{"id":12334,"date":"2018-01-14T17:54:04","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T22:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=12334"},"modified":"2018-01-14T17:54:04","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T22:54:04","slug":"mark-henry-quietly-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2018\/01\/14\/mark-henry-quietly-retires\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Henry Quietly Retires"},"content":{"rendered":"

After more than twenty years in the WWE<\/strong>, Mark Henry<\/strong> has now officially retired from in-ring competition according to Dave Meltzer<\/strong> from the Wrestling Observer<\/strong>.\u00a0(EDITOR’S NOTE: Mark Henry himself actually announced his retirement back in September of 2017<\/a> on an episode of The Sam Roberts Show).<\/em><\/p>\n

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Photo: Muscle & Fitness<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before his wrestling career, he was a successful powerlifter, Olympic weightlifter, and Strongman.\u00a0 His nickname “The World’s Strongest Man”, followed him throughout his entire career, from when debuted with the WWE at twenty-four years of age.\u00a0 He appeared on an episode of Monday Night Raw where he was interviewed by Jerry Lawler<\/strong>.\u00a0 Not happy with the way the interview went, he power-slammed\u00a0Lawler.\u00a0 Henry would then go on to participate in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia and at the conclusion signed his first WWE contract.<\/p>\n

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Photo: WWE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Henry feuded with Lawler before he eventually would join the Nation of Domination<\/strong>,\u00a0led by Farooq<\/strong>.\u00a0 Once the Nation disbanded he would go on to become Sexual Chocolate.\u00a0 He would then be given his first taste of WWE gold as Jeff Jarrett<\/strong> gave him the European Championship in exchange for helping him defeat his former Nation teammate D-Lo Brown in a match that crowned him the Intercontinental champion as well.<\/p>\n

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Photo: WWE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a short stint in Ohio Valley Wrestling<\/strong>, Mark Henry returned but would spend the next few years alternating between face and heel storylines and dealing with nagging injuries.\u00a0 With the addition of Extreme Championship Wrestling<\/strong> to the WWE portfolio, he found himself on the ECW roster.\u00a0 At Night Of Champions in June of\u00a02008, he fought in and won a triple threat match for the ECW Heavyweight Championship, beating both the Big Show and Kane.\u00a0 His title reign would only last a few months as he lost it at Unforgiven the following September.<\/p>\n

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Photo: WWE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He would not capture another title until Night Of Champions 2011 defeating Randy Orton<\/strong> and winning his first and only World Heavyweight Championship.\u00a0 He would lose the Championship\u00a0to the Big Show<\/strong> four months later at the Tables, Ladders, and Chairs pay-per-view.<\/p>\n

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Photo: WWE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Henry would spend the next few years again dealing with injuries and trying to get back into the title picture.\u00a0 He would become the WWE Ambassador to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.\u00a0 His last in-ring appearance would come at Wrestlemania 33<\/strong><\/em> in 2017 where he participated in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal.<\/p>\n

Although he only had a handful of title reigns, there is no question that Mark Henry had an incredibly successful career in professional wrestling.\u00a0 Not many performers can say they spent more than twenty years performing with a WWE contract.\u00a0 Henry has already started to book wrestling shows and appearances where he will be taking photos and signing autographs for fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After more than twenty years in the WWE, Mark Henry has now officially retired from in-ring competition according to Dave Meltzer from the Wrestling Observer.\u00a0(EDITOR’S NOTE: Mark Henry himself actually announced his retirement back in September of 2017 on an episode of The Sam Roberts Show). Before his wrestling career, he was a successful powerlifter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2367,"featured_media":12346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,3,320],"tags":[1403,1302,47],"class_list":["post-12334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-wwe","category-wwe-universe","category-wwe-women","tag-mark-henry","tag-retirement","tag-wwe"],"modified_by":"Jamie Greer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}