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Bottom line: they were very comparable. Who was better is personal taste. Top-notch tier-B Olympians. Both far too flawed to be in the same sentence with Coleman, Schwarzenegger & Oliva. Let alone being any better than guys who would've beaten them in fair contests, like Wheeler, Dillet, Levrone, Nasser, etc.
Hope this helps
Lee Haney was not any tire-B, you retard. He won eight Olympias, five of those with straight-firsts scores. No other bodybuilder carried 250 lbs with as much quality as Haney. He could do a vacuum pose at that weight, and his serratus separations were second to none. Not only that, he set the standards for deltoid width-to-waist-ratio. I personally think he should have lost in 1990 to Benfatto, but the bottom line is that is that Lee was on another level when it came to pectoralis, latissimus and deltoid development, and although he wasn't as symmetrical as Benfatto in terms of muscular proportionality and structure, he was still able to hold his own in two of the three angles of the symmetry round - from the sides and back -, and won convincingly five o the seven mandatories in the symmetry round, with the other two being debateable - Benfatto had a smaller hips, which helped him in the abs-and-thighs, besides having better abdominal and serratus separations, and was also more complete in the side triceps shot. As for shape, Benfatto had smaller joints and rounder muscle bellies, but Haney had a more dramatic clavicle-to-waist ratio, thus matching him for aesthetics.
Haney was not lacking in structure. This is a given. Look at him and you'll observe that the legh of his legs are in proportion to his torso, and that his clavicle-to-hips ratio was one of the best ever. Fantastic! And as great as his skeletal structure goes, Lee Haney didn't lack a single muscle. Observe, as an example, the place where his vastus lateralis and medialis heads insert, and you'll see that the isertion points are close to his knees. This is also true when it comes to the back: his latissimus, teres major and minor as well as the infra-spinatus all insert way down the tendom, with his latissimus inserting close to his kidneys. Lee Haney's incredible structure as well as long muscle bellies allowed him to a be a big competitor who also was able to compete with the smaller guys in the symmetry round.
So Lee Haney is symmetrical both from a skeletal as well as muscular point of view, but the real question is: How did these advantages work for him i the symmetry and muscularity rounds of all the bodybuilding contests he took part of? Well, Haney was at a disadvantage from the sides in terms of symmetry to a great extent, because the few muscle that he was lacking in were mostly visible from this angle. When standing relaxed from the sides in the relaxed round, Lee Haney's incredible serratus separations was down played because his calves were small, and his vastus lareralis was out of proportion with his very thick pectoralis major muscle, thus resulting in a poor view as far as symmetry is concerned. Regardless, he lacked the faults that are so common among recent bodybuilders, such as a distended midsection, and he had classically separated intercostals and serratus. Notwithstading his ew flaws, he was able to match his competitors in the relaxed side shot. Now, from the back, the first thing that caught your attention about Lee Haney was his incredible taper, the result of his genetically narrow hips and wide cobra lats. His competitors might have had smaller waists, but Haney had the better taper overral, so he wins the back angle of the symmetry round covincingly. The one angle I thik Lee Haney had problems was from the front. The reasons for this are several-fold: his clavicles, although very wide, were not able to give him an advantage in taper due to his hips which, although narrow, were not so narrow as that of guys like Ray and Benfatto; his abdominal separations didn't shine as much as that o the smaller guys, and his quadriceps, although the most massive omong that os his competitors, had defective separations between vastus lateralis, medialis and sartorius when compared to the ultra-shredded ones of the smaller guys. Regardless, Lee Haney wins the symmetry round overral, due to him being better in two of the three angles of the round - the sides and back. And regardless, the symmetry round is only 50% of the judging, and Lee Haney was as good as any at this round, although usually not the best overral.
