EDDIE HALL has lifted the lid on how his ‘hatred’ of nemesis Hafthor Bjornsson started.
Speaking to Muscle and Health, Hall admitted he ‘wants to hurt’ Bjornsson, 33, after the Icelander’s allegations of cheating at World’s Strongest Man 2017.
And Hall, 34, fired out a chilling warning by adding: “Thor wronged me.”
The behemoths will battle it out in the boxing ring next month to settle their feud dating back five years.
Both former World’s Strongest Men winners, Bjornsson contested Hall’s victory in 2017 by claiming the Brit ‘cheated’ during the Viking press event.
It sparked years of animosity between the pair before things finally spilled over in 2020, when Bjornsson beat Hall’s world record deadlift by one single kilo.
And nearly two years on, the pair will finally let their fists do the talking in Dubai.
But Hall believes he will get the vengeance he’s been seeking for half a decade by ‘banging out’ Bjornsson in the desert.
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Hall said: “I want to hurt him. This is a serious fight. We actually genuinely hate each other.
“I just want to bang this guy out, bang him out again, and then just get him out of my headspace because I’ve just spent too much time fixated on wanting to hurt this man and I just need to move on.
“He wronged me in 2017, he’s put a black cloud over me for a number of years. I just want to put that to bed and move on with my life.”
Hall also belittled Bjornsson’s own WSM win in 2018 and reckons the Game of Thrones star’s 501kg deadlift was ‘b******t’.
Hall added: “The only reason Thor took the World’s Strongest Man title is because I retired, so he’s welcome. He’s welcome that I retired.
“He’s lucky I retired, or else he never would have won the World’s Strongest Man.
“He then went and did some b******s home gym hero lift trying to beat my world record deadlift.
“If he beat me then the fact it was only 1kg heavier is irrelevant, but I just can’t get my head around how he can think his attempt can be legitimate.
“Who checked the plates? His dad weighed the plates! Everything about it just stinks to me.
“Put it this way, if I pulled 500 kilos four years ago in my home gym and my own dad weighed the plates, every single person would smell b******t.”
However, Bjornsson is adamant that history will show he was the better strongman.
Bjornsson said: “Eddie’s claims are hilarious. Let’s look at his career and let’s look at my career. How many titles internationally has he won? One. He competed for almost a decade, so why only one?
“Why didn’t he win any other prominent show? How many times have I won in my career? More than I can count on two hands. Who’s better? Obviously, me.
“His question mark over my world record deadlift is also laughable. I mean, I have more records than he could ever have. There’s no need for me to prove anything.
“Everything was filmed, everything was weighed. There was a high-class referee there. It was live streamed throughout the world with millions of people watching.
“We could be seen weighing each and every plate, because I wanted to make sure that it would be an official record. It’s now in the Guinness World Record Book as the heaviest lift ever. So that’s that.”
Source: Boxing - thesun.co.uk