RIP... To the guru of modern bodybuilding.
wow that's a shame. i still get muscle and fitness mags and read them regularly as i love bodybuilding and the feeling I get from working out. Few things make me feel better than a good workout. RIP Joe.
RIP - he was an interesting person for sure. He had a nice long life, but I wasn't particularly a fan. I respect what he did for bodybuilding in general, since he was one of the pioneers in making it mainstream. However, as a former competitor, I thought his products and pitch were misleading. Nonetheless, it's a shame to see him pass.
RIP Arnold thru Gaines/Butler, Joe Gold, Jack Lalanne, Hoffman, Kennedy made weight training/bodybuilding to the public in general what it is just as much as the Weiders. But the Weider bros. could have done more to turn BB towards a legitimate sport instead of the bizarre cult of drugs that it is now.
Yup - agreed 100%, main part of my comments above. Too many deaths - Momo Benaziza, Andreas Munzer, Mike and Ray Mentzer, Steve Michalik, Paul DeMayo, the list goes on. Don't get me wrong, MLB, NHL, and NFL are complicit too, but it's really evident in the BB scene.
In the early 80's they actually had hopes of BB getting into the Olympics, not so strange when you know what had been going on in Olympic lifting for decades but ......... anyway the IFBB was really the only show in town and certain publications the only ones that could make a career. Just look at RR's story in the late 70's early 80's. Politics played a big role. The last somewhat normal appearing champ was Haney. If TPTB had wanted to, the sport could have been steered toward what it had been, balance, proportions, symmetry, instead outrageous bizarre size was rewarded. It became a joke losing all pretense of any claim to athletics and/or healthy competition.
That quest for bizarre size often made me wonder about Weider - another story for another day, but I wholeheartedly agree. I read some comments from Robinson about the drug use and how the sub-culture has enabled BB to avoid scrutiny. My opinion - not unlike other pro sports - these people devote a lot of time and energy to become pro. Simply injecting steroids will NOT get you there. If these guys looked more balanced - like Steve Brisbois - then maybe the overload and experimentation would dissipate. I have no hope of that. I thought that would have been the Weider brothers' legacy, but instead it was the opposite. Bodybuilding rivals Pro Wrestling and the Adult Film industry for premature deaths and wacky people / stories.
This link goes to the point in the discussion where the wrong turn was made back in the early 90's. TPTB who picked all the judges and instructed them on the criteria and created the scorecard categories could have easily steered the sport in a different direction and looked above board doing so. But they chose not to (jumps to point in the discussion) 2012 IFBB Masters Olympia Legends Seminar - Available at Prime Cuts Bodybuilding DVDs - YouTube The roid subject has come up in a number of threads and I will try to make it clear, 3 different era's silver age 40's - mid 60's no drugs, golden age mid-60's - end of 80's heavy use of "mild" drugs, modern age early 90's - till now heavy use of very potent new drugs. Silver age what you see is real, golden age 25lb+- gift from drugs, modern age 40lb+- premium on top of golden age gift. Best example imo would be the guy who competed in both era's and was sporting 50lbs of new muscle in his 40's after looking like an average dude in the interim. I believe this video describes the beginning of the modern era; Growth Hormone Side Effects And Danger !!! - YouTube All the top guys since then have had the pregnant gut which should have been a very negative judging factor, one way to remove it from the sport w/o worrying about testing.
