MacDonald was the man... (Singlet and T-shirt only, flat back on bench).
Shortly after finishing his basic training, he was sent for a year to Vietnam, and he says he passed the long nights in the bush by dreaming that one day he would follow the lead of Ronnie Ray and create world records in the bench press when his life returned to normal. Happily, it wasn’t too long in coming, and he spent his final year in the service stationed in Minneapolis, where he had good training facilities and such workout partners as Ken Patera, the giant American Olympic lifter and all-around strongman.
Under these conditions his bench press and his bodyweight both shot up, and within a year he had brought his bench up from a post-Vietnam 230 to an official 480, weighing 215. The next year he entered the Junior National Powerlifting Championships (open to anyone who has won neither the Seniors or the Juniors) and not only made a new bench press record with 539, but also squatted 655, and deadlifted 640 to total 1,835 and win the Best Lifter trophy. These lifts demonstrate what Mike can do in the squat and deadlift if he trains on them, which he rarely does, preferring instead to specialize in the bench.
In 1973, he trained down to the light-heavyweight class again and set an American record (world records not yet being official) of 487.75. Following the 484.75, he made a 470 official world record (which I described earlier) at the 1973 World Championships, a record which still stands as this is being written. The following year Mike went up to the middle-heavyweight (198.75 pound) class, and at the state meet in Minnesota he shattered the world bench press record twice by lifting 535 and 540 back to back, yet these two great lifts were never official because there were no high-ranking cardholders present to “pass” the lifts.
Mike then moved up into the newly formed 220.5-pound class and broke his friendly archrival Larry Pacifico’s world record in the bench my making 555. 75. Later that year he and Larry met head to head in he 1974 World Championships in York, Pennsylvania, and when the chalk dust settled, Larry had driven Mike to another world record in the 220’s, this time with 573.25, which as of June 1977 was still the record. The 573.25 is not, however, Mike’s best official effort in this class because early in 1975 he hoisted 585 in a contest in North Dakota only to lose the lift as a world record because of the aforementioned problem of cardholders.
In 1975, Mike made a judgmental error by driving 1,300 miles almost straight through on the day of the National Championships. He was so fatigued that he did far less than his best and was outbenched by the powerful Pacifico. Stung by the defeat, Mike dropped again into the 198.75-pound class and added another bodyweight class to his list of world records with a bench of 523.5. Pacifico, however, had ideas of his own about records, and he upped the mark to 529.5 and then published a challenge to Mike saying in effect, “You won in 1974, I won in 1975, so let’s have it out for the title in 1976 in the 198-pound class at the National Championships.
