Mr. Olympia is one of those contests that always has its fair share of controversy, as you can expect from an event of this caliber. With that in mind, the Mr. Olympia 1980 was particularly controversial since a lot of people ended up not agreeing with the results, especially when it comes to the winner and the way the IFBB chose him.
What happened during 1980 Mr. Olympia
The Mr. Olympia finals were quite impressive with a lot of grand names being a part of the event. Frank Zane was the reigning champion, and Mike Mentzer was the favored challenger. Another important competitor was Boyer Coe, which had extremely good conditioning at the time. However, this was also the year when Arnold Schwarzenegger chose to come out of retirement, all while training for his Conan the Barbarian movie.
It was an unexpected return, and obviously many competitors didn’t see that coming. Arnold was already out of the bodybuilding world, at least from a competitive standpoint. Yet he decided to come back, to his competitor’s chagrin.
Why did Arnold win?
Arnold ended up against Mentzer, Zane and the other stars. He was lacking in leanness and muscularity, but he made up for that with his charisma. In fact, he was telling jokes to his competitors in an effort to break their concentration and it did work quite well for him. After that, he was striking poses and people were appreciating him.
IFBB chose its finalists in Chris Dickerson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, something that severely affected Mike Mentzer which was the fan favorite at that time. Schwarzenegger even made some questionable remarks about Mentzer, stating that his stomach was fat, which made the latter very furious. Arnold eventually won, and that made everyone upset. Some people in the crowd even decided to boo the decision and thought it was something unfair.
Mike Mentzer ended up being so affected by this decision to the point where he ended up retiring. The sad thing is that his health ended up getting worse and worse due to mental health issues caused by this problem. Some say that Mentzer continued to carry this grudge in his heart, and it eventually brought his demise in 2001.
It’s said that eventually Mentzer and Schwarzenegger eventually settled their feud before the former passed away. However, it seems the feud was settled way into the 1990s, so close to Mentzer’s death. This is one of the many controversies surrounding Mr. Olympia, but also one of the most iconic and which brought long-lasting effects for the entire industry!
