Mark Henry details what he tries to instill in talents as a coach in the AEW locker room.
Mark Henry spent two decades under the WWE umbrella. Now as a coach in All Elite Wrestling, Henry tries to use his years of experience and the nuggets of wisdom he picked up from the eclectic group of mentors he was fortunate enough to come across.
Speaking to Kurt Angle and Paul Bromwell on the latest episode of the Kurt Angle Show, Henry says he doesn't want to spend any time teaching people how to get it done inside the squared circle, he is more concerned about teaching them why and how to think outside the box.
"I'm always gonna be around wrestling to some capacity. I feel like I'm more of a wrestling counselor than a coach," said Henry. "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.
"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," he continued. "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.'"
Henry says that one wrestler in AEW that he's mentored is Action Andretti. Henry says that Andretti "got it" quickly and that he was hired after about three coaching sessions with him.
"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."
In the past, Powerhouse Hobbs has stated that he wants to face Mark Henry.
Fans can read Mark Henry's thoughts on potentially wrestling one more time here.
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