LionDen
09-20-2014, 02:16 AM
Mark Henry was interviewed by Nashville Scene in promotion for Night Of Champions.
USA! US
A! WWE strongman Mark Henry defends Old Glory at Bridgestone — but is it wrong to miss his bad old Attitude days?
http://www.nashvillescene.com/imager/b/magnum/4692985/7bf6/sports1-1.jpg
In the world of professional wrestling, no other word is as important as "kayfabe." An odd survivor from the vocabulary of the sport's early days in traveling circuses, it means an unwritten rule that performers should stay in character inside the ring, and especially outside of it when surrounded by fans. The most famous incident in this method of "keeping it real" occurred during a 1984 backstage exposé on ABC's 20/20, when reporter John Stossel suffered a beating at the hands of WWF grappler David "Dr. D" Schultz upon telling the brawler, "I think this is fake."
That was much on my mind toward the end of my interview with WWE superstar Mark Henry. After one too many questions he felt were too concerned with the past, the massive Texan cut me off to say, "If we go through the whole Attitude Era, it'll take us almost an hour to go through my career."
But it's difficult to discuss anything with a wrestler from the late '90s Attitude Era — the then-WWF's maniacal sex-blood-and-guts attempt to court adult audiences — without that becoming the main point of conversation. Sure, with Henry you have a two-time Olympic athlete competing in a good old-fashioned xenophobic feud against the evil Russian strongman Rusev at this Sunday's WWE pay-per-view Night of Champions, taking place at Bridgestone Arena. The question that goes unanswered, however, is how can anything that happens this weekend in Nashville hope to measure up to Henry's old antics on television, back before the WWE decided to go strictly family-friendly with a TV-PG rating?
Here is a man who impregnated a 77-year-old woman, which resulted in her giving birth to a hand. A man who agreed to a storyline that included an incestuous relationship with his sister. A man who has gone by such racially dubious nicknames as "Sexual Chocolate" and "Silver Back." How are fans supposed to forget all that and just accept him as the flag defender of the month?
Then again, maybe Henry was born to play a neckbreaker for Mom, Old Glory and apple pie. Born in Silsbee, Texas, Henry quickly cast a large shadow over other kids his age. By the fourth grade, he had already grown to 5 foot 5 and tipped the scales at 225. While his mother may have helped his Olympic-sized power-lifting talent bloom at age 10 by buying him his first set of weights, it was another incident that steered him toward a life inside the squared circle.
While attending a wrestling show in nearby Beaumont as a child, Henry reached out at ringside in an attempt to touch his idol, The Princess Bride's gentle gargantuan André the Giant. Instead, he tripped over the barricade. The boy went sprawling, only to feel André's large hands lift him up and put him safely back behind the barrier. To this day, Henry sings André's praises to anyone who dares to cast aspersions on the wrestling icon's memory.
"There was just something about André," he recalls. "The size was definitely striking to a 6 or 7-year-old kid, but it was really the way that he was portrayed. He was a big guy during that time, the biggest of all of those guys, and I just hated to see someone try to get the one-up on him. To this day, no one can tell me that there has ever been a better wrestler, as a talent, as a box-office draw, or as an icon than André was. I have daily arguments to establish that as fact."
Henry's journey led him to his high school football team's weight room, where he was squatting 600 pounds easily. Soon dubbed "the world's strongest teenager" by the Los Angeles Times, he was discovered by a University of Texas at Austin professor during a high school powerlifting competition. Persuaded to train in Olympic-style power lifting, Henry soon found himself the veteran of two Summer Olympics, with multiple invites to talk shows and even a nude photo shoot with photographer Annie Leibovitz. It was only a matter of time before the WWE came calling.
"I was contacted after a televised interview where I was asked what the world's strongest man does in his spare time, and I said, 'Well I'm a videogame head, but no one can bother me on Saturdays, because that's the day that I watch wrestling,' " Henry remembers. "The WWE, or WWF as it was still called at the time, reached out to me after hearing that. I was in Austin, Texas, at the time because I was actually going to the Dallas Cowboys football camp. I've always thought it was divine intervention."
It didn't take long for Henry to make his mark in the sports-entertainment field. Appearing on television to slam Memphis legend Jerry "The King" Lawler after he made some disparaging remarks at Henry's expense, the supersized competitor signed a record-breaking 10-year contract with the WWE.
"I knew that it was going to take me time to learn the industry; I had never trained in a martial art, or hand-to-hand combat, or wrestled in high school or college, so I was going to be an amateur," Henry explains. "I needed a guarantee, because I was already somebody, and I was going to give up my life as a strongman, and a potential NFL football player, to wrestle."
