And that may be what this comes down to.
Ronnie was, from the stat you provided, 55-lb heavier than Flex.
That's over 20% heavier!
To me, it comes down to the question is: was Flex over 20% more aesthetic, or conditioned...or some combination of the two?
Then I would go with Flex.
But by your standard, if we take sheer freaky mass out of the picture, then Flex would almost universally be regarded as superior in terms of aesthetics.
My question is: how else was bodybuilding expected to evolve?
It seems to me it made sense that bodybuilding would continue to reward mass monsters until finally, we got these new categories.
Bodybuilding is hard to judge.
Also another point to add - I think most of the poses where Flex looks prettier than Ronnie are from the front. I'd be hard pressed to give him any back poses over Ronnie.
For me personally, I had never seen anything like Ronnie in 2003.
Here's the thing with the "evolution" of bodybuilding. Size doesn't mean it's moving in the right direction when it comes at the expense of aesthetics and details like separation, conditioning , tie-ins and guts. So to me, bodybuilding peaked in 93. While 98 and 99 were good years I question the validity of body parts in those years and after 99 it went downhill hard. Then there were just some good bodybuildefs sporadically since then. Wolfe, Dexter, 09 Jay, 07 Victor, Phil, 2012 Kai, 2018 Rhoden.
I'm not a fan of Ramy's physique, it's littered with flaws. Curry's legs from the rear are shameful in terms of definition and size. He was the best of a mid grade bunch.
Anyway, you're right, from the rear, Ronnie dominated Flex in terms of width, conditioning and size.
To get back to evolution, bodybuilding should have always been about bringing in the least flawed or most perfect physique and each era would have had their athletes. I think we can safely say that Ramy, Jay, Nick Walker and 03-06 Ronnie do not display an ideal combo of size, aesthetics, conditioning, separation. Imo, they display Size with all the other stuff sprinkled in to varying degrees and that has been the problem visually and health wise.
I don't think anyone would be complaining if these guys would all come in looking like their versions of 93 judging standards. Bodybuilding would be alot more popular and alot more bodybuilders would still be alive.
