What happened to Mikey from Saved By The Bell: The character and actor
He was the heart of the first incarnation of Saved By The Bell: Mikey Gonzalez. But when the show relaunched with a cool California setting, he was gone. Find out why, what happened to the character, and what the actor who played him is doing now. Here’s a hint: his career is just as interesting as if he’d kept acting.
Mikey Gonzalez: The character
Technically, Mikey wasn’t on Saved By The Bell. He was on Good Morning, Miss Bliss, the Hayley Mills vehicle that featured many of the SBTB characters. It lasted only a year but had a much longer impact.
Set in Indianapolis, Indiana at John F. Kennedy Jr. High School, the show only lasted 13 episodes, but it made a much longer impression thanks to syndication replay. Zack, Lisa, Screech, and Mr. Belding moved on to Bayside, but the rest of the characters didn’t.
There’s rampant speculation about how the internal logic of the show could explain the move. In syndication, Zack explained that the series had happened to him in Junior High. The many inconsistencies aren’t possible to resolve, but SBTB writers probably didn’t expect such scrutiny.
Max Battimo: The actor who played Mikey Gonzalez
Max Battimo memorably played Mikey in that first season, but behind-the-scenes drama sent him on a different career path entirely.
The problem? The show switched from its Disney Channel home to NBC, and not all the actors moved with it. In addition to some adult characters, child actors Battimo and Heather Hopper (who played Nikki Coleman) weren’t brought over.
For the young Battimo, it signaled a shift in priorities. He told the NCAA that he was “kind of hurt that I didn’t get picked up,” and he wanted to “take a break from acting and be a real kid.” His new obsession? Hockey.
As a Los Angeles Kings fan, he started playing every day. Eventually, he shifted his focus to refereeing games and has done it professionally since 2000. The job has taken him throughout the ECHL, WCHL, WHL, AHL, and college hockey. He says he and other referees are a “tight-knit group,” which is good, since the job can include gigs as far-flung as Asia for special games.
Do Battimo’s two worlds ever collide? Occasionally. Fans still recognize him from the show, and at least one coach mentioned it to him during a game. University of Denver coach George Gwozdecky called him over after a penalty, but instead of focusing on the game, he just smiled. “Saved by the Bell, huh?” he said.
But such interruptions are relatively rare. Aside from the occasional coach’s jibe or fan recognition, Battimo has enough to do on the ice without worrying about Mikey.
