Trivia / Mark Henry

• Cast the Expert: Judging by the records he set in powerlifting, Henry is one of the strongest men in recent world memory, making the name "World's Strongest Man" a lot more than just a Red Baron and Badass Boast.
• Creator Backlash: He despised the 'Silverback' nickname he was given for a short while, especially due to the racial undertones it could conjure, and eventually managed to talk WWE into dropping it.
• Executive Meddling: One of his most well known injuries happened in OVW where he broke through the ring ropes, which Jim Cornette blamed on WWE forcing them to use their equipment instead of cables which could have caught Mark.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Henry was the man who discovered Braun Strowman, seeing him at one of the strongman/powerlifting events they both frequent and realising that not only was he monumentally strong, he was also working the crowd at the same time. It wasn't the first time this had happened, as Henry had previously scouted Big E. Langston under similar circumstances; apparently he's WWE's primary scout in the powerlifting scene.
• Lying Creator: Even the wrestlers in the back were suckered by Henry's 2013 "retirement speech." He'd been making noise for a while about finally hanging it up and they assumed the speech was for real and as shocked as everyone when he slammed Cena. In a WWE Network special on Henry, Big Show related how the guys in the back were all set to give him a big retirement party and stunned to realize he'd been working them all along.
• Money, Dear Boy: When WWE feared that Mark's ten million dollar contract was a poor investment, they began booking him in bad angles in an attempt to get him to quit. They believed that if they humiliated him on national television, Henry would walk out on a guaranteed one million dollar a year salary to try to salvage his dignity. As it turns out, money was a pretty good salve for the World's Strongest Man's pride.
  "If Vince McMahon signed you to a 10-year, $10 million deal and asked you to pretend to date a 77-year-old woman, you'd probably be a good sport about it too."
• Promoted Fanboy: Grew up as a fan of André the Giant. When attending one of Andre's matches, young Mark Henry accidentally fell over the fan barricade and was picked up and placed back on the other side by Andre.
• Real Life Writes the Plot
  • He had to be written out of several angles due to injury during his career.
  • Was also once written back into a storyline due to another superstar's injury when WWE was planning to let him stay on the shelf to heal for another month or so.
• What Could Have Been:
  • His powerlifting career, from which he retired at age 26. Seeing as how other powerlifters have still yet to surpass his records, we can only speculate how much Henry could be lifting had he devoted more time to it.
  • Conversely, given the way the last few years of his career, have gone for him, one can only speculate as to what Henry's wrestling career would have looked like as a whole if he hadn't had to endure the injuries and less-than-stellar booking from his early years.