Bodybuilder Kai Greene Banned From the 2015 Mr. Olympia (TigerFitness.com)
September 16, 2015
TigerFitness.com
Breaking news. Kai “the Predator” Greene will not be allowed to compete in the 2015 Mr. Olympia competition. In a video released last night on Youtube, the top contender for Phil Heath’s crown made the announcement that he was officially banned from competition.
Speculation abounds as to the circumstances behind this shocking story. One inside source claims that Kai Greene’s banning stems from his intention to release his new Dynamik supplement line at the Olympia Expo.
This source stated that Kai Greene asked for a free 20×20 Expo booth and was denied. When he was asked to pay for the booth, a standoff occurred and things escalated. The statements from this source have yet to be verified.
Update 10:44am EST: An updated report has come out stating that Kai Greene did in fact make an attempt to pay for a booth and had never asked for free space. This source is claiming that Kai Greene’s request was denied.
Update 12:17pm EST: Reports are coming in that the ban may be tied to a contractual issue with American Media (AMI), the company that owns Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness and Men’s Fitness.
Here is Kai Greene’s official statement, taken from a video he released last evening:
“I’ve got a chance to see a lot of emails and messages and things, talking about that, asking me about that. I just… This is what it looks like when a man is trying to be responsible.
Let me just say that behind the scenes there is just so much more things that are going on than I’m at liberty to share with you. There is a lot more that’s happening, and that is still in the process of happening that I cannot say.
It is a test of my resolve and my sense of personal responsibility to exist here in this moment, in this position, faced with this reality of what will be my inability to participate in the Olympia 2015.
Let me just say that I’ve invested more than 20 years of my life in the belief, the idea, of being able to come to the Olympia and to do my absolute best. Despite whatever the opposition, whatever’s said, whatever the beliefs are on stage, off stage, whatever the oppositionary forces have been.
My resolve has been to respond as a champion and just aim to represent the better thought of what that means to me.
You don’t get this far, you don’t get to this point and just stop. It doesn’t happen like that.
I am not a victim. They are not going to break me. I don’t want to speak negatively to anybody, I don’t want negatively about anything else. Let me just say there’s more going on than I’m able to say.”
Watch the entire official Kai Greene video here:
Marc Lobliner Responds to the Kai Greene Ban
“That’s right. You read the title correctly. Kai Greene, as of today, will not be competing in the Mr. Olympia 2015 in his famed rematch with Phil “the Gift” Heath.
Kai Greene did a video where he said he can’t explain it any more. Now the reason being is that he supposedly missed a registration deadline. There are also some reports of why he missed that.
kai Greene is starting a supplement line and I believe there are partners involved, which means that it’s not like Kai Greene’s going to be sitting in a polo shirt every day at a desk pushing papers. But his name is on the product.
Allegedly Kai Greene’s agent or his people went to the people that run the Olympia, who aren’t necessarily the IFBB. This is a business thing. He went to them and said hey, I’m competing in the Mr. Olympia. They requested a 20×20 booth with no union fees.
Now as someone who exhibits at the Olympia, as someone who’s done it since 2004, basically that’s 4 total spaces at $2500 per space. The union fees, depending on how elaborate the booth is, can be any where from $3000 to $10,000 to $15,000. So allegedly there was a standoff.
This is based on the information we currently have and could be 100% wrong.