Photo: Koimoi

Mark Henry Reveals Incredible Story About An Intense First Encounter With Michael Jordan During The 1996 Olympics

During the NBA hiatus, and thanks to ESPN and Netflix’s joint production ‘The Last Dance’, a 10-part documentary about Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls, the entire basketball world was talking about Jordan. Numerous new stories about him have come to light… which is great.

One of these stories was revealed by none other than WWE superstar, Mark Henry. Henry’s story is from when he was an Olympic weightlifter, and took place during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. 

It was the first encounter of the two legends and it turned out to be incredibly unpleasant, first for both, but then mostly for Jordan.

“At the 1996 Olympics, I was friends with Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, David Robinson. I knew guys on the team personally. I went to the hotel with Charles. As we’re in the lobby, Michael walks up. It’s not, ‘Hey, how are you doing guys…?’ 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… 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. [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.”

“It was real cool then because he was under the microscope of his peers. They were looking at him like, ‘Why did you do that? He didn’t do anything to you.’ Now he’s talking to me with kid gloves. Not to mention, I looked at him like I was going to snap my fingers and it was gonna be like Thanos and would he disappear. I put him in his place,”.