Mark Henry talked with Alfred Boima Konuwa III of Forbes about his career, NXT’s black renaissance, his favorite gimmick, and the Olympics.

•Mark Henry on if there was any animosity between him and WWE when he left for AEW

“Not at all. I had a conversation with Vince (McMahon) and I wanted WWE to hire me, and he said that we have people that have applied for the jobs that you are applying for and he felt like it would show favoritism to give me one of those jobs. And I hadn’t put the work in to receive one of those jobs, so I had to leave to get that experience. And I told him, I was like, ‘You know, I’m going to kick your ass.’ And he was like, ‘I have no doubt whatsoever, and I know how hard you work.’ And he said, ‘When the day comes, I’m sure that we’ll be the first ones trying to get you back.’

•Mark Henry on his Favorite Gimmick 

“I made the most money in The Hall (of Pain). But Sexual Chocolate was the most fun… Listen, I said that I would’ve done that for free. That’s how much fun it was every day, man, just laughing and going on the road. Anybody that’s a professional wrestler who understands what I’m about to say, is going to bust out laughing. But wrestling a lot of times is, get in there and bang it out and endurance and risk and anxiety. Man, I got to live it up. I got to top what I did last time, not Sexual Chocolate. Sexual Chocolate was fun, man. It was what we call walk and talk and you entertained by story, by telling story, by acting, by performance. And that’s what I was good at and my facial expression and my reaction to the wrestler that I’m wrestling against.”

•Mark Henry on NXT’s Black Renaissance 

“Probably about four years ago, there was probably about 14 African-American wrestlers that were down in Orlando, and they all went out to dinner and they went around the table and they were talking about how they got into business or who inspired them to get into business, and it just became a Mark Henry party. ‘Oh yeah, Mark Henry told me I needed to come and try wrestling… yeah, he did that to me too. Oh, he reached out to me on social media, and I watched him do this.’ And it just came this whole table full of people. And there’s a picture of all those people out there somewhere. I think Bianca Belair took it and I’m going to call her and see if I can get it and I’ll post it on my social media, but that was one of the proudest moments in my career.”

•Mark Henry on if pro wrestling will ever be an Olympic Sport 

“It won’t because it’s subjective and it is not performance-based. It’s about entertaining, the better elements. Wrestling is also a fashion show. It is a beauty contest. In the Olympics, it don’t matter how you look. If you’re fast, you’re fast. If you’re strong, you’re strong. If you jump high, you jump high. If you swim fast, if you can flip better, it’s about the performance. In wrestling, we’re everything else, how you look, your presentation, your ability to articulate, your ability to get people to believe you to a point where they love you or hate you. Man, that’s church right there. Because Jim Ross used to say all the time, pro wrestling is like the Bible. It’s good versus evil.

“Your question should be why would you not be nominated for an Oscar for your performance? Why should you not get a Daytime Emmy or an Emmy for your performance as… There’s a criteria for wrestling, but it’s more designed for Hollywood. But Hollywood, people think that Hollywood is huge, that Hollywood is California. Hollywood is about 10,000 people in Los Angeles. It’s a very small room. You can get all the people in Hollywood in a stadium, and those people decide on whether or not this is Hollywood, they’re not going to make wrestling, Hollywood, it’s just never going to happen. Because wrestlers are better entertainers than Hollywood. You can look at what’s going on in Hollywood and see that people like the Rock and John Cena and Batista, Batista is a incredible actor. He’s getting beyond just sports and action, and he’s becoming a thespian.”

Read the full article HERE.

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