During a new interview with Heavy.com Mark Henry revealed that he feels he should have beaten John Cena after his fake retirement speech in 2013.
The now legendary promo saw Mark Henry give a heartfelt speech seemingly announcing his retirement, before turning on Cena, hitting the WWE Champion with a World’s Strongest Slam. This set up a title match between the two at the following Money In The Bank pay-per-view. Cena would beat Henry via submission and the feud ended there.
However, during the interview with Brandon Robinson, Henry expresses regret at how the feud went down. When asked is there was one match he could go back and redo from his career, he chose his clash with Cena.
“The other one is after my retirement speech and I turned on John Cena which is one of the more historical wrestling moments in history. I was so beat up that I wanted to go home, that I didn’t really wanna wrestle no more. Like I was in so much pain, because like I said, it was real to me and I told people, ‘Lay it in, because I’m gonna hit you’ and I want you saying, ‘I beat you up and took advantage of you.’ Like I’m giving my body to you, let’s go, and the match I had was in Philadelphia [Money In The Bank 2013] with John Cena and I lost that match when I should’ve won that match. I should have told them, ‘Nah, I’m not gonna go home.’ Like, let’s run a six-month program and we could’ve had many matches, but you know, I was ready to go.”
Elsewhere in the interview Henry touches on WWE’s COVID testing policy as well as the NBA and the NFL. In recent years Henry has transitioned into a backstage role, while he also appeared in the ThunderDome for the season premiere of SmackDown earlier this month.
The full interview can be seen here, with a h/t to Post Wrestling for the transcription.