Wrestling and strongman competitions (2000–2002) In 2000, Henry was sent to Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) to improve his conditioning and wrestling skills. In OVW, he teamed with Nick Dinsmore to compete in a tournament for the OVW Southern Tag Team Championship in mid-2001. He also worked a couple of matches for Heartland Wrestling Association. Later that year, Henry's mother died, causing him to go on hiatus from wrestling. He felt he had to compete in the "Super Bowl of weight lifting"—the Arnold Strongman Classic—in honor of his mother, who gave him his first weight set when he was a child. Four months prior to the contest, Henry began lifting the heaviest of weights and trained for the first time since 1997 for a major lifting competition. He had never been a professional strongman before, but in the coming contest he was to face the very best of the best of professional strongmen, such as the #1 ranked strongman in the world, and defending World's Strongest Man competition winner of 2001 Svend Karlsen, World's Strongest Man winner of 2006 Phil Pfister, World Powerlifting Champion of 2001 and equipped deadlift world record holder Andy Bolton, World Muscle Power Champion, Olympic weightlifting Champion Raimonds Bergmanis, and reigning America's Strongest Man of 2001 Brian Schoonveld. On February 22, 2002, in Columbus, Ohio the competition, consisting of four events, designed to determine the lifter with the greatest overall body power, began. Henry surprised everybody when he won the first event, setting a world record in the process by lifting the Apollon's Axle three times overhead. Only three men in history had ever been able to press it at all. By deadlifting for two repetitions in the second event and easily pushing a or more Hummer with nearly flat tires in the third event, Henry kept his lead continuously throughout the competition and never gave it up again. In the final "Farmer's Walk"-event Henry quickly carried the roughly of railroad ties up an incline, winning the whole competition convincingly to capture the winning prize — a US$75,000 Hummer, a vacation cruise and $10,000 cash. Since Henry had only trained for four months and defeated the crème-de-là-crème of worldwide strongmen, who had been practicing for years, his win was a shock for strongman experts worldwide, but remained basically unnoticed by the wrestling audience. Henry proved to be worthy of the title "World's Strongest Man" not only by