You make it seem as though Henry had control over his character or his booking for those fourteen years. Fact is he has always been terribly misused, and they certainly could have gotten more out of him. I don't blame him if he leaves, he finally got tired of the s***
There's some validity to this. Henry didn't have control over his character but, then again, very very few wrestlers ever do. A lot of big names in WWE have been stuck with either lousy gimmicks or lousy programs over the years: The Rock, John Cena, The Undertaker, Triple H, Edge, Christian, Kane, Chris Jericho, etc. are all big stars who've gone through similar "misuse" at one point. However, one way of separating the stars from the rest of the pack is seeing whether or not they can make the proverbial silk purse out of a sow's ear. Look at how many lousy feuds Taker had during the 90s such as Kamala, Giant Gonzalez, Kama, King Kong Bundy and several others. Despite not having quality to work with, Taker was still able to keep fans interested in those feuds. That's star quality. Some have it and some don't.
The while "misused" thing is something that's very, very overly used these days. Every bitter wrestler that comes down the pike these days seems to go online and complain about how they weren't "used right" or some other excuse to explain why they were never the star that they feel they should have been. I won't say that there aren't some that have valid claims but I'd say the vast majority of them are just not nearly as good as they thought they were.
Since last summer, Mark Henry has been great in my view. Has he always been that way? Not by a long show. Maybe things could have been different for Henry but let's not let the past 8 months or so cloud the fact that Henry has been damn near unwatchable for much of his WWE career. I can't say whether or not Henry is "soft" because, honestly, who really knows all the goings on backstage? The dirtsheets certainly don't, despite whatever claims they might make. I do know that Henry is getting older. True, 40 is still pretty young in the grand scheme of things but Henry is also legitimately close to weighing 400 pounds. He's been that size for much of his adult life, so couple that with the wear & tear of the road & him getting older, then you might have a recipe for potential disaster. Maybe getting out while he's still got his health for the most part is the way to go.
At the end of the day, I don't think Mark Henry has a lot to complain about. He made a ton of money in WWE, probably wasn't worth it for the vast majority of his career, and he's had one of the most dominant World Championship runs in recent years.
