I love Mark Henry. I really do. We all do. That’s what we do. And I totally get that he has to feed his family and keep his job. But damn, his appearance on Huff Po Live to talk about race in the WWE is hard to watch. As I mentioned last week – and I hope this wasn’t lost in the shuffle – wrestling is racist as sh*t. We can argue all day about if The Rock is Black enough or if cucumbers taste better pickled, but there’s no way to make a logical argument that wrestling doesn’t have a history of incredible racism.
Sadly, Mark Henry just tried to make that exact point on Huff Po Live. He doesn’t just tow the company line here. He wraps the line around his waist and pulls a Volvo with it. In the episode (hosted by Marc Lamont Hill), Henry sort of argues that Kamala isn’t racist. Nor is Abdullah The Butcher. Nor is Akeem The African Dream. Mark, I get it. You don’t want to end up getting pinned by Great Khali on every episode of Main Event for the next two years but still, he should be able to freely admit that a few angles and gimmicks are racist.
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At the 13-minute mark Marc really gets into Henry’s mug a bit (via Skype, which is the only way I’d yell at Mark Henry) and really challenged him. Which is exactly what should happen because Mark doesn’t even really sound like he believes what he’s saying.
Then there’s Koko B. Ware who’s sort of there. I guess it’s cool to note that the parrot was his idea but that’s about it. Really, this is about Mark Henry and the WWE not being willing to have a serious discourse on the topic of race in wrestling, which is the most unfortunate part about this whole ordeal. Because really, until that happens, we’re in store for a lot more Kamalas than I want to put up with.
