Over the weekend, millions of people were finally treated to the airing of ‘The Last Dance,” a documentary series focusing on Michael Jordan and his final season with the Chicago Bulls.
Since Jordan and the Bulls are so much in the news right now, it has gotten an assortment of stories to come out that we haven’t heard before.
Mark Henry, who is a former WWE wrestler and the team captain for the US Olympic Weightlifting team at the 96 Olympics, recalled an incident where he first met Jordan and how unpleasant it was…mostly for the Great one.
“At the 1996 Olympics, I was friends with Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, David Robinson. I knew guys personally. I went to the hotel with Charles. 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.’”
Henry continued, “It didn’t matter (that I knew him). It was the [principle]. 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 went on to claim that Jordan changed his tune after that incident:
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“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,” said Henry.
Due to an injury, Henry wound up finishing in 14th place at the 1996 Olympics in weightlifting, but he really gained national attention when he took his talents to the WWE.
