[9] While he stuck with Shotokan karate long enough to earn a black belt, he deemed the rigid training out of touch with the spirituality he sought from martial arts.
[10] His true interest lay in Chinese martial arts due to their emphasis on artistry and traditional weapons, but tuition in those disciplines was not widely available at the time.
Within two months of moving to Canada, Merhi found Mo Chow's kung fu school in Toronto and started training there, primarily in the Choy Li Fut and Hung Gar styles.
[10][11] Merhi also helped promote martial arts tournaments like the Canadian Karate Internationals,[12] and later the Diamond Challenge, with his Shotokan teacher Bill Pickells.
It lured several name competitors from the U.S., such as Steve "Nasty" Anderson, Terrance "Tokey" Hill, Sonny Onoo, Cynthia Rothrock and Billy Blanks, several of which later appeared in his movies.
It still sold in Canada to Cineplex Odeon,[8]: 25:00 whose Jeff Sackman helped him network and gain financing for a second picture, Tiger Claws, through Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment (SGE).
[4]: 20:20 [8]: 23:20 Even in his heyday, Merhi stuck to a lean template, banking on his martial arts experience to limit superfluous coverage, and wrap his films within three weeks[19] for budgets around CDN1 million—substantially less than the Canadian industry average—and grosses generally equaling three times that.
[20] Thanks to Tiger Claws' success, its successors Talons of the Eagle and TC 2000 quickly gained financing, and Merhi brought in friend Billy Blanks as his co-star.
Still reeling from the loss of his SGE deal, Merhi regrouped and aligned his company with fledgling Le Monde Entertainment, an affiliate of Canadian major Alliance Communications.
[21] It afforded Merhi his highest budget yet for Expect No Mercy, which mixed fisticuffs with early CGI-based science fiction,[22] although Le Monde president John Freme voiced limited belief in the long term prospects of martial arts vehicles.
[23] Echoing what had happened with Talons of the Eagle, Alliance offered a bigger budget to retool the intended Expect No Mercy 2 into a more mainstream, standalone picture, which Merhi would direct but not appear in.
[19] Merhi however, did make it into the finished film, Expect to Die, which came to fruition thanks to a rekindled partnership with former SGE executive Alan Solomon, now at his new company Amsell Entertainment.
Against the advice of his entourage, he sold the majority of his business interests, as well as his share of a downtown Toronto building, to fund the next steps of his career and give his company its own studio.
While ostensibly martial art films like many of his earlier ones, they incorporated some Southern Californian locations and went for a grittier, more urban vibe, at the behest of their Los Angeles-based star Olivier Gruner.
However, the home video market was changing further, and soon even larger chains scaled back their operations, greatly limiting the commercial prospects of low budget independent action fare.
Despite selling several films to distributor ThinkFilm, a new company co-founded by early supporter Jeff Sackman,[16][44][45] Merhi's output went on to receive increasingly spotty releases,[46][47][48] and the producer switched to reality television altogether.
Thanks to the advent of streaming platforms and the lower production costs afforded by digital media, Merhi has expressed interest in reviving The Circuit in episodic form.
[6]: 28:50 As the direct-to-video market stopped being sustainable, Merhi made reality television his main avenue, taking advantage of the genre's low costs and burgeoning demand from specialty channels.