Mark Henry Reveals Vince McMahon’s Reaction To “Sexual Chocolate” Character
Mark Henry has revealed who came up with the “Sexual Chocolate” gimmick in the Attitude Era and what Vince McMahon thought about it.
When Mark Henry signed with WWE in 1996, he did so after becoming the World’s Strongest Man. Henry’s initial run in WWE took some time to get going due to how inexperienced he was and then he was placed in the heel Nation of Domination until that fizzled.
In late 1998 and into 1999 as the WWE Attitude Era was in full swing, Henry became a new character known as “Sexual Chocolate” who ended up having an affinity for all kinds of different women.
There were many outrageous moments involving Henry as Sexual Chocolate including the time he got the elderly WWE Hall of Famer Mae Young “pregnant.” That led to an unforgettable, yet utterly terrible, moment when Mae gave birth to a prosthetic hand on Raw.
Thankfully for Henry, he improved a lot in the 2000s, realized his potential by becoming a World Heavyweight Champion in WWE and eventually a WWE Hall of Famer as well.
During an appearance on WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle’s podcast called “The Kurt Angle Show,” Mark Henry revealed that his former WWE boss Vince McMahon loved the Sexual Chocolate gimmick.
“Sexual chocolate was my invention. 100%. Not one writer. Nobody. Me and D’Lo (Brown) were driving after The Nation, and The Nation broke up, so everybody was starting to go and do their own things and trying to figure out what was next. You had the Godfather go his way. You had Ron Simmons go his way and just be Ron Simmons. D’Lo had the chest protector. I was fu**ing kind of just like out in the cold.”
“I was like, you know what, man. I just saw this movie ‘Coming to America.’ They had this band called Sexual Chocolate and I just loved the name. He’s like, ‘Sexual Chocolate’, and I say, ‘You know what, man? I’m gonna kind of be a ladies man and I’m gonna do this.’ Then D’Lo said, ‘They’re not gonna let you say sexual chocolate on TV’, and I said, ‘Man, you watch. I’m going to Vince.'”
“I went to Vince and Vince was like, ‘No. We have too much money invested in you Mark. We want to make you serious. We’re gonna just wait a minute. It’s gonna be alright. We’re gonna get you going.’ I said, ‘Just let me try it one time. I’m telling you, if you see me do it, then you’ll understand what I’m talking about’, because I was starting to get the psychology of wrestling, and how to tell stories, and how to make people feel a certain way rather than see something. He said, ‘God dang it. You got eight minutes.'”
Mark Henry Recalls Performing As “Sexual Chocolate” In WWE
As the story continued, Mark Henry spoke about having a match with Val Venis and the beginning stages of the Sexual Chocolate gimmick.
“I went out there with Val Venis, Sean Morley. I said, ‘Hey, man, any time that I down you and leave you, just stay there. I’m going to do enough to put you down, but I’m going to leave you. It’s going to feel like a long time, but it’s really not. They’re gonna be looking at me.’ He was like, ‘Oh, God’, like he didn’t want to do it either.”
“We’re wrestling around. We do our normal sh*t and then about that time, he fires up and I give him a power slam. Bam, he’s down and I jump up and I look at the hard camera like, ‘Hey, what’s up.’ I get out of the ring. I go and I started talking to this girl in the front row. I said, ‘Can I have a hug’, and she gave me a hug.”
“Then Sean, you know, I told him, the referee came, ‘Morley, you got to get back in the ring.’ ‘Tell him to come stop me.’ Then Sean comes out. He was like, bang, bang, and I turned around, boom, boom. I press him and throw him in the ring, and then I go back to talking to the girl, ‘Hey, you know, maybe later on we can do this and this.'”
“Man, we finished the match. I come in the back and Vince is like, ‘Come here you big son of a b*tch.’ Done. He loved Sexual Chocolate. He loved it and Sexual Chocolate is one of the most memorable characters in WWE history.”
Mark Henry works for AEW as a coach and mentor to the roster.