Mark Henry & Bully Ray Talk AJ Styles' Homage On WWE SmackDown
During last week's "WWE SmackDown," AJ Styles and Cody Rhodes had a segment that was an obvious callback to Mark Henry's fake-out retirement and attack on John Cena, back in 2013. Naturally, Henry caught wind of the segment and gave his opinion of it on "Busted Open Radio."
Beginning his assessment, Henry recalled how Bully Ray once explained to him that plagiarism tends to occur when something is successful. "Anytime somebody copies, you should not be mad at them that they're copying, you should be happy," Henry said. "You should be proud that somebody said 'You know what, man? I see value in that, and I'm gonna do it just like that. And people are gonna know that I did it just like that on purpose.' And that's exactly what happened."
Henry then noted how similar the entire segment was to his own faux-retirement 11 years ago. "Even the powdered jacket! He could have worn anything! But he knew that I'mma do a pastel color, I guess he couldn't find lavender, he couldn't find lime green, so he went with the powder blue and I dug it like a son of a gun. What a great night!"
Bully Ray opined that the segment wasn't as good as Mark Henry's was
Reflecting on the segment, Bully explained that he believes when you borrow, plagiarize, or ripoff, it should be better than the original. "I thought it was good, it wasn't anywhere near Mark Henry status; and I'm not saying this because Mark is here. There's a big difference between the Mark Henry turn, and the AJ Styles turn."
He then made the point that fans in 2013 couldn't predict Henry's heel turn at the time, but that Styles' attack on Rhodes could be seen a mile away. "And that's where it lost some steam for me; I saw it coming, and I don't want to see a turn coming."
Henry later added that he feels like they did the segment as a parody instead, due to how similar it was to his own, and that WWE wasn't trying to fool fans but simply create a talking point. "When you do something with the intent on making it like that, then they weren't trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes, they were trying to do what they did, which is get everybody to talk about it like we are right now. They did their job, and we're the ones with the hooks in our mouths."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Busted Open Radio," and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.