Ahead of the Michael Jordan documentary series The Last Dance premiering on ESPN tonight, WWE Hall of Famer Mark Henry reflected on a tense encounter he had with the six-time NBA Champion back in 1996. At the time Henry was being pushed as the most popular Olympic lifter in US history, conducting interviews with Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and Oprah Winfrey while also appearing on HBO Inside Sports and The Today Show. He was also friends with a few members of the Olympic men’s basketball team including Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and David Robinson. But when Jordan spotted him hanging out with them during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, he was abrasive.
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“I went to the hotel with Charles,” Henry explained on Busted Open Radio (h/t Fightful for transcript). “As we’re in the lobby, Michael walks up. It’s not, ‘Hey guys, how are you doing?’ It was was, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ And that was the introduction. Charles was like, ‘Ohhhhhh.’
“It didn’t matter (that I knew him). It was the [principle of the matter]. You don’t walk up to Mark Henry and talk to me like I’m some kind of peon. I was somebody in the world. Maybe I didn’t make the money you made, people don’t know my name, I don’t sell a billion dollars in shoes. But I’m Mark Henry. And if I wanted to snuff your lights out, I would do it in a heartbeat. Charles smoothed it over. The [Michael] was like, ‘My bad, I didn’t want to come across like that.’ But he did. Of course, he smoothed it over and said he wasn’t trying to disrespect me.”
Henry added he easily could have beaten Jordan if the two had come to blows, adding “I looked at him like I was going to snap my fingers and it was gonna be like Thanos and he would disappear. I put him in his place.”
The former World Heavyweight Champion said things got smoothed out after that, with Jordan inviting him to that year’s NBA All Star Game and his birthday party.
Due to an injury Henry wound up finishing in 14th place at the 1996 Olympics in weightlifting, though his popularity helped gain the attention of Vince McMahon and eventually led to Henry becoming a pro wrestler.
