Mark Henry: The Ten Million Dollar White Elephant

It was almost ten years ago when WWF Chairman Vince McMahon took one look at a man who was fresh out of competing at the Atlanta Olympics and who wanted to become a professional wrestler, and signed him to a contract with the idea of making him a big star in the future.

Sadly, this isn’t a column about newly crowned World Champion Kurt Angle, but the WWE’s other current Olympian, Mark Henry.

It was in 1996 that Vince McMahon signed Henry to a massive ten year, one million dollars a year contract, with the intention of training Henry up and pushing him as the next big star, the All-American hero.

But it didn’t quite go that way, did it? Because the WWF was losing the Monday Night Wars to WCW, things were about to change. The era of the clean cut hero was about to change, and the era of the crotch chopping and beer swilling anti-hero was about to begin.

The story goes that at the beginning of Henry’s career, the WWF merchandise division ordered that for every Austin 3:16  t-shirt made, ten Mark Henry t-shirts should be made. Steve Austin’s shirt became one of the biggest merchandise sellers in wrestling history. What happened to Henry’s shirt? There’s probably thousands of them in some boxes in a warehouse somewhere.

But what about Henry’s actual wrestling career. After Henry completed his training, he began with a feud with Jerry Lawler, which saw The King submit to Henry’s over the shoulder backbreaker. However, injury put Henry on the shelf.

When he returned to action, the WWF was in the middle of a change in creative direction, heading into the Attitude era. Steve Austin was becoming the hottest star in wrestling, with The Rock, who, like Henry, was pushed as a smiling baby face, had ditched the smile and joined the Nation of Domination, the WWF’s version of the Black Panthers militant group. It was a short time later that Henry himself joined the Nation.

But as The Rock rose to super-stardom and became WWF Champion in 1998, Henry was again left without direction. It wasn’t long before the creative team came up with something for him. Re-dubbing him Sexual Chocolate, Henry became a sex addict, courting Chyna, seeking help from a therapist, who he ended up having sex with, before moving on to his ultimate conquest, the geriatric Mae Young, and in one of the most tasteless angles in WWF history, Mae announced she was pregnant with Henry’s child, before she prematurely gave birth, on live television, to a hand. Yep, you read that right. Mae Young gave birth to a hand.

Later Henry was given time off to train and compete in Arnold Schwarzanegger’s World’s Strongest Man contest, which Henry won with flying colours. He would return to the WWF, who began to push him on his achievements in Arnie’s contest, before putting him under the management of Teddy Long. But this went absolutely nowhere. He became nothing more than a job-boy to the likes of Shawn Michaels, Booker T and everyone else on the Raw brand.

Henry made his return to our screens a couple of weeks ago on the Smackdown brand.. Now managed by Melina, Henry attacked Batista, and began feuding with him until Batista’s injuries forced him to give up his World title.


Mark Henry is now a ten year veteran of the wrestling business, and currently one of the company’s longest serving employees. But has Mark Henry’s career been a success? Far from it.

There seem to be two reasons why Henry’s career hasn’t been an outstanding success. The first is because of Henry’s lack of wrestling ability. Sure, some of his power moves are impressive, but his matches fail to grab one’s attention.


During all of his years in the WWF/E, I can’t remember one good Henry match. All I can remember of his career are his activities outside the ring.

The second reason seems to be that despite the fact he’s been wrestling for ten years, he just isn’t over with the fans. For a wrestler to become successful, they need to develop an emotional bond with the fans, whether it’s a one of love or one of hatred. Despite that fact that he’s been pushed time and time again over the years, Henry has never developed that kind of relationship with the fans, and it’s the fans who really can make or break a wrestler’s career. You only need to look at John Cena’s speech on Raw this week to see that.

Yet once again Mark Henry is getting another push in the WWE, despite the fact that the fans just don’t care about him. Maybe it’s just Vince McMahon trying to get every penny’s worth out of Henry’s one million a year contract.

Henry’s contract is due to expire later this year. So far the Internet newswire hasn’t reported anything about talks over a new contract, and there are probably a great number of fans who hope that these talks never take place.

In Mark Henry, Vince McMahon invested ten million dollars on what is little more than the professional wrestling equivalent of a white elephant. When I think about the money that’s been invested in Henry, I think about all of the wrestlers, the highly talented athletes, who have been released over the years in so-called cost cutting exercises.

When people look back on the career of Mark Henry in the next few years, they’ll scratch their heads and wonder what was going on. How could the WWE constantly push a guy who would never get over with the fans? And were they really naïve enough to sign him to a ten million dollar contract?

One thing is for sure - Mark Henry’s bank manager will certainly be a happy man.


Is Kurt Angle A Deserving Champion?


There’s something that’s been bothering me these past few weeks, something that’s been niggling at the back of my mind every time I watch Smackdown, and it only really dawned on me what it was while I was watching No Way Out a few days ago. I found myself asking if Kurt Angle really deserved to be World Heavyweight Champion.

Let’s have a look at Angle’s match record before he jumped ship from Raw to Smackdown on January 13th;

January 8th: Lost Elimination Chamber match at New Year’s Revolution.

January 2nd: Defeated John Cena in a first blood match on Raw.
December 26th: Lost to Daivari via count out on Raw.
December 12th: Defeated Ric Flair on Raw.
November 27th: Lost to John Cena at Survivor Series.

And these are just Angle’s singles and title matches on Raw and pay-per-view. They don’t take into account his losses to John Cena at house shows, or his losses in tag-team matches.

Now I’m not one to put down Kurt’s accomplishments in both the amateur and professional wrestling fields, and I know that the circumstances surrounding the World title situation on Smackdown were beyond the control of the creative team, but let’s look at things in a slightly more realistic manner. If Kurt had been a heavyweight boxer rather than a heavyweight wrestler, would such a record have been enough for a shot at the World title? I think not.

Although professional wrestling has added touches of realism in recent years, recent records of wrestlers going into title matches is something that hasn’t been addressed. Angle’s recent record before his World title win is just one example of this. For instance, Mark Henry hadn’t done anything of note in the WWE for nearly three years before he got a crack at the World title. Last summer, the late Eddie Guerrero lost a series of bouts to Rey Mysterio, actually only winning one match of the series. A few weeks later he got a World title shot against Batista.

I could give several other examples, but I think you know where I’m heading with this.

It’s very rare these days that we see a storyline where a wrestler spends weeks and months beating every wrestler he faces, not letting anything get in his way, so he can get a shot at a title to prove how good he is, that he is the best of the best.

But these days it seems that the creative teams are incapable of devising such storylines, and that’s what makes professional wrestling less appealing these days. Let’s forget about making new stars, and just stick with the same old faces we’ve seen for years on end.

After all, it worked for WCW, didn’t it?