Mark Henry’s fake retirement speech will go down in history as one of the greatest promos in wrestling, according to WWE Hall of Famer The Undertaker.
On the June 17, 2023 edition of RAW, Henry “announced” his retirement before ambushing John Cena and starting a feud with the then-WWE Champion.
On a recent edition of his “Six Feet Under” podcast, The Undertaker spoke about Henry’s ruse and was impressed by the World Strongest Man’s performance.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On Mark Henry’s fake retirement speech: “Mark’s was probably the greatest promo ever. By far Mark’s greatest promo, but it’s up there, all-time. I mean, I remember when he did it — like, I hadn’t spoken a lot to Mark. And Mark was getting up there, too. And I was like, s**t, this is it, man.’ I bought it. I bit the hook, man.”
On whether he knew the boneyard match with AJ Styles would be his last: “Yeah, for sure. Like, I don’t think that match would have happened if it wasn’t AJ, because he was somebody that I wanted to work with. I put him up there with Shawn… I mean, he’s just great. I would have loved to have seen him work with Shawn, and work with Bret. Holy crap, would those have been great matches.”
On the match: “I always felt like we were very fortunate to be able to get out of the Performance Center, and go and do that. Just because — you know who had a great match Edge and Randy. They had a phenomenal match, but there was just no reaction. There’s just nothing but the sound of them going through and hitting metal, and doing everything. It was just like, ‘Man, this is a really, really, really good match. And there’s no feels to it.’ With the Boneyard Match, it was — it was kind of like the boiler room brawls and those types of things. I was really proud of it, and thought that we told a really good story. Which is always the most important thing to me. Him talking mad trash, bringing out this different evolution of The Undertaker, and merging the three characters all together into one. Yeah, other than put my arm through the Hearse window — which you know, sucked. But other than that, I was really happy with it.”
