Mark Henry Comments On His WWE Hall Of Fame Induction, Reveals When He Decided To Retire

Former WWE World Champion Mark Henry spoke with USA Today to talk about his WWE Hall of Fame induction, which was made official by the sports entertainment company on Monday afternoon.

WWE holds their 2018 Hall of Fame ceremony on Friday, April 6th in New Orleans, Louisiana at the Smoothie King Center and will air on WWE’s streaming service, WWE Network.

Bill Goldberg will headline the class. Henry joins Ivory, Jeff Jarrett, The Dudley Boyz, and HillBilly Jim in the class.

“It was a little while back. I was in Los Angeles with the powers that be… it was just an overwhelming feeling, you know? My face got hot. A couple of tears fell, and you felt like, instantly, all of the pain and torment that you put your body through, the sacrifices that you made – they were worth it. It paid it all off.”

“Well the first conversation I had, I thought it was one of my buddies playing a joke on me and I hung up on him. And my manager at the time called me back and said ‘hey, I just had Vince McMahon call you and he said you hung up!’ And I was like ‘that was Vince McMahon for real!?’ I felt so dumb. Here he is, one of the most influential people in the wrestling industry calls you and you hang up on him thinking it was a joke. Eventually I called back and I said ‘hey, I hope you understand, I thought it was somebody playing a joke on me.’ And he said ‘don’t worry about it, I’m glad I could get you back on the phone.’ He was like ‘I want you to come to Connecticut and see how we do things up here.’ I said ‘am I going to get to meet The Undertaker?’ You know, I was such a fan, I just wanted to meet everybody. That was really my primary thing for going down there because I wanted to see the stars. I wanted to see the superstars.”

Henry has been with the company since 1996 after being named “The World’s Strongest Man.” He was just 24-years of age when he decided to get into the pro wrestling business. During his time with the company, he held three championships. The WWE World Heavyweight Title, ECW Title, and European Title.

If you recall, Henry hinted that he would be wrapping up his career as an in-ring performer in WWE when the WWE Network aired an episode of “Table For 3” last year.

The episode featured Henry and WWE Hall of Famers Ron Simmons and The Godfather. During the show, Henry dropped a bombshell by revealing a bit of information regarding what’s to come in his WWE career.

The longtime Superstar officially announced that his 21-year in-ring career is coming to an end. He will transition from being a WWE Superstar to a WWE employee to help all of the up-and-coming male and female talent develop and become successful in the company.

“You know what, I saw a match – and I always study my matches. I always see what I did wrong, what I could do better. I was watching and there were things that I did that weren’t up to the standard that I thought they should have been. And a lot of that… I think some of it was age, some of it was the fact that I had some pre-existing injuries that I really couldn’t do all the things that I could do. And I didn’t want the fans to remember me being injured and being a shell of my former self.

I want people, when they remember me, to think of the Hall of Pain, when I was catching guys, 275 pounds. Picking up Big Show, close to 500 pounds, over my head and driving him through a table. And picking up Kane, 320 pounds and slamming him through tables. And jumping off the top rope to the ring and jumping out of the ring to the floor and splashing Kurt Angle. I wanted people to remember me at my greatest. Around 2015, I started to see my skills diminish. It happens to everybody. Father Time is undefeated. He is gonna win every time, and I saw him catching me.”