Mark Henry was a guest on Edge and Christian’s Pod of Awesomeness, where the World’s Strongest Man discussed his most successful run in the WWE, “The Hall of Pain.” During that time Henry captured his first and only world title, defeating Randy Orton at Night of Champions. Henry claims that as a reward for being a loyal company man and safe-worker for 20-plus years, Vince McMahon gave him free reign to do whatever he wanted during that time, as long as he was keeping the other wrestlers safe. Henry adds that he thoroughly enjoyed “beating the hell” of opponents and calls that run the best of his career.

That was probably my best work and I was given the word to do what I wanted, which I never had in my career. I had the freedom to have a promo segment against someone like John Cena, and I can go out there and say, listen, just because you won a bunch of championships, and just because the company is behind you and because you do Make-A-Wish and that everybody loves you, doesn’t mean that I do. When I see you on this date and this time, I am going to bury you and all of these people that clamor behind you are just a bunch of puppets. They love you because everybody else loves you, so they’re followers.

Vince McMahon told me not to hurt anybody, but everything else is up to you. Very few people get that. I was able to parlay that into about a 3-year period of beating the bloody hell out of people and I got the go-ahead to do whatever I wanted to do and I think that it was all the years of me not hurting people. It was all the years of me being easy to work with and all the years paid off to go out there and do what I wanted to do. I had a lot of fun. That Hall of Pain run was great.