Schwarzenegger, Mentzer, and the 'Stolen Watch'
Bodybuilding's darkest hour
The booing from the audience within the Sydney Opera House came cascading down from the balcony and picked up steam from those whose seats were on the main floor.
Arnold Schwarzenegger - booed? At a bodybuilding contest? This was a first.
He was the most heavily publicized bodybuilder in the sport's history, the man who had won more Mr. Olympia titles than anyone before him, and who had recently begun breaking into Hollywood. This was inexplicable. Or was it?
The 1980 Mr. Olympia contest was meant to be a triumphant celebration of bodybuilding’s elite, a gathering of physical marvels under the bright stage lights of one of the world’s most iconic venues. Instead, it turned into the most contentious, divisive, and suspicious competition the sport had ever seen.
For many, it marked the end of an era; not just for the competitors involved, but for the very credibility of professional bodybuilding.
At the heart of the controversy were two men: Arnold Schwarzenegger, the undisputed king of bodybuilding now turned aspiring movie star, and Mike Mentzer, a cerebral, outspoken challenger who represented a new wave of thinking in bodybuilding training.
What unfolded in Sydney on October 4, 1980, wasn’t just a clash of physiques, it was a collision of ideologies, ambitions, and the hidden machinery of a sport grappling with its own integrity.
By the dawn of the 1980s, Arnold Schwarzenegger had long since put competitive bodybuilding behind him. Having won six Mr. Olympia titles between 1970 and 1975, it was believed that the “Austrian Oak” had retired for good, redirecting his considerable charisma toward a career in Hollywood.
His role in the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron helped catapult him into the public imagination, but breaking through in feature films was proving more difficult than anticipated.
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Arnold’s big cinematic break - Conan the Barbarian - had been in limbo for two years. Producer Dino De Laurentiis harbored doubts about Arnold’s thick Austrian accent and perhaps his still-unproven box office draw. The start date for Conan kept getting pushed back.
With his star status hanging in the balance, Arnold saw an opportunity. A dramatic return to the Mr. Olympia stage that would be broadcast by CBS Sports, and a documentary to capture what was being billed as Arnold’s Comeback, would offer just the kind of spectacle that could reestablish his public dominance and help launch his film career as a leading man in feature films.
Arnold hadn't been part of the competitive circuit for five years. His appearance wouldn’t be just about reclaiming a title; it was also a maneuver designed to ignite his celebrity brand.
Suspicions were raised when it was discovered that the contest’s promoter, Arnold’s good friend Paul Graham, was the producer of the Arnold’s Comeback documentary. An Arnold loss would have rendered the film nearly worthless.
Right from the start, it was beginning to look like this was not so much a competition as it was a coronation.
Just one month shy of his 28th birthday, Mike Mentzer was the antithesis of then 33-year-old Arnold. A deep thinker who had garnered the first ever “perfect” score in bodybuilding competition at the 1978 Mr. Universe contest, Mentzer had become known not just for his body but for his mind.
His “Heavy Duty” training method rejected the marathon workouts extolled by Arnold and promoted by Joe Weider’s magazines. Mentzer utilized brief, intense sessions backed by science. In doing so, he wasn’t just challenging an entrenched training style, he was challenging the very foundation of the bodybuilding establishment.
The Weider brothers (Joe, the sport's publishing kingpin, and Ben, the head of the International Federation of Bodybuilders, the governing body of amateur and professional bodybuilding) held tremendous sway over competitions and media exposure.
Arnold, who had been brought to America from Europe by Joe Weider to market the latter’s bodybuilding products, had benefited enormously from the exposure Weider had provided.
The magazines trumpeted that Arnold followed Joe’s bodybuilding principles, which included training up to six days a week, twice a day, with up to twenty sets per body part.
Mentzer, by contrast, spent less than 45 minutes in his workouts, which were typically performed only three days per week. Moreover, he was a vocal critic of what he saw as a corrupt and cronyistic machine. His articles, interviews, and public comments increasingly put him at odds with the power structure.
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The animosity between Arnold and Mentzer quickly became personal. At the pre-contest competitor’s meeting in Sydney the morning of the competition, a heated exchange between the pair nearly devolved into a physical altercation.
The ideological battle lines had been drawn; the Sydney stage would become the battleground.
From the outset, the 1980 Mr. Olympia reeked of impropriety. Promoter Paul Graham’s dual role as event organizer and documentary producer posed a clear conflict of interest.