Moving on the the mandatories, you understand that Lee Haney wins five of the seven convincingly because his few symmetrical liabilities were mostly visible from the sides, and his sheer volume was obvious, and he was able to present them with great separations even when he was of, due to his incredible genetics for separations. from the front, he only would be challenged in the abs-and-thighs, because this mandatory is all about separations between the four quadriceps heads and abdomen and serratus, and while Lee Haney was more massively developed when it came to quads, he was lacking in separation overral when compared to the smaller guys. Besides the abs-and-thigh, the only other mandatory that Haney could lose would be the side triceps, due to his poor outer triceps head, small calves and a disbalance between pectorialis and vastus medialis. Regardlles, he won the front lat spread covincingly due to his advantage in latissimus width and taper, the front double biceps because, although his biceps were lacking in peak - and only in peak -, they were huge and Lee Haney had the advantage in quadriceps and pectoralis development. He won the side chest for the simple reason that his pectoralis were thicker, not to mentio that he had, like Arnold, an incredible upper pec development, giving his pecs an incredible shape. His weakness here was the same as the one he had in the side triceps: the calves. Now, This was not a problem for Lee Haney, because, while in the side triceps shot his weak calves were complimented by equally weak triceps, this is not the case in the side chest, where the relatively sub-par calves of Lee Haney are the only real liability that he has; it is unlikely that this, by itsel, would be enough to make him lose the pose considering his massive advantages in muscularity. The real lat spread is where Lee Haney was really dominant, except for his relatively poor calves. He possessed incredible symmetry due to his taper, and his latissimus was on it's ow league, both in terms of width and thickness. The back double biceps was another pose where Lee Haney dominated, although not to the same extent that on the reart lat spread. This pose again emphasizes separations and not width and thickness, and Haey was not as separated as the other smaller guys. Yet, he wo the pose overral.
Now, Lee Haney wo so many cotests due to his overral superiority in terms of muscularity and symmetry, both in terms of structure as well as muscular proportionality, but what really made him stand out was his presentation. By that, I don't mean posing; that is only part of it. Presentation emcompasses several different aspects that come together to determine the utltimate quality of a physique: posing, tanning, proper shaving, selecting the right song and the right routine, and also even things that oridinarily dont come into play, such as GI health - a helthy GI makes one's skin more lustrous, thus giving the competotors a healthier, more conditioned look. Lee Haney was always right on target on contest day, and everything in his physique was precisely tunned to make his shine. For instance, when posing he would tilt his back and contract his neck up and down. This brought up the trpaezius and teres tie-inseparations while doing the back double biceps, which is usually not seen. About six weeks befor the contst, Lee Haney started to do Yoga breathing exercises, so that he could force his sternum out while simulatenously contracting the muscles of the abdominal cavity, thus bringing out the coveted vacuum pose. Lee Haney also took a shot of intavenous vasodilator right befre the contest, so as to cause expansion of the capillaries and brig out the most vascularity. All of this added up to the presentation. he musics were had usually heroid themes, such as Mozart's 9nth Symphony. He would cotract his muscles very quickly and then he would make a abrup strop, thus transmitting a general idea of power and dominance. This is in cotrast to bodybuilder like Lee Labrada, who always preferred ballads and erudit music, which suited more his classical physique, and transmitted an idea of contemplation and beauty.
This all added up with Lee Haney's conditioning, which was usually the best onstage besides that of Rich Gaspari - and Labrada at the 1988 Olympia, which was one of the best coditionings ever wittnessed onstage. Lee Haney pioneered the concepts of carb-loading and Sodium depletion for increasing intra-muscular water stores while simultaneously depleting water sub-cutaneously. He would eat no more than 50 grams of complex carbs a day for the last two weeks beore the contest and then, three days out, he would increase his intake to 1000 grams a day, while simultaneously he would stop drinking water and would ingest no Sodium at all, thus forcing out all the water from beneath his ski to inside his muscles, to be stored together with the carbs as glycogen. This all resulted in a physique characterized by incredibly full muscles, with great separations and dryness. Even to this day, this is the best way to dry out without diuretics. Besides, Lee Haney was blessed with incredible genetics or separations, so he would be shredded even when retaining water. So, Lee Haney presented the most muscular and symmetrical - both in terms of skeletal as well as muscular proportionality - physique of his era to it's best, and he would be very separated even when off. Game over. Lee Haney: great champion and arguably the greatest Mr.Olympia ever in terms of actual physique.
SUCKMYMUSCLE
