Michael Jordan’s competitive mindset is one of the reasons he is regarded by many as basketball’s GOAT.
Jordan won six NBA titles and five MVP awards as part of a glittering career at the top level.
But his fire to succeed and drive consistently higher standards led to fall outs too, including with his teammates.
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While younger fans got to witness that competitive edge in the Netflix series ‘The Last Dance’, WWE legend Mark Henry had his own disagreement with Jordan back at the 1992 Olympics.
The pair were both representing Team USA in Barcelona, but Henry claims Jordan ‘disrespected’ him when they met in the basketball team’s hotel.
"During that time, I went to the hotel just because I wanted to see people that I knew," Henry told Chip Brown of 247Sports.
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"[Charles] Barkley being one of those people, and David Robinson and Karl Malone. You would think in a perfect world that when somebody walks up on a group of people, they would just greet everybody, “Hey, guys. How you all doing? What’s going on?” and go from there.
"Well, when Michael walked up, that wasn’t the case. I guess I seemed out of place. And his response to me was, 'Who are you?' And I was like, 'Who the hell are you?' And you know, I started to get a little bit angry, because I was not expecting that.
"It was like a slap in the face. It’s like someone walking up and just slapping you. I was in shock. I was like this is Michael Jordan. And I’m angry, like, 'Why? Why? What the hell?'
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"He backed off. 'Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. My bad. I didn’t want to come across,' but he did. And, I’m sure that that’s not the only time something like that has ever happened in this world, but it had been a long time since that happened to me, and I wasn’t having no parts of it.”
However, Henry did say that Jordan apologised and made things right between the pair through VIP passes to the NBA All-Star game.
"The thing about it, the one thing about the story that is not told, and I guess could be told here, is he apologised," added Henry.
"A lot of people don’t remember, but the All-Star game was coming up after that and it was in San Antonio. When that came through, he invited me to the All-Star game.
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"He was having his birthday party during the All-Star game. So, his people contacted me and got me a parking pass and VIP. It was all fine and good. It all ended well. It just didn’t start off. And like I said, that’s a blip on the radar.”
Topics: NBA, Michael Jordan, WWE