Why pretend 97 Ronnie was already better than the one who would later beat Levrone, Ray, Nasser etc until they all retired?! when in 97 they were all killing him?
they do this to make dorian seem better.
after all, they claim Ronnie was 95% of his 98/99 form in 97 if not better in 97 than in 98 according to some of their posts (

), and dorian and 8 other people placed ahead of him.
so, according to their twisted logic, 98 ronnie would still lose to dorian and probably a few other people too..

of course, the problem is, that in reality, 97 ronnie was probably only 70% of what he was to look like later on by 99..
if that.
when you are competing in the top 10 of the Olympia, that last 25% size/conditioning difference makes all the difference in the world..