For the record, Ronnie was making a lot of jokes, so he could have been just joking around.
But even at that time, he was the largest dude I ever saw.
There was a gym rat there (completely covered up even though it was 85+ degrees in the summer) who insisted he was as big as Ronnie, who to my knowledge, never competed.
In all seriousness, this gym rat got to be otherworldly humongous (like Trevor Smith big), but NEVER EVER dieted. He was a bouncer at a place where I did not work, and was always very cool to me when I would go to his place. I was too young to be in the place (strict no under 21 policy--yet you can serve/bartend at 18--wtf?)
When people would ask dude when he was going to compete, he would always have some odd explanation that he wasn't ready, he needed to bring his hams up, he recently had an injury, etc.
He eventually got so big and strong that he tore a pec, badly (like Stokely Palmer bad). He shrunk down to damn near a guy that looked like he NEVER trained. Well, I went back to school, saw him a few more times, and he got back into training. The gym owner that I knew very well would tell me that dude would train clean for about 4 weeks, then he'd be back on the sauce. He simply could not train without being on.
The gym owner was one of the coolest guys around. Not huge, openly admitted use in the 80's, and kept the place immaculate. Solid, old school equipment, and he even kept the old Nautilus pieces in very good working order. Knowledgable, always willing drop some wisdom on a kid who was going too heavy, to often, etc. Learned a lot from this guy. He even had boxes to so barbell stepups (Bulgarian old school shit) in the early 90's, when I was in high school.
