The Man Who Beat Eminem at the 1997 Rap Olympics Says Em Choked, Calls Him “Flawless,” and Still Hasn’t Seen the Footage

Otherwize gave his longest account yet of the loss that ended up in 8 Mile. He gives Eminem a lot more credit than you might expect.

Every Eminem fan knows the shape of the story. In late 1997, a broke Marshall Mathers flew to Los Angeles for the Rap Olympics, made it all the way to the one-on-one final, and lost. Not long after, his Slim Shady EP made its way to Dr. Dre. The man who beat him that night was Otherwize, a battle rapper out of L.A.'s Project Blowed scene, and for almost three decades he has mostly stayed quiet about it.

That changed in a long, multi-part interview with the YouTube channel PANDA CHOP! News. Part 7, titled "Otherwize vs Eminem: What REALLY Happened at the '97 Rap Olympics?!", went up on October 14, followed by Part 8, "Where Is The Footage?!", on October 15. A quote card from the interview spread across Eminem fan accounts on X this week:

In a new interview, underground rap legend Otherwize, who defeated Eminem in the final of the 1997 Rap Olympics, talks about Marshall.

Southpawer (@Southpawer) October 22, 2026

Quotes below are transcribed by us from the video's captions and lightly trimmed for filler words ("you know what I mean"). Nothing has been reworded.

"It was no clear winner up until when he choked"

Otherwize admits his own memory of the battle is hazy, and says he has never seen the full tape. What he does remember is that the final was close enough that the hosts kept sending them back out. "Even when me and him had went at it, they still told us to go like another two more rounds," he said. "It was that close."

His version lines up with the one Eminem himself has told. On Rock the Bells radio years ago, Em said he couldn't remember a single line Otherwize said, only that he was screaming in his face, and that it didn't matter anyway because "I had already choked." Otherwize agrees that was the turning point:

Otherwize: "It was no clear winner up until when he choked. That's the only way... It's like a knockdown. If he wouldn't have choked, then... And by him choking, he knows, 'cause he's a freestyle MC, battle rapper dude too. He knows what it means when you choke in front of another thirsty MC."

The interviewer's reply: "He made a whole movie on it." The final battle of 8 Mile, where B-Rabbit flips the script after choking earlier in the film, has always been read partly as Eminem working through nights like this one.

Otherwize also says that after the choke, Em lost his footing and the bars turned into pure anger: "He just started cussing me out after that part. It wasn't even about rhyming anything."

Why he kept walking off stage

The most interesting part of the interview is Otherwize explaining his strategy, which he credits to advice from a fellow Project Blowed veteran who warned him not to give Eminem a target. Rather than stand in front of Eminem and give him material, he hid behind curtains, walked away mid-round and even wandered toward the bar. That is where the quote fans have been sharing comes from:

Otherwize: "With an MC like Eminem, as long as you're in his face doing something, he's creative enough to break down what you're doing and make you look stupid. But if you're not in front of him doing anything, then he has to work off of just pure imagination or storytelling, or depending on the written rhymes that he already had."

He was blunt about how good the young Eminem was on the clips that do exist. "When I hear his verses, the [stuff] is flawless battle magic," he said. "On the highlight tape, the dude is flawless. I ain't going to lie."

He also points out that nobody in that L.A. room knew who they were watching: "It's not who we see him as as we've grown to know him. He was just a random white boy up there."

"I have nothing bad to say about him"

Otherwize says some of his friends expect him to hold a grudge. He doesn't, and his praise goes well past the battle:

Otherwize: "He's doing exactly what I would have done in that position. He's really a student of the craft. He really knows his history about hip-hop and rap. He's really pushed the envelope in that shock rap... The technical skill, craft, MC, showmanship, I have nothing bad to say about him as far as that."

He did add one criticism in the same breath, saying Eminem's early drug-heavy content helped shape the generation that came after him. But on rapping, he gave no ground at all.

Asked what Eminem's face looked like when the result was announced, Otherwize said he has no idea. "He disappeared... I don't even think we shook hands. I was straight to the bar." He added: "I never seen him again after that."

The 1999 "racist" comment

The interviewer then read Otherwize a quote that has circulated for years, attributed to Eminem in a 1999 online chat, in which he supposedly called Project Blowed "racist" and said he "can't respect them for what went down." Otherwize pushed back hard on the label, pointing to the white, Asian and Latino members in the collective: "That's not correct at all."

He called it "a weak ass answer" for someone who went on to become the biggest rapper in the world, then softened right after when the interviewer noted Eminem was young at the time: "If that's '99, then that's to be expected. I would have said the same thing. That's only two years. It's still fresh."

We could not find the original 1999 chat transcript, so treat the Eminem quote itself as reported, not confirmed. The interviewer said as much on camera.

The Rolex, and the footage nobody has seen

Otherwize confirmed the one-on-one winner took home $500 and a Rolex, but corrected an old story that the watch was stolen the same night. He says he had it for weeks, kept it in a coffee mug on top of his TV next to his trophies, and showed it to his stepdad. "I battled some white boy last night," he remembers telling him. Later, when "My Name Is" hit TV, the conversation changed: "Oh, this is the guy that you beat?"

The footage is the part fans care about most, and it still isn't out. Otherwize says he has never seen the whole battle and has to piece the story together from other people's memories "because they're holding on to the footage." DJ Breeze, who co-produced the 2021 documentary Where We're From: Rise of LA Underground Hip Hop, told HipHopDX at the time that Eminem bought all the footage so nobody could see the battle. That claim has never been confirmed by Eminem's camp, and Otherwize didn't say who "they" are.

Twenty-nine years later, he seems at peace with the way it played out. "You could either win and be interviewed and respected for that one win, or you can be a mega superstar," he said. "And if that's what you want, they're going to know the other guy's name too... The way that aligned is beautiful."

What we could not verify

The Part 7 quotes above come from the video's auto-generated captions, checked against the flow of the conversation; we did not timestamp-check every word against the audio. Part 8 ("Where Is The Footage?!") has no captions available, so nothing in this article is quoted from it. The captions don't clearly name the Project Blowed veteran who advised him. The 1999 Eminem chat quote and the claim that Eminem bought the battle footage are both secondhand and unconfirmed.

Header image: Otherwize in his interview with PANDA CHOP! News (frame from YouTube video). Credit: PANDA CHOP! News.