Mark Henry On How He Came Up With Sexual Chocolate, Training With The Rock

On the latest episode of the Kurt Angle Show, fellow WWE Hall of Famer Mark Henry made an appearance where he talked about his Sexual Chocolate character and more. You can check out some highlights below:

Mark Henry working with The Rock before he became the People’s Champion: “Man, I remember like the first day he came to Connecticut to train. Tom Prichard trained in the warehouse and being the first developmental wrestler, the first two developmental wrestlers, I think WWE did pretty damn good. He [The Rock] came in, he was broke. He didn’t have any — the bags that he had with him were all he had. And I had a two-bedroom apartment. Because that was all that the building near the office had, and they didn’t have a one bedroom. So it kind of worked out. And I told him, I said, ‘Man, you can stay with me, man. Just ain’t no bedroom suit in there. Like, you know, we gotta buy you a bed.’ He was like, ‘Man, I ain’t got no money, man.’ I said, ‘Listen, let’s go get some furniture, put you in there and we man, you pay me back when you get some money.’ So he moved in with me and we lived together for about nine months.

“And I’m gonna tell you something. Second-generation wrestlers have an extreme advantage over everybody else, because they understand storytelling and psychology. And even though they don’t know how to hit the ropes, they’ve seen them done a thousand times. They don’t know how to grab a headlock and do a takeover, but they’ve seen it a thousand times and all they gotta do is once and then they go, ‘Oh, okay, I got it.’ And that was him. I was so frustrated because Tom Prichard could do stuff with him one time and then he could do it. So it got to the point where when I was working with him, we couldn’t do stuff over and over because he would go and do it with Tom, and then they would do like three minutes or five minutes of s**t, and I would be standing there like, ‘Look at this, he already knows.’ That’s how visibly good he was. And he could leapfrog and drop down like, man, I almost broke my ribs doing drop-downs the first day. I dove like, ‘Whoa!’ And it was like a fall rather than laying it in and slapping the mat. It took me a while to learn, and Dwayne already knew it, man. And he used to tell me all the time, ‘Imma be good, man.’ He said, ‘You watch.’ You had all the confidence, man. Sexual chocolate was my invention.”

Mark Henry on becoming Sexual Chocolate: “Not one writer. There was not one writer, nobody. I went to Vince. D’Lo Brown and I were driving after the Nation [of Domination], and the Nation broke up. So everybody was starting to go and do their own things and trying to figure out what was next. And you had The Godfather go his way, you had Ron Simmons go his way and just be Ron Simmons. D’Lo had the chest protector, and I was kind of just out in the cold. I just saw this movie, Coming to America. And they had this band called Sexual Chocolate. And I just loved the name. And I said, ‘You know what, man? I’m gonna kind of be a lady’s man, and I’m gonna do this.’ And then D’Lo said, ‘They’re not going to let you say Sexual Chocolate on TV.’ And I said, man, ‘you watch. I’m going to.'”

Mark Henry on taking the idea to Vince McMahon: “I went to Vince, and Vince was like, ‘No.’ He’s like, ‘We have too much money invested in you, Mark. We want to make you serious. You’re going to just wait a minute. We’re going to be alright. We’re going to get you going.’ I said, ‘Just let me try it one time. I’m telling you, if you see me do it, then you’ll understand what I’m talking about.’ Because I was starting to get the psychology of wrestling and how to tell stories, and how to make people feel a certain way rather than see something. And he said, ‘God dang it.’ Like he said, ‘Y’all, you got eight minutes.’ I went out there with Val Venis. I said, ‘Hey, man, anytime that I down you and leave, you just stay there. I’m going to do enough to put you down, but I’m going to leave you. It’s going to feel like a long time, but it’s really not. They’re going to be looking at me.’ And he was like, ‘Oh God.’ Like he didn’t want to do it either, so we wrestled around, we did our normal [thing]. And then, about that time, he fires up on me. I give him a powerslam, bam! He’s down. And I jumped up and I looked at a hard camera. And I get out of the ring, and I start talking to this girl in the front row, and I said, ‘Can I have a hug?’ And she gave me a hug. The referee came, ‘Mark, you gotta get back in the ring. Tell him to come to stop me.’ Then Sean comes out, and he bangs. And I turn around, boom, boom. I press him, throw him in the ring, and then I go back to talk to the girl. ‘Hey, so, you know, maybe later on we can do this or this,’ Man, we finished the match, I come in the back and Vince is like this, ‘Come here, you big son of a bitch.’ He loved it. And Sexual Chocolate is one of the most memorable characters in WWE history.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit the Kurt Angle Show with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.