At 66, Lee Haney Finally Breaks Silence On Lee Labrada

For more than three decades, eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney said almost nothing about the man who came closest to dethroning him. Lee Labrada placed second at the 1989 and 1990 Mr. Olympia in two of the most controversial finishes in bodybuilding history.

At the drug-tested 1990 Olympia, Labrada won the first two rounds outright. He still lost. When Haney finally appeared on Labrada's podcast, he admitted what the bodybuilding world had always suspected: he was fighting for his life against a man whose physique, pound for pound, may have been the most complete ever to stand on the Olympia stage.

Now sixty-six and facing kidney failure from a congenital condition, Haney's words carry the weight of a man reflecting on a career that produced eight titles and one rival he could never fully shake.