AEW star Mark Henry recently appeared on an episode of the Kurt Angle Show to talk about a number of topics including how he will always be around pro wrestling in some capacity as he would want to be more of a counselor to the younger talents rather than a coach.
Henry said, “I’m always gonna be around wrestling to some capacity. I feel like I’m more of a wrestling counselor than a coach. I don’t teach them how. I want them to already know how. I teach them where you do it, when you do it, and why you do it. I teach them to think outside the box because that’s what Stu Hart did for me, and Leo Burke, and Tom Prichard, and Rip Rogers, and Jim Cornette did for me. They were all free-spirited thinkers. They would be like, ‘Stop being Mark Henry, nobody wants to hear that shit. Be somebody else.’ So when you start thinking, how can I get over being something else? It opens up your brain to pro wrestling.”
Enjoying the one-on-one time with the younger wrestlers:
“If somebody said Mark, you gotta be John Wayne. You give me 20-30 minutes with John Wayne rehearsal stuff, I’ll be the best John Wayne I can be.” “I don’t need a lot of study time because all I need to know is what the character references [are] and the sound and voice flexion, and that’s the science of studying wrestling or acting, and that’s what I teach. I enjoy the personal one-on-ones, the people I talk to every week. It’s working and when you see what you do works, it’s gratifying. I sit back sometimes like, ‘Man, I did that.’”
Mentoring Action Andretti:
“Action Andretti, every time he passes me he goes [nods] and I know what that means. He’s saying, ‘Thank you, but I got it,’ and he got it. He’s one of those that you have a conversation with, he didn’t have a job, and two or three sessions with me, they hired him. So, those are the things that are good to me.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
