Jesus fuck you can win 4k friday night racing the local dirt track then race an hour away Saturday night and do it again all summer long. Meanwhile these guy can only do how many shows a year and only the top guy gets 10k and it only pays down 5 spots? The guys who got paid made about 2k on average several guys didn't get paid ay all and These guys are spending more money prepping and travelling than they are making. This is considered professional bodybuilding lol amateur redneck race car drivers make more money. It cost 2k just to fly to Puerto Rico and get a hotel
Racing is more popular, bottom line. It doesn't matter how hard you think bodybuilders work to prepare for a show. What matters is the finished product.
Cars racing around at ridiculous speeds, often crashing into each other, provides more entertainment value than swole guys flexing in posing trunks.
Big muscles only go mainstream when their possessors ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING WITH THEM that looks awesome and entertaining. See American Gladiators from the 80s and early 90s.
Only a handful of those bodybuilders were IFBB pros; and those were the women (Tonya "Gold" Knight" and Shelly "Siren" Beattie).
The rest were state/national-level NPC bodybuilders: Billy "Thunder" Smith (training partner of IFBB/WBF pro, "The Future" Jim Quinn), Erika "Diamond" Andersch, Raye "Zap" Hollitt, Lori "Ice" Fetrick, Steve "Tower" Henneberry, etc.
But, they made WAY MORE MONEY than the average IFBB pro.
Why? THEY ACTUALLY DID STUFF with their muscle (women's powerball was my personal favorite
).