Van, Shawn said on here and several times in the mags that he was trying to get in Flex's head A la Muhammad Ali, he said he saw Flex as a threat and if he could get Flex off his game it was good for Shawn. And it worked to some extent. There was a deep, deep seated rivalry between the two, but a love/hate relationship. Flex showed he was paying attention to what Shawn accused him of in his vid "Hardbody", from 1993. He had scrapped his calve and flexed it and said his calf implants are leaking. Which is what Shawn accused him of.
Now, I have posted a rare pic from the 93 Arnold that shows clear striations and split calves from the back. ND has it, i scanned it from a magazine.
I believe that if Flex was using something in his calves it would have been Escilene, he admitted to using it in his delts in a t formation, back in the early 90's. When I mentioned that if he used it there why not somewhere else, Shawn had agreed with me.
Manfred was a guinea pig for Chris Clark. I am 99% sure that most of those pics are from 95-96. My first bodybuilding mag was a 1994 Ironman, and I read most from the latter part of that yr. No Manfred. Only by late 95 or 96 did he start showingup in mags, in particular Musclemag and Flex. Both did articles or interviews on him. And made comments that his arms were not as hard as Robby Robinson's.
