WWE Hall of Famer and one of the newest AEW acquisitions Mark Henry recently spoke to Renee Paquette on her Oral Sessions podcast where the World’s Strongest Man revealed a story about bringing in Daniel Bryan for a WWE tryout, and how he had to lie to upper management about Bryan’s height. Highlights are below.
On seeing Daniel Bryan at an indie show and knowing he would be great:
I had to lie to get Daniel Bryan [in WWE]. I saw Daniel Bryan at an Indie show in Canada and was like, ‘Damn, he’s good.’ I could tell he was carrying the guy he was working with and made his ass look good. I went back and found him on social media, reached out, and said, ‘I saw your match against so and so’ and he said, ‘Thanks, it wasn’t one of my best.’ I was like, ‘It was pretty good to me. I want you to come to a camp in Tampa.’ ‘For WWE?’ ‘Yeah, I’m Mark Henry.’ ‘No you’re not.’ I got his information and passed it on to Johnny Ace.
Says he lied to WWE about how big Bryan was to get him a tryout:
Johnny is like, ‘How big is he?’ ‘Oh, he’s like 6-feet, 6’1”, 200 pounds.’ I lied through my teeth because I knew they wanted bigger guys. ‘Well, we’ll bring him in.’ Once I transferred the information, they started doing the scouting and I never said anything until he ended up in FCW and here we are, a Hall of Fame guy.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful
)