Mark Henry on what Vince McMahon said when he was approached by AEW, his favorite gimmick, NXT’s Black Renaissance

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

Forbes interview with Mark Henry
Interview conducted by Alfred Konuwa
Available at Forbes.com

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.'”

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.”

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.”