Worse still, the judging panel included several of Arnold’s longtime friends and allies, and just hours before the contest was to begin, veteran judge Peter McCarthy was removed from the panel under curious circumstances.
His replacement was believed to be a person who also had been a longtime friend of Arnold’s and whose judge’s credential had been revoked just two months earlier for “bad judging.”
Then came the competition. Arnold, while still genetically gifted and incredibly charismatic, was visibly off his prime. His legs lacked their usual size, which made him appear top heavy – certainly not symmetrical (which was one of the criteria for winning the contest) and he violated IFBB rules by refusing to perform certain of the mandatory poses.
Yet, inexplicably, the majority of the judging panel awarded him perfect scores. By contrast, competitors like Frank Zane (the reigning three-time Mr. Olympia), Chris Dickerson, and Mike Mentzer displayed championship-level conditioning and symmetry. Boyer Coe and Roger Walker were equally impressive.
As the results were announced and Arnold was named the winner, the audience’s reaction was immediate and ferocious. Boos rang out through the Sydney Opera House - a stunning rebuke in a sport where Arnold had been considered the greatest, and where fans typically respect the judges’ decision, even if they disagree with it.
CBS Sports had licensed from Ben Weider the exclusive rights to air their film of the event nationally, bringing the bodybuilding competition into millions of living rooms. But in the aftermath of the debacle, and despite having sent a television crew halfway around the world to film it, the network refused to broadcast the contest.
Mike Mentzer, despite clearly being among the top contenders, was relegated by the judges to fifth place. Journalists and insiders confirmed what many fans already suspected. Both Peter McCarthy and Muscle & Fitness writer Jack Neary admitted privately that they believed that Mentzer had been intentionally marked down in the scoring.
Adding insult to injury, when Muscle & Fitness published the edition that included Neary’s contest report, it also featured a full-page ad with Arnold dressed as Conan the Barbarian, endorsing Weider’s new “Olympians” supplement line.
Disgusted, disillusioned, and convinced the sport had no room for integrity, Mike Mentzer walked away from competitive bodybuilding altogether.
His exit was a seismic loss. As an athlete and thinker, he represented the future of bodybuilding; one that might have been fairer, smarter, and less dependent on personalities and politics.
The damage didn't stop in Sydney, however. The very next year, the 1981 Mr. Olympia, which was promoted by Arnold and his partner Jim Lorimer, saw Arnold’s close friend Franco Columbu win under equally dubious circumstances, despite a visibly imbalanced physique due to a recent leg injury.
Top-tier competitors, including Zane, Coe, and Mentzer boycotted the event. CBS, despite having already purchased the broadcast rights, chose not to even send a film crew. A sport once poised for mainstream legitimacy suddenly looked like a closed-shop sideshow.
For its part, the bodybuilding industry couldn’t sweep the fiasco under the rug fast enough. Many decades later, in the 2023 Netflix documentary Arnold, which chronicled Schwarzenegger’s life from Austria to the California governor’s mansion, the 1980 Olympia is conspicuously absent.
While his earlier victories are celebrated, and his post-retirement career is explored in depth, his seventh and final Olympia title is ignored. This omission is telling.
Sporting comebacks are typically glorified. Think of Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, even Tiger Woods. But Arnold’s 1980 “triumph” remains shrouded in silence. Perhaps because acknowledging it means confronting an uncomfortable truth: that perhaps Arnold’s victory that day in Australia had been crafted in the shadows by promoters, friends, and a system desperate to protect its icon.
The 1980 Mr. Olympia remains bodybuilding’s darkest hour. It ended one of the most promising careers in the sport’s history. It undermined the legitimacy of the IFBB. It drove fans and mainstream television away. And it revealed a rot at the core of the sport’s governing institutions.
Fellow 1980 Mr. Olympia competitor Roger Walker later likened Arnold’s victory to seeing a man wearing a stolen watch. “What do I say?” he asked. “Do I say, ‘Nice Watch’ or do I say, ‘Why are you wearing a stolen watch?’”
The metaphor is an interesting one, as the Sandow trophy won by Schwarzenegger that night may have shined, but more than a few believe to this day that its luster was dimmed by the suspicion of corruption.
John Little is the bestselling author of "Bruce Lee: The Warrior Within," "The Time-Saver's Workout", "Who Killed Tom Thomson?" and the two-volume book series "The Donnellys." He has authored over 40 books, and his latest release is “Mike Mentzer: American Odysseus”.
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