Mark Henry was a guest on the latest “Kurt Angle Show” podcast. The World’s Strongest Man talked about living with The Rock when The Rock was breaking into the business:
“I remember the first day he came to Connecticut to train with me and Dr. Tom, because me and Tom Prichard trained in the warehouse. Being the first developmental wrestler, the first two developmental wrestlers, I think WWE did pretty damn good. He came in. He was broke. He only had the bags that he had with him, was all he had. I had a two bedroom apartment because that was all that the building near the office had. They didn’t have a one bedroom, so it kind of worked out. I told him, I said, ‘Man, you can stay with me, man, just ain’t no bedroom suit in there. We got to buy you a bed.’ He was like, ‘Man, I ain’t got no money, man.’ I said, ‘Listen, let’s go get some furniture, put you in there, and you pay me back when you get some money’, so he moved in with me and we lived together for about nine months.”
On the creation of the Sexual Chocolate character:
“Sexual chocolate was my invention. 100%. Not one writer. Nobody. Me and D’Lo were driving after The Nation, and The Nation broke up, so everybody was starting to go and do their own things and trying to figure out what was next. You had the Godfather go his way. You had Ron Simmons go his way and just be Ron Simmons. D’Lo had the chest protector. I was fu**ing kind of just like out in the cold. I was like, you know what, man. I just saw this movie “Coming to America.” They had this band called Sexual Chocolate and I just loved the name. He’s like, ‘Sexual Chocolate’, and I say, ‘You know what, man? I’m gonna kind of be a ladies man and I’m gonna do this.’ Then D’Lo said, ‘They’re not gonna let you say sexual chocolate on TV’, and I said, ‘Man, you watch. I’m going to Vince.’ I went to Vince and Vince was like, ‘No. We have too much money invested in you Mark. We want to make you serious. We’re gonna just wait a minute. It’s gonna be alright. We’re gonna get you going.’ I said, ‘Just let me try it one time. I’m telling you, if you see me do it, then you’ll understand what I’m talking about’, because I was starting to get the psychology of wrestling, and how to tell stories, and how to make people feel a certain way rather than see something. He said, ‘God dang it. You got eight minutes.'”
“I went out there with Val Venis, Sean Morley. I said, ‘Hey, man, anytime that I down you and leave you, just stay there. I’m going to do enough to put you down, but I’m going to leave you. It’s going to feel like a long time, but it’s really not. They’re gonna be looking at me.’ He was like, ‘Oh, God’, like he didn’t want to do it either. We’re wrestling around. We do our normal sh*t and then about that time, he fires up and I give him a power slam. Bam, he’s down and I jump up and I look at the hard camera like, ‘Hey, what’s up.’ I get out of the ring. I go and I started talking to this girl in the front row. I said, ‘Can I have a hug’, and she gave me a hug. Then Sean, you know, I told him, the referee came, ‘Morley, you got to get back in the ring.’ ‘Tell him to come stop me.’ Then Sean comes out. He was like, bang, bang, and I turned around, boom, boom. I press him and throw him in the ring, and then I go back to talking to the girl, ‘Hey, you know, maybe later on we can do this and this.’ Man, we finished the match. I come in the back and Vince is like, ‘Come here you big son of a b*tch.’ Done. He loved Sexual Chocolate. He loved it and Sexual Chocolate is one of the most memorable characters in WWE history.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit AdFreeShows.com with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
