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What’s the story?
Several news stories broke out yesterday that WWE star Mark Henry was officially retired from wrestling. The news reached pretty much everywhere, first being reported by Dave Meltzer.
The interesting thing here is that Mark had already announced his retirement several months ago and the news was previously covered here and elsewhere.
In case you didn’t know…
Mark actually retired just after WrestleMania 33 last April, which is also when he wrestled his last match, in the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal.
Mark is a former WWE World Heavyweight Champion, WWE ECW Champion and European Champion. He was involved in the main event scene for years, most notably in 2006 and 2011. He has long earned his place as a future WWE Hall of Famer.
The heart of the matter
Despite already being retired, everyone is commenting on the news as if it was brand new. Mark's former manager in WWE, Shawn Daivari commented on it by saying:
"Working with Mark was awesome. We were both kinda thrown in the deep end when we were put together. it all happened accidentally. I was with Kurt on Raw, then Batista got hurt on SmackDown. Mark just started with a monster push to be a heel that was big enough to make Dave sell. Dave is massive. It's hard to get babyface sympathy on a guy who legit is bigger than a statue of a Greek god. So Mark got thrown right into the deep end after kinda being in a bit of a lull. Then Batista tore his tricep I think and kinda left Mark with no one to work with and Smackdown's biggest babyface on the shelf for six months.
So they moved me and Kurt to SmackDown, put the belt on Kurt, then did the swerve where they put me with Mark. Neither I, nor Kurt, nor Mark knew this was happening. And from that, we forged an awesome friendship. We drove together we hung out together, I got to know his wife and his (then) new baby. Mark was a guy very similar to Muhammad Hassan who was kind of unfairly judged a bit by a lot of the boys. I was happy to work with him during that run where we both had this mentality of proving the doubters wrong. Undertaker was the first one who jumped on board and allowed Mark to be elevated. Things were going great too until he got hurt and kinda had to start the whole process all over again. But, as you saw, it worked out.''
What's next?
Mark Henry has been working as a producer for WWE since his actual retirement last April. Mark will continue in this role as well as making occasional appearances on WWE TV for special occasions, especially events in Texas.
Author’s take
It is quite perplexing that people are only reacting to the news almost a year after it happened but maybe it was just something that was swept under the rug by most other journalists, as well as WWE themselves who never actually confirmed the news of Henry's retirement now or then.
