Sorry dude, but BBing is about size, symmetry and conditioning and having little to no flaws, Yates was huge and got hard as hell but toward the last years of his career, he got caught up on being bigger and bigger and lost his sharpness and almost any straiation he might have had before, Shawn had all of that and there are pics floating of him completly owning Yates........dude, get off the size thing, thats not all of what BBing should be about!
The irony of you telling me to get off the size thing , I ( especially me ) know its not all about size but you're wrong Yates typically stayed between 257-265 pounds his Olympia career whole career , so he roughly stayed around the same weight give or take 10 pounds , with the exception of 1992 he was 242 pounds and very depleted and conditioning was never an issue for Dorian not even at his biggest which was 1997 he was still bone dry and rock hard his problems weren't to much size and conditioning it was torn muscles and he had the same striations in 91 and in 97
I know its not about size and it shouldn't be about size but I'm only commenting on what is not what should be , and you look at history the last Mr Olympia around 200 pounds was Samir Bannout in 1983 , the trend was going up starting with Haney , then Yates and Ronnie . Shawn was 5'7" and weighed 205 pounds he was competing in the time of the giants in 1994 which some harp on as Shawn's Olympia it wasn't even close , Dorian was 262 pounds Vs Shawn's 205 pounds thats almost a 60 pound muscle advantage he wasn't compensating for that
The same with Lee Labrada Vs Haney it wasn't a small mans game anymore , Shawn would have flourished in the 1970s very early 1980s he was born for the wrong era , 1994 Mr Olympia wasn't a contest on paper or off Shawn Ray was very lucky to place second place , he only beat Levrone by virtue of a better posing routine not by virtue of his physique because after the pre-judging Shawn was trailing Kevin for second place ( a distant second I might add ) 1994 was a close contest after all , close between second and third , Dorian was clearly ahead of the two , and this is a quote from Shawn post-contest
Flex magazine January 1995 Shawn Ray
Dorian was a bigger version of what he's been. I'm not a fan in the sense that his physique is something I aspire to attain. Dorian is in his own class and in his own little world. For that reason, there's nobody they can compare like-to-like with Dorian. They can only bring forward a different package.
( 1994 Mr Olympia ) Tonight I feel that I got what I deserved. With a beaming smile , Shawn concluded: " This is the first time in three years I haven't ' retired ' the night of the show and got drunk. "
