Mark Henry’s Feud With Lio Rush Reflects Badly On Them Both

A week in the world of professional wrestling isn’t complete unless there’s a scandal to report on, and we’ve been spoiled in the past few days on that front. WWE legend and Hall of Fame member Mark Henry has been going back and forth on Twitter with recently-released former WWE Cruiserweight Champion on Lio Rush, and the situation has just turned ugly. Rush started it by taking a swipe at Henry’s treatment of him while he was still with the company, Henry responded by inviting Rush to call into his radio show and discuss the matter in person, and before anyone knew what was happening, both men started to threaten each other with lawsuits for defamation. 

To understand what’s led to this point, we must first understand what’s happened in the past. You don’t have to go back much more than a year to find a time when Lio Rush had a regular on-screen role on Monday Night RAW, serving as Bobby Lashley’s hype man. He wasn’t wrestling as regularly as he would have liked to – and when he did, he usually got squashed to protect Lashley – but it was a highly visible featured spot that most of his peers would have killed for. At only 24 years old and gifted with a microphone, Rush was someone who should have had a bright future in the wrestling business, and inside WWE in particular. The fact that he may no longer have a future in wrestling at all can largely be attributed to his own behavior. 

There’s a long-standing tradition in WWE that the younger wrestlers perform basic tasks for the older wrestlers as a means of earning their respect and ‘paying their dues.’ One of the typical duties that might be expected of them is carrying water, and making sure that the veterans always get a fresh bottle to drink and douse themselves with when they come back through the curtain. Rush publicly rejected the very idea of him performing such duties, saying that he felt they were ‘demeaning’ and that the idea of a young black man carrying water for a white performer ‘isn’t a good look.’ 

Almost immediately, Mark Henry criticized Rush for taking such a stand, explaining that he’d performed such duties when he was a rookie, and had them performed for him once he’d earned the locker room’s respect. His criticism came with a personal plea to Rush. Henry noted that he also had ‘the wrong idea’ of how the business worked when he came into it, and thought that as a former Olympian, he was automatically entitled to respect. He got it wrong and had to learn the hard way, and was keen for Rush to avoid making the same mistakes. It seemed like sensible advice, but it appeared to fall on deaf ears. 

Not long after the backstage row over water-carrying was reported, Rush was back in the wrestling press to complain about his paycheque. There were some reports that he felt entitled to some of Lashley’s royalties on account of the fact that he was part of Lashley’s act. He also said that his salary wasn’t enough for him to live on, and that he was losing money by coming to work when accommodation and transport were taken into account. Again, Henry was one of the first people to take to social media to answer back to Rush, and cast doubt on the idea that a main roster WWE paycheck wouldn’t be enough for anybody to live on comfortably. 

Unsurprisingly, Rush disappeared from television for a while. When he did eventually reappear, it was in NXT where he arrived with a new look and a new push. He was given the WWE Cruiserweight Championship, and he was back in the company’s good books. It didn’t last for long. Rush’s reign ended almost as soon as it began, and once he’d dropped the title, he once again vanished from television. It came as a surprise to nobody when he was included in WWE’s round of contract releases in April of this year. Lio Rush was gone from the company, and it was hard to feel like both he and the company hadn’t missed out on a good opportunity to make money. 

Being pushed on television in any kind of role isn’t a guarantee of success in WWE, and nor, sadly, is being a skilled wrestler or talker. WWE is notorious for treating its wrestlers like games at an online slots casino – they’re happy to spend a little money on them and take them for a few spins, but if they don’t like the return, they’ll quickly move on to the next game. If wrestling companies really were online slots websites, WWE would be the biggest by a long distance. They have no shortage of new games to play, and they can afford to ditch the ones that don’t work out for them. Rush, whether it was due to his attitude or something else, was deemed to fall into that category. Ironically, WWE has a series of character-themed slot games coming to web casinos later this year. We can safely say that Lio Rush won’t feature on them. 

Taken all together, the current situation is a bad look for Rush, a bad look for Henry, and a bad look for the company. WWE wanted to be shot of Rush when it released him, and won’t like the fact that their name keeps being dragged into reports about his latest antics. Henry, who’s repeatedly boasted that his lawyers are much more capable and expensive than anyone Rush could retire, is at risk of being seen as a bully, using his status and his resources to beat down a younger man whose ability to fight back is limited. Rush, on the other hand, is going against his own word. When he was let go by WWE, he claimed that he was going to forget about wresting and focus on making a name for himself in music. Starting a battle with a legendary former pro wrestler isn’t consistent with that aim. If anything, it makes it seem like he’s clinging on to an old wrestling feud to keep himself relevant as opposed to letting go. 

Neither side of this argument benefits from going to court, and the chances that either of them could prove that the other has defamed them seem low when the concept of freedom of speech is taken into account. The best thing to do would be to drop it all and walk away. If Rush wants to become a musician, he should make music. He doesn’t need Mark Henry’s approval to do that, and Henry shouldn’t have anything to say about it.