Of course everyone knows I love Mark Henry. I am a sucker for good big men and while he's not the guy who I think is the absolute best, he might be the one I have the biggest emotional connection to. In fact as Exposer will attest to, a little over a year ago I traveled almost five hundred miles to a house show in Chattanooga for the sole reason that I heard Henry was going to be on the card. He was originally booked against Cena and they ended up changing it on short notice and I still had no regrets. It ended up being Henry v. Orton in a Cage and was a shit ton of fun and worth the trip alone.
I think Henry is actually underrated as a face. Any time he worked face he got over, to the point where you had bits like his "human conductor" thing with the crowd that seemed like terrible ideas but somehow worked. I don't think there is any question that he was better as a heel and was more credible when pushed as a heel. Having said that I do think he was very good in the gatekeeper role as both a face and a heel and that is a role that is really important to a company. I don't know if it's a good direct comparison, but in someways Henry in between pushes was sort of like Meng in WCW. He was always respected as a badass and a guy where it meant something to beat him, even if he wasn't collecting wins or treated as a threat to top tier guys.
To me Henry has three really great runs, with good runs and performances mixed in between them. His best runs were in 06, 08 and 11 when he was actually pushed as a top level heel on his respective brand.
In 06 he was brought in with the rip the cage of the door spot, put over huge in an awesome battle royal on SD and proceeded to have a really good run as the big angry monster. I haven't watched them in a while, but my memory is that the Rey series was really great big v. little wrestling and I enjoyed his work with Taker and others during this period.
In 08 he was on ECW during a year when ECW was EASILY the best wrestling show in the company and to my mind the best wrestling product on the planet. I don't know if Henry was the absolute best guy on the brand that year because it was loaded with talent. But I would not rule it out. He had really good matches with a litany of guys on the roster and the character was somewhat similar to the one he worked in 06, but with a slightly comedic edge at times due to his association with Tony Atlas.
As much as I loved those two runs there is no question that 2011 was the apex for Mark Henry. It's a perfect example of a guy having a career year, where he even managed to turn the corner with long term doubters. There were people who didn't think his work was impressive (I thought he was top five in the world, in fact I think I had him 2 behind only Blue Panther on my WKO100 ballot), but virtually no one who didn't he was entertaining as a character. His promos were the most consistently entertaining of the year. Hell ratings even went up in a meaningful way and stayed up during his title reign (so did paid attendance and yes I know you could point to other factors, but I don't think it's a coincidence entirely). When he beat Orton clean for the title it was my "moment of the year" well ahead of Punk's "pipe bomb."
Here is something I wrote around this time last year explaining my choice to put him number one on my A1W ballot which is another LIST! this one based on in ring work from the U.S. alone:
In the previous two years my vote for number one was not tough at all. In both 2009 and 2010 no wrestler in the U.S. combined volume of quality, with consistency and strength of big match performances as well as Rey Mysterio. In actuality no one was particularly close. However, 2011 was a different story. Rey got hurt and left the fold in August. On top of that CM Punk had put together a remarkable year up to that point, including an all-time great series with John Cena, a far better than it should have been series with Randy Orton, consistent TV performances and of course an excellent match with Rey himself. In a year with Rey on the shelf, Punk seemed like the heir apparent.
But there was a sleeping giant that emerged from the pack. That giant was Mark Henry, a polarizing figure in many circles, but someone who seemed to enjoy near unanimous approval in 2011 on the strength of a career defining run. I myself have been a fan of Henry for some years and considered him one of the top workers in the States in both 06 and 08. Still there was something about last year that was different, as Henry was no longer just a player. As the year went on he started to feel like THE player.
Henry started the year slowly as he was still a babyface on Raw, being used in radom settings as a sort of “gatekeeper” for guys trying to work their way into the upper tier or as a monster for little guys to bounce off of. He had some quality matches during this period, mostly notable a tag match from Superstars and a quality house show bout with Tyson Kidd that is available online. He was not setting the World on fire though and it would have been unimaginable to see him breaking out to have the most successful and entertaining year of his career.
And then the unimaginable happened. Henry was drafted to Smackdown, turned heel, and in relatively quick order went on a tear. Starting in April and running through the end of the year there was no more consistent and interesting figure in wrestling than Mark Henry. Where Punk had extremely high highs, he also had extremely low (and frankly embarrassing) lows. Part of this was due to booking and circumstance and Punk remained a consistent performer in the ring. But Punk started to feel stale and it became a chore to sit through segments involve him that ultimately felt like a great performer being set up to fail. Even in matches Henry was simply more fun to watch.
It was not just about “fun” though. Henry had very good to great matches with a multitude of wrestlers. His series with Sheamus, Big Show, Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan featured a multitude of high quality matches in a variety of different settings. In particular the matches all had a distinct feel and showcased different aspects of Henrys character (and talents). His matches with Sheamus and Big Show looked and felt like brutal clash of the titans affairs. His matches with Orton saw him work as a remarkably effective dominating heel, with decisive power. In some respects his most impressive performance was against Bryan in the cage where he was working as a wounded wild animal, evoking a legitimate sense of vulnerability, without losing the any of the sense of violence that made his character so compelling. His trash talking and domineering attitude in the ring made nearly every affair watchable to the point where seeing him matched up with The Great Khali actually made me excited wondering if and how Henry would be able to make it work (he did).
He was remarkably adept at saving and building to the big spots at the right moments. The World’s Strongest Slam off the top of the cage was the finish of the year. Or was it the definite shrug off of the RKO and WSS the night he won the title? Or was it the superplex spot that “broke the ring” with Show? Or was it putting Sheamus through a barricade before beating a ten count? They were all so great it’s hard to pick.
His parting of the red seas spot with the lumberjacks in his Smackdown match with Christian was one of the more entertaining spots of the year. His bout with Rey from April was one of the most underrated bouts of the year. He took the Big Show’s WMD better than anyone and would regularly surprise with other impressive bumps. There was just a lot of stuff in 2011 that Mark Henry did really, really well.
In December I had a chance to see Henry and Punk live within a week’s time. Henry lapped Punk despite already feeling the effects of the injury that would cut his run short. At this point I really started to consider “is Henry the (U.S.) wrestler of the year over Punk?” Overall the Smackdown ratings trends and direction of their characters led me to conclude the answer to the question was “yes.” In the ring…?
The best way I can explain my decision is by looking at the 2009 Academy Awards. Sean Penn ended up winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his lead role in the bio-epic Milk, edging out Mickey Rourke for his excellent work in The Wrestler. As a wrestling fan and a movie fan I felt that Rourke should have won for two reasons.
Firstly it was a role that transcended the movie and told the viewer as much about the troubled career and past of Rourke as it did about “Randy The Ram.” It was a career peak that sprung up out of nowhere signaling the resurrection of a man who had seemed permanently damned to irrelevance.
Secondly Penn had a tight template to work off of. He was to become Harvey Milk, a man who really did exist and about whom a lot is known. Rourke’s job was to create a new character, realistic enough to connect with viewers. He had to study the context of a business he knew little about, understand it and take scraps of his own life to mold an authentic representation of a man who embodied the reality of that World.
CM Punk is Sean Penn. He’s had other dances and will have more. I cannot begrudge someone for voting him the best in ring performer of 2011. He was handed a role and played it well. Mark Henry emerged from nowhere, created a role, made himself relevant again and had a career year in the process.
Maybe the Academy voted with their head when they picked Penn in 2009, but they should have voted with their heart. I voted with my heart. I voted for Mark Henry.
