Reportedly, the current plan is for Kane to join Smackdown and the angle to bring him there should take place over the next three days either at Summerslam, Raw or the Smackdown taping. Kane is booked to work September Smackdown house shows against Kurt Angle.

 

Mark Henry was in La Crosse yesterday, promoting the WWEs Tour of Defiance. Heres a copy of what the local Tribune had to say about it:

Appearance doesn't truly define WWE's Mark Henry
By MATT JAMES / Of the Tribune staff

Eating with Mark Henry, I assumed, would be like playing chess with Bobby Fischer. Building bird feeders with Martha Stewart. Singing with Bing Crosby. Complaining with Antonio Freeman.

I assumed wrong.

If you have no idea who we are talking about, Mark Henry is a large man. He weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 pounds. He can bench press most of French Island. In high school, he was the junior world powerlifting champion. He is a two-time Olympian. He is one of the strongest men on the planet. He was been on the Oprah Winfrey Show with the great sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, who died two years later of a heart attack at age 38.

But for all that, Henry, the giant from a little town in southern Texas, never became famous until he put on tights. The strange part is we might never have known Mark Henry if he hadn't started picking up grown men and hurling them out of a ring, and smashing them over the head with trash cans and folding chairs.

Henry and I went for lunch on Friday. I prayed he wouldn't mistake me for a chicken leg.

He was in town to promote WWE's "Tour of Defiance," whatever that is. WWE, we know, stands for World Wrestling Entertainment, the newest name of the bazillion-dollar professional wrestling company.

The Tour of Defiance is making a stop Sept.2 in La Crosse. Henry and roughly 30 other wrestlers will be performing. For you die-hard wrestling fans, the lineup (always subject to change) includes Edge, Kurt Angle, Brock Lesnar and a six-team tag team match. I think it's safe to assume defiance will be plentiful.

Wrestling, though, wasn't my top priority Friday afternoon at lunchtime. I had important, journalistic questions to ask Mark Henry like...

"How many hot dogs can you eat without throwing up?"

"Will you snap that guy's leg over there?

"Can you lift up my car while I change the oil? No really, I've got a new filter right here in the trunk."

Truthfully, I couldn't wait to see Henry eat. Because, let's face it, you don't get to four bills by snacking on celery. ("I don't believe in vegetables," he says). A feeding frenzy, I assumed, was about to take place.

As it turns out, he's a finicky eater. Can you believe that? Mark Henry likes pepper jack cheese, not cheddar. He doesn't like his hamburger buns overly toasted. His favorite spice is pepper.

Henry only had a small bowl of seafood chowder and half a hickory burger. A half of a burger! He cut it in half with a knife, for crying out loud! What in the world! (Sorry, I'll stop yelling now.)

Henry is so much more than you'd expect. Less than you'd expect in other ways. He does have quite a story. He was a huge kid in Silsbee, Texas, lifting hundreds of pounds and dreaming about the Olympic Games. And he made it. In 1992, and then again in 1996.

After that, he wasn't sure what to do. Some NFL teams wanted to draft him. Then, wrestling owner Vince McMahon saw him on Oprah's Olympic special. (Maybe Vince does have a soft side.) Henry's life has been chaos ever since. Good and bad. He's made good money, broken bones, dislocated fingers, had concussions. Every year is a struggle to stay healthy.

"It's not a business for the faint of heart," he said.

McMahon saw something in Mark Henry five years ago. It's obvious right away. He cares about people. Looks them in the eye. During lunch, he asked more questions than I did.

"Anybody ever tell you that you look like Andre Agassi," he said.

"Yeah, sometimes."

"I think it's the eyebrows," he said.

Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown came up to Henry in a restaurant once and asked for an autograph. He knows Arnold Schwartzenegger. He went to the University of Texas for a year, and the governor at the time used to work out on campus. Henry would tease him about being a small fry. The governor joked that he could lift anything Henry could. They wrestled around a couple times. It was George W. Bush.

"He's a good guy," Henry said. "I don't care what people say. He always has been."

He has opinions about everything. He's informed about everything. He says things like, "I hate negativity," without even blinking. He lights up a room. Every time one of the couples he knows has kids, they make him the godfather. He loves kids. He was born to entertain.

I asked him when he would settle down, have children of his own. "I'm thinking about it," he said. "I ain't ready 'cause I know how impatient I am."

Mark Henry is going to make a great father some day. He's just 30 years old. Right now, he's enjoying the good life. Not that he isn't keeping an eye out.

"I like tall, athletic women," he said, laughing. "Tell them to have their phone numbers in hand."

Matt James can be reached at (608) 782-9710 Ext. 205 or at mjames@@lacrossetribune.com