His gamble paid off. The change in conditioning soon had him on the injured list, a spot he has filled on and off ever since.
"I found that it was harder than I expected it to be. For my whole life I was an anaerobic athlete, and wrestling is an aerobic sport," he says. "It took time to deal with that, as well as deal with the injuries that I suffered. Right off the bat, I broke my ankle, and that took almost a year to heal. I had almost three years of injury time in my first 10 years in wrestling. That may not sound like a lot, but three years is a long time to spend rehabbing injuries."
Perhaps the one thing that his newfound career in wrestling and his once-promising career in football have in common is their lack of compassion for wounded players. I ask if the locker-room leaders took it easy on him once they found out he was injured.
"No, nobody has time to worry about anyone else's injuries," Henry shoots back. "Everyone is nursing their own injuries, or are worried about themselves. Suck it up and go."
Reminiscing about old injuries isn't how Henry pictured his afternoon off. Time to wrap up the interview.
"To summarize what I've done, I've been able to come in as a nonexistent talent, to becoming Sexual Chocolate, to my mother dying and my taking time off and in the process getting my strength back to the point where I competed again in 2002 and became legitimately the World's Strongest Man at the Arnold Strongman Classic after a seven-year hiatus; after all that we finally hit the eight to 10 years where I became a high-level talent and became a World Champion during that time period ... twice."
Whew. Taking a breath, Henry goes into shill mode, the power of the kayfabe code now pulsing through his veins.
"And today, here we are, standing at the threshold of Night of Champions," he intones, working himself up to come-to-Jesus fervor, "and we're standing on the doorstep of Nashville on the 21st seeing one of the epic battles between John Cena and Brock Lesnar, who I've had my dealings with both of these guys and know exactly how tough they are, so I'm excited about seeing what will happen with them.
"But I'm just as excited about what's going to happen between me and Rusev. I've always had pride in being a two-time Olympian and being a man that represented America to the fullest, and everyone knows I wear that on my sleeve. So to have someone come and run down my country, and they live in my country, is a little bit much. I represent to the fans on the 21st a chance to stand up to Rusev, and give him a buttwhoopin' of epic magnitude."
God bless America, God bless Mark Henry, and God bless the WWE, that most American of entertainments.
Original article can be found by clicking here (http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/usa-usa-wwe-strongman-mark-henry-defends-old-glory-at-bridgestone-andmdash-but-is-it-wrong-to-miss-his-bad-old-attitude-days/Content?oid=4692984).
USA! US
A! WWE strongman Mark Henry defends Old Glory at Bridgestone — but is it wrong to miss his bad old Attitude days?
http://www.nashvillescene.com/imager/b/magnum/4692985/7bf6/sports1-1.jpg
In the world of professional wrestling, no other word is as important as "kayfabe." An odd survivor from the vocabulary of the sport's early days in traveling circuses, it means an unwritten rule that performers should stay in character inside the ring, and especially outside of it when surrounded by fans. The most famous incident in this method of "keeping it real" occurred during a 1984 backstage exposé on ABC's 20/20, when reporter John Stossel suffered a beating at the hands of WWF grappler David "Dr. D" Schultz upon telling the brawler, "I think this is fake."
That was much on my mind toward the end of my interview with WWE superstar Mark Henry. After one too many questions he felt were too concerned with the past, the massive Texan cut me off to say, "If we go through the whole Attitude Era, it'll take us almost an hour to go through my career."
But it's difficult to discuss anything with a wrestler from the late '90s Attitude Era — the then-WWF's maniacal sex-blood-and-guts attempt to court adult audiences — without that becoming the main point of conversation. Sure, with Henry you have a two-time Olympic athlete competing in a good old-fashioned xenophobic feud against the evil Russian strongman Rusev at this Sunday's WWE pay-per-view Night of Champions, taking place at Bridgestone Arena. The question that goes unanswered, however, is how can anything that happens this weekend in Nashville hope to measure up to Henry's old antics on television, back before the WWE decided to go strictly family-friendly with a TV-PG rating?
Here is a man who impregnated a 77-year-old woman, which resulted in her giving birth to a hand. A man who agreed to a storyline that included an incestuous relationship with his sister. A man who has gone by such racially dubious nicknames as "Sexual Chocolate" and "Silver Back." How are fans supposed to forget all that and just accept him as the flag defender of the month?
Then again, maybe Henry was born to play a neckbreaker for Mom, Old Glory and apple pie. Born in Silsbee, Texas, Henry quickly cast a large shadow over other kids his age. By the fourth grade, he had already grown to 5 foot 5 and tipped the scales at 225. While his mother may have helped his Olympic-sized power-lifting talent bloom at age 10 by buying him his first set of weights, it was another incident that steered him toward a life inside the squared circle.
