I never said that Waller didn't shrink when he was off. Never said it was not wrong to take that stuff no matter what the era. As I have never actually met Heath I cannot comment on whether or not he is a great guy. Waller I can. Franco too. Zane, Robinson, Draper, Mentzer and several others as well. Heath may well be a nice guy but his physique is even more dependent upon drugs than people of of thirty and more years ago. It is what it is and I didn't particularly like it then and even less so now which is a major reason I stopped going to gyms and train at home.
I don't pretend to know the old days nearly so much as someone like Stuntmovie. In the world of bodybuilding I was a nobody back then, but the guys that trained at the gyms pretty much treated everybody the same, as a friend or at least a potential one. No big deal. They would still spot you, call you by name and give you a hard time for missing a lift or a workout.
The jokes about the "Weider Principles" were damn funny no matter how many times we said them.
I never said you did. point is those guys were just as dependent on drugs to look the way they did as the guys of today.
Yes, they have upped the ante to ridiculous heights, and i think they have gone too far as well, but it's all relative. No drugs= no bodybuilder..just as true in the 70s as it is today.
BBing was in it's infancy then, there wasn't a fraction of the money in the sport as there now, and they were just regular guys who were kind of making it up as they went along.so I can see where there would be a lot more comraderie as compared to today, now you have sponsorships, gurus, big prize money...the "innocence" of those days is long gone...but that's like anything else that starts small and then the mainstream gets a hold of it.