10 Times WWE Turned Trash Into Treasure
5. Mark Henry
The WWF wanted Mark Henry off the books so desperately that Vince McMahon green-lit an onscreen humiliation campaign. This happens fairly regularly, of course, but the difference here was the sheer scope and duration of the thing.
Henry, throughout the Attitude Era, having failed to master the basics and proven himself as a danger to himself and others, was repackaged as Sexual Chocolate. We all have our vices. Kurt Angle's happened to be "gutter sl*ts". Batista favoured the wives and girlfriends of his contemporaries. Henry had vices, plural: transvestites, octogenarians, bodybuilders, family members. They all wanted a little taste of Henry's Sexual Chocolate.
Once Henry relearned his trade, and recovered from a spate of serious injuries, various attempts to rehabilitate the character, via unimaginative monster pushes, failed. Henry did recover, and became a respectable if limited worker a full 10 years after learning his trade in a decent WWECW stint. As the years passed by without major injury, the sensitive performer grew in confidence to such an extent that he pulled off a late-career fairytale run. Inducting all who dared face him into the Hall of Pain, this, at long last, was the Henry Vince McMahon signed in 1996.
A terrifying aural and physical nightmare, Henry was so credible and fearsome in the role that he even drew in the post-draft wasteland that was SmackDown. Incredibly, his work was so good that the Hall of Pain, and not the years of shame, have informed his legacy to the mat game.