of work. That's exactly right. And performing is much the same.
So what do you tell a young person who's on the front edge and staring down this possibility of failure to keep going during those times when things didn't go the way they had hoped? Great question. A couple of things, Toby. I would tell him one, reassess your values, your priorities, and your dreams and hopes, and make sure that you're doing something that you are ready and prepared to do
for the rest of your life. Whether you make a ton of money or not, I always say success is doing the job or the career that you enjoy doing, or you're gifted to doing and go after that with all your heart. That's the first thing I would say. But as far as that person who's downcast and saying, man, I'm blowing it. Listen, man, you gotta get up, my son, and you gotta realize that tough times don't last, but tough people do. And so you gotta persevere.
And what I realized as an actor, they said, Darren, listen, you're gonna fail and fail and fail, but like I was telling you, you fail forward. Always learn, young man or young woman, something from what your failure cost you. What caused me to fail or why did I not get that job? Or why did I blow that interview? And that's what I would always do.
If I went in and I just really messed up an audition, it was terrible, okay, after I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I would say, okay, Darren, what can you do better next time? And then I went and made sure I did it. And that's the best advice I could give anybody, is always learn, because there's lessons in every failure that are golden opportunities to step up and learn and grow and achieve every dream you ever hoped for.
That's so powerful and so inspiring because it's always tempting in that moment to just shut it down. Well, maybe I don't have what it takes. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. And it takes wisdom and discernment to figure out, okay, is this adversity to make me stronger? Or is this a sign that maybe I need to go in another direction? And that only comes with age. Right. What do your days look like today? You kind of mentioned that you serve in the addiction community, but that's not all you do.
Tell us a little bit about what your day to day looks like. Well, thank you. It's been quite an exciting journey. I just worked on a movie, stunt coordinating a little film last week, which was fun. So I'm still dabbling in the
movie industry, but really my main objective and my main drive is ministry right now. Honestly, after all the publicity I've been getting from these podcasts that I've been doing and all the publicity I'm getting from these two major documentaries that are out there, I really want to parlay that into a platform where I can encourage young people in their lives to tell them, listen man, there's a God out there that's real and that you search for that God,
believe in that God, because the world's gonna tell you right now that there is no God, and if there's no God, it's an awful, hopeless, empty place to live your life these days. So that's one thing, but for me, again, if I can go out and speak in churches or do radio shows or podcasts like this where I can encourage people and tell them, listen man, there's heroes out there. Search for a hero, search for a mentor.
Find somebody who you respect that's older than you, wiser than you, and then listen to that person. Learn from that person because some of the greatest lessons I got were sitting under the tutelage of men that were much smarter than me, much wiser than me, and a lot more humble than me. This particular piece of advice is especially painful for me to hear today. Up until last week, I had two mentors who I met with at least monthly to talk about life and career and growth.
Sadly, I lost one of them this past week. Dr. Robert Pasteraro was a faculty member in Healthcare Leadership and Management at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. He was a Yale-trained radiologist with more than three decades of experience, and he'd been inducted in the American College of Radiology as a fellow. Late in life, he taught exclusively online, as a degenerative neurologic disorder had taken much of his strength and mobility.
Nevertheless, he agreed to be my mentor two years ago, and we chatted on Zoom every month. He was a wise, kind, and humble soul who helped me keep my professional journey in perspective. He encouraged me as I sought out new paths and new opportunities. And as Darren says here, we all need people like that in our lives. I'll miss you, Bob. That's, I think, the biggest takeaways I can give young people right now. And what I'm doing, I'm loving what I'm doing.
I honestly, Toby, I am happier now with where I'm at and what I'm doing than I've ever been in my life. That's awesome. And such an inspiration because you've had to go through some stuff, things that no one would have chosen. And there's so much hope in knowing that someone can emerge on the other side of that and still be able to say that I have a life worth living. I have a fulfilling existence and I'm pouring into other people. So that's fantastic. Right. Right.
I love music and the emotion that it can convey or represent. If we're doing an 80s training montage or some sort of piece together clip of Darren McBee's life, what song do you have playing in the background or what song most represents who you are? You're giving me a curveball there, Gobi. I've got to say, there's a couple that stick in my head. Motley Crue is one. I always loved the glam bands of the 80s because I'm a natural born show off. I love all that kind of hair and costume.
So to me, the bands of the 70s and 80s, Journey, probably my favorite band of all time, like that. Those are the ones, but I also love R&B, like Earth, Wind & Fire and groups like that have always been my favorite. Of course, my all-time favorite training came in the 1990s with the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Now that was definitely my jam and my groove when I was working out. And then by the grace of God, I ended up co-starring in the second one, Mortal Kombat
Annihilation. So that's how cool God is sometimes. That's very cool. As we've discussed, I mean, the show's about how we can fall apart and then fall into place. And so you certainly had seasons in your life where it seemed like things were falling apart. What for Darren McBee remains undone? What do you have left to accomplish before you go see the good Lord? Oh man, sky's the limit. You know, everything, and I'm not just saying this as a cliche, but you know, everything is
possible with God. And so as far as I'm concerned, I want to see a million more souls come into the kingdom of heaven, at least, before he takes me home because he's brought me to this place where I've gathered a lot of wisdom, gained a lot of wisdom from what he's taught me and taken me through.
And I honestly, honestly want to encourage other people to be the best they can be, to shine like a diamond every day and do what they love to do, but really, really to lead people to a relationship with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That is my number one most important goal in my life right now, man. That's awesome. Well, I'm gonna plant the seed. If you're not already working on it or haven't thought about it, the world needs a Malibu.
We need the documentary from you specifically because you've got a story to tell my friend. How can people connect with you and follow and support your work? What are the best ways? Sure, you can reach me, friend me on Facebook. I will always get back to anybody who friends me on Facebook. You need someone to talk to if you're struggling with issues of faith or addiction. I'm never going to shove my beliefs down your throat. Listen,
those are personal. I'll always just share my journey, but I'm there to discuss anything with you. I mean, I also counsel people that are going through depression and anxiety and things like that. So please, by all means, get a hold of me. Fantastic. Darren, can't thank you enough. Really appreciate your time. Thanks for being on the show. Big inspiration for me. I had a lunchbox I'm not ashamed. So as an 80s kid, you were definitely someone to aspire to.
So I certainly thank you for that and certainly it continues. So Darren, thanks. Thank you so much, Toby. God bless you, man. You as well. For Darren McBee, it's been an incredible ride of highs and lows, of victory and failure, of days in the spotlight and sadly, long dark years and despair. However, he's a survivor. He's emerged on the other side of that gauntlet of life, wiser and better equipped to serve people who are
wrestling with their own challenges in life. And with lofty goals of helping to see a million or more souls won for Christ, and maybe even a Malibu memoir book project to come, it's safe to say that this former American gladiator is still undone. For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com backslash ep49 to see the notes, links, and images related to today's guest, Darren McBee. If you enjoyed the show, I got one request.
Please share with someone that you think might enjoy it themselves. It would really go a long way in helping me spread the word. I know there are great stories out there to be told and I'm always on the lookout. So if you or someone you know has a story that we can all be inspired by, tell me about it. Surf over to undonepodcast.com, click that connect tab in the top menu drop me a note coming up
I've got cancer researcher dr. Phil Anton dr. Garfield bright one of the original members of the iconic and award-winning 90s R&B quartet shy and fitness business legend Pat Brigsby so stay tuned this and more coming up on Becoming Undone is a Nitro-Hype creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone, contact me at undonepodcast.com.
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