Mark Henry Deserves 1 Last Push as Serious WWE Title Contender

Former world heavyweight champion Mark Henry noted in an interview with James E. Causey of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in February that he intends to retire in when his WWE contract expires in two years.

Considering this, the star deserves one last run on top before he steps away from in-ring competition.

Henry's profile has fallen considerably from the period in late 2011 when he was squashing everyone in sight and held the World Heavyweight Championship.

Part of that is undoubtedly due to him taking various sabbaticals to deal with one injury or another. It feels like the writing team simply lost interest in him.

Credit: WWE.com

Apart from the wonderful segment in June 2013 in which he cut a long and emotional retirement speech only to turn around and brutally attack WWE champion John Cena, revealing that the whole thing was a ruse, he hasn't done anything meaningful. (His feud with Cena started out great but sadly lost steam soon after.)

Henry's low profile over the last few years is too bad. He's a decent in-ring performer, and we have seen that he can still be a big deal if booked correctly.

But can WWE revive his struggling career one last time? Yes, I think so.

One potential idea to return him to relevance is to book him in a title feud against Brock Lesnar.

Following his bout with Cena at Night of Champions—and presumably the end of their feud—the champion will probably find himself without an opponent. There aren't many fresh challengers for him to face.

Credit: WWE.com

Why not script him to work a feud with Henry for a couple of months? It makes a lot of sense. Lesnar has been presented as an unstoppable monster capable of crashing through every hurdle in front of him. He famously ended The Undertaker's streak in April and squashed Cena like a jobber five months later at SummerSlam.

One of the few threats to him right now is arguably The World's Strongest Man.

Henry is one of the select guys on the roster who could go up against Lesnar in a pay-per-view match and believably look competitive.

Thanks to his size and real-life weightlifting accomplishments, he has credibility and an aura of toughness few wrestlers in WWE possess.

Credit: WWE.com

As noted, Henry hasn’t been booked terribly well over the last couple of years, but it shouldn’t take too long to build him up as a main event challenger again—just book him to squash some midcard guys on Raw and SmackDown over the course of a few weeks.

A Lesnar-Henry match would be an immensely entertaining program and likely something that could draw a good number of new WWE Network subscriptions. It would give Henry a final main event on top before he winds down his in-ring career for good.

Besides, after years and years of being the ultimate company man and going through one hideous angle after another without complaining or causing a fuss—the embarrassing Mae Young storyline in 1999 springs to mind—hasn’t Henry earned one last run on top from Vince McMahon and his team of writers?