It would never be in everyone’s best interest to prank The World’s Strongest Man, Mark Henry.
All Elite Wrestling‘s Mark Henry was a recent guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about one specific time he was pranked by Vince McMahon, Henry said he was lucky McMahon got out of the building when he did or they might not be having this conversation right now.
“When I looked at Scott Armstrong. And he said, ‘It’s not me.’ And he had fear in his eyes,” Mark Henry recalled. “And you can smell fear, and you can see it, and he was deathly afraid. And I asked for the microphone. And I started talking, and they turned the microphone off. And I said, ‘Okay, I get it.’
“And like that was one of the maddest times, that was the maddest that I had ever been at that point. And I’m just glad that they had, you know, got in the limo and drove off because the conversation that we’re having right now may not have happened because I’d have whooped all their asses. And I don’t know if I could have controlled myself as mad as I was back then.
“I felt disrespected; I feel trivialized. Out of all the work that I did. Like all of the sacrificing. And you people say oh, you got paid a lot of money. You know what, man, I didn’t get paid enough money to dummy down my pride and my respect as a man. Ain’t no price for that. And when that happened, I felt like okay, I’m expendable, I’m useless to them. They don’t respect me.
“That’s kind of feeling that it was. And you know, I got a lot of counsel after that about how I felt as a man because like, it was troubling. But being that I am a man and that I was able to say my piece to Vince and everybody involved, like, just know who I am, because that won’t ever happen again.
“If it does, like us talking will not be an option, and I quit. And you know what, man, I probably owe my wife more of an apology and thank you because she was the one that got me to come back to wrestling. And go and talk to them again because I didn’t have any interest in coming back, and then none of that, none of the things after would have happened if that was the case.”
When asked why Vince McMahon did the prank in the first place, Henry said simply because McMahon thought it was funny.
“Vince just thought it was funny,” Mark Henry said. “He said that he thought it was funny. And they wanted to get to the cars and get to the airport. And that was gonna give them time to get out of there without any traffic. Not thinking how’s Mark gonna feel after this?”
Mark Henry had fun with pranks that were lighter in tone, as he previously mentioned on Busted Open Radio that he was known for taking naps at events (and often ribbed for it).
“Fuck you, Ryback. You’re trying to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, that I’m not great, that I was the shits? You’re throwing it on an unnamed agent—name his name! You threw it on Cena, so name the agent. Call him and we’ll get him on the show, and I’ll say, ‘Listen, did you tell Ryback that I was the shits?’ Henry continued, “And I was famous for taking naps, I take naps every day. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s great. Vince McMahon himself has ribbed me, poured water on me, while I was sleeping because everybody would go, ‘Anybody got eyes on Mark Henry? Because he usually naps around this time. Find him.’ Oh yeah, we had a lot of fun with my naps.”
Henry also spoke about Owen Hart’s legendary reputation for pranking his peers during an interview with WrestleZone. Henry said that every time he sees someone play a prank, it gives him a chance to remember his friend.
“You ever play a joke on one of your friends? That was an everyday thing for Owen. Every time that I hear somebody would get a joke played on them, I get to think about Owen. It’s an ‘Owen’ to me, to see someone get joked or get ribbed,” Henry told WrestleZone. “Owen was never painful or hurtful, he just wanted everybody to get a good laugh and realize you gotta enjoy this. There’s only so much time in-between and you need to enjoy it.
“True fans love Owen because they smile and laugh when they’d hear his name and it wasn’t laughing at him, but with him,” Henry added. “And that’s the important thing in our business, to latch on to people that care and have the same views as you. I think that’s why the pro wrestling world is so connected together because we all know that we’re all fans at the end of the day.”
More must-reads: