During an appearance on the “Attitude Era” podcast, Mark Henry looked back on his fake retirement speech to lure out John Cena in 2013 during an episode of WWE RAW. After swerving Cena and the fans, he attacked Cena before demanding a WWE Title match.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how it came about: “You know what man, during that time I was actually — my contract was expiring, and I was thinking about taking a break. And so I went probably about six, eight months basically really preparing myself for retirement. So it was like 50-50 [whether he’d retire or not]. And then Vince talked to me and said, ‘You know what? I think this would be a really good time to really pull the wool over people. Everybody thinks you’re going to retire. You won’t re-sign, like what’s the deal? Is it more money, this or that?’ I said, ‘No.’ It’s like, ‘It’s not the money, I just want to go home.’ When you’re on the road for like 18 years, and I was missing stuff, seeing my kids growing up. And at that point I was like, ‘Man, I’m done, I made enough money. Let me go and you know, be the dad that I always wanted to be.’ And it ended up being Vince talked me into it, and all of that emotion and the reality of it was true. It’s just that I ended up putting it into the show.”
On the reaction to the segment: “It ended up being one of the best moments in pro wrestling history. I had people calling me, I didn’t even know how they got my phone number. Hulk Hogan called me. I was like, ‘How in the hell did you get my number?’ And he was like, ‘Look, you pulled the wool over my eyes. And it’s been a long time since that happened, you should be proud.’ And I was proud.”