While attending a wrestling show in nearby Beaumont as a child, Henry reached out at ringside in an attempt to touch his idol, The Princess Bride's gentle gargantuan André the Giant. Instead, he tripped over the barricade. The boy went sprawling, only to feel André's large hands lift him up and put him safely back behind the barrier. To this day, Henry sings André's praises to anyone who dares to cast aspersions on the wrestling icon's memory.
"There was just something about André," he recalls. "The size was definitely striking to a 6 or 7-year-old kid, but it was really the way that he was portrayed. He was a big guy during that time, the biggest of all of those guys, and I just hated to see someone try to get the one-up on him. To this day, no one can tell me that there has ever been a better wrestler, as a talent, as a box-office draw, or as an icon than André was. I have daily arguments to establish that as fact."
Henry's journey led him to his high school football team's weight room, where he was squatting 600 pounds easily. Soon dubbed "the world's strongest teenager" by the Los Angeles Times, he was discovered by a University of Texas at Austin professor during a high school powerlifting competition. Persuaded to train in Olympic-style power lifting, Henry soon found himself the veteran of two Summer Olympics, with multiple invites to talk shows and even a nude photo shoot with photographer Annie Leibovitz. It was only a matter of time before the WWE came calling.
"I was contacted after a televised interview where I was asked what the world's strongest man does in his spare time, and I said, 'Well I'm a videogame head, but no one can bother me on Saturdays, because that's the day that I watch wrestling,' " Henry remembers. "The WWE, or WWF as it was still called at the time, reached out to me after hearing that. I was in Austin, Texas, at the time because I was actually going to the Dallas Cowboys football camp. I've always thought it was divine intervention."
It didn't take long for Henry to make his mark in the sports-entertainment field. Appearing on television to slam Memphis legend Jerry "The King" Lawler after he made some disparaging remarks at Henry's expense, the supersized competitor signed a record-breaking 10-year contract with the WWE.
"I knew that it was going to take me time to learn the industry; I had never trained in a martial art, or hand-to-hand combat, or wrestled in high school or college, so I was going to be an amateur," Henry explains. "I needed a guarantee, because I was already somebody, and I was going to give up my life as a strongman, and a potential NFL football player, to wrestle."
His gamble paid off. The change in conditioning soon had him on the injured list, a spot he has filled on and off ever since.
"I found that it was harder than I expected it to be. For my whole life I was an anaerobic athlete, and wrestling is an aerobic sport," he says. "It took time to deal with that, as well as deal with the injuries that I suffered. Right off the bat, I broke my ankle, and that took almost a year to heal. I had almost three years of injury time in my first 10 years in wrestling. That may not sound like a lot, but three years is a long time to spend rehabbing injuries."
Perhaps the one thing that his newfound career in wrestling and his once-promising career in football have in common is their lack of compassion for wounded players. I ask if the locker-room leaders took it easy on him once they found out he was injured.
"No, nobody has time to worry about anyone else's injuries," Henry shoots back. "Everyone is nursing their own injuries, or are worried about themselves. Suck it up and go."
Reminiscing about old injuries isn't how Henry pictured his afternoon off. Time to wrap up the interview.
"To summarize what I've done, I've been able to come in as a nonexistent talent, to becoming Sexual Chocolate, to my mother dying and my taking time off and in the process getting my strength back to the point where I competed again in 2002 and became legitimately the World's Strongest Man at the Arnold Strongman Classic after a seven-year hiatus; after all that we finally hit the eight to 10 years where I became a high-level talent and became a World Champion during that time period ... twice."
Whew. Taking a breath, Henry goes into shill mode, the power of the kayfabe code now pulsing through his veins.
"And today, here we are, standing at the threshold of Night of Champions," he intones, working himself up to come-to-Jesus fervor, "and we're standing on the doorstep of Nashville on the 21st seeing one of the epic battles between John Cena and Brock Lesnar, who I've had my dealings with both of these guys and know exactly how tough they are, so I'm excited about seeing what will happen with them.
"But I'm just as excited about what's going to happen between me and Rusev. I've always had pride in being a two-time Olympian and being a man that represented America to the fullest, and everyone knows I wear that on my sleeve. So to have someone come and run down my country, and they live in my country, is a little bit much. I represent to the fans on the 21st a chance to stand up to Rusev, and give him a buttwhoopin' of epic magnitude."
God bless America, God bless Mark Henry, and God bless the WWE, that most American of entertainments.
Original article can be found by clicking here (http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/usa-usa-wwe-strongman-mark-henry-defends-old-glory-at-bridgestone-andmdash-but-is-it-wrong-to-miss-his-bad-old-attitude-days/Content?oid=4692984).