Royal Rumble 2012 Results: Why Mark Henry's Main Event Time Is over

It took Mark Henry 15 years to reach the pinnacle of his career and win his first World title in the WWE.

After debuting with the company in 1996 and undergoing a number of gimmick changes and face/heel turns, it wasn’t until 2011 that Henry was able to win the World Heavyweight Championship and etch his name into the history books.

Henry’s surprising title win came after he exploded onto the main event scene in April 2011 when he was drafted to Friday Night SmackDown and slowly but surely became the top heel on the blue brand.

He wreaked havoc on every SmackDown star in his path week after week and has been a main event level for the better part of a year now.

But Henry’s run at the top is officially over.

PWInsider.com (via SEScoops.com) reported last week that Henry was legitimately injured at last Tuesday’s SmackDown tapings, and it was pretty clear from his lack of involvement in the World Heavyweight title match at the Royal Rumble that the injury is still bothering him.

While the extent of Henry’s injury is unknown and it remains to be seen exactly how he will be booked going forward, he is undoubtedly losing his grasp on SmackDown’s top heel spot, and his fall has gone on for more than two months now.

Ever since Henry cheated to retain his World Heavyweight title against The Big Show at Survivor Series, it’s been all downhill from there.

Up to that point, he was booked like a monster heel who no one would ever be able to beat without some kind of outside help or shady ending. But once Henry lost to Big Show, his weaknesses were exposed, and he became human for the first time since moving to SmackDown in early 2011.

At the following pay-per-view, WWE TLC, Henry took the next step in his fall from the main event scene by losing the World title to The Big Show, even though Show lost it just 45 seconds later to Daniel Bryan.

Once Henry lost the title at TLC and was a total non-factor in Sunday’s Royal Rumble match (his “last” chance to win the belt back), all of the momentum that the World’s Strongest Man had built up for nearly a year came crashing down.

Henry is now the only person sitting in his Hall of Pain.

He is no longer the World Heavyweight Champion, he is not entitled to any more rematches and he is just not the same Mark Henry when he isn’t holding a World title.

If Henry is not involved in the World title scene on SmackDown, then he does not have much of a place in the main event picture, especially with the likely upcoming return of Christian, the push of Bryan and the rise of guys like Wade Barrett and Cody Rhodes.

Sure, Henry will probably be a participant in SmackDown’s Elimination Chamber match at next month’s Elimination Chamber PPV, but he is nothing more than a pretender in a match that only has a couple of legitimate contenders.

There are just a few SmackDown stars who make sense as the holder of the World Heavyweight Championship as we head into WrestleMania season, and Henry is not one of them.

He had his time at the top, but the new crop of the blue brand’s heels—combined with the fact that WrestleMania is right around the corner and that he seems to be injured—will prevent him from staying there.

Sorry, Henry. We enjoyed the ride, but everyone has to get off of it eventually.

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