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Mike Matarazzo was a Men's Open Bodybuilding competitor from the United States. Mike Matarazzo has a verified height of 5'10" (178 cm) and a recorded contest weight of 260 lb (118 kg).
1 career win
Mike Matarazzo
CountryUnited States
GenderMale
DivisionMen's Open Bodybuilding
Born1965
DiedAugust 16, 2014, aged 48
StatusRetired
Mike Matarazzo, a bodybuilder from the United States, stands 5'10" (178 cm) tall and competed at a contest weight of around 260 lb (118 kg). He was born on November 8, 1965 and died on August 16, 2014, aged 48.
Career Record
- Total Results
- 33
- Wins
- 1
- Win Rate
- 3%
- Career
- 1991–2001
- Height
- 5'10" (178 cm)
- Weight
- 260 lb (118 kg)
- Lifespan
- 1965-2014 (aged 48)
- Division
- Men's Open Bodybuilding
- Country
- United States
- Verified
- Sources
- 12
Mike Matarazzo was an American IFBB Pro who competed through the 1990s, and one of the few bodybuilders of that era remembered as much for how he carried himself on stage as for where he finished on it. He turned professional by winning the heavyweight class at the 1991 USA Championships, made seven Mr. Olympia appearances, and never won a professional show. He died of a heart attack in 2014.
Win rate here is first-place finishes as a share of all 33 recorded contest results. It is published only where a career holds at least five, because below that a single placing moves the figure by twenty points or more.
Every season on record
Olympia
1st place
2nd place
3rd place
Other
- Pro Debut
- 1991
- Last Contest
- 2001
| Year | Placement | Division |
|---|---|---|
| 1993 | 18 | Men's Open Bodybuilding |
| 1996 | 13 | Men's Open Bodybuilding |
| 1997 | 13 | Men's Open Bodybuilding |
| 1998 | 9 | Men's Open Bodybuilding |
| 1999 | 11 | Men's Open Bodybuilding |
| 2001 | 21 | Men's Open Bodybuilding |
Data updated
Known for
His calves, and the nickname that came with the rest of him. "The Boston Mass" had lower legs thick enough to carry his reputation on their own, and he put them down to years of boxing rather than to anything he did in a gym. His best Olympia finish was ninth, in 1998.
Early career
He came through the NPC and won the heavyweight class at the 1991 USA Championships, the result that made him a professional. He was on the Olympia stage the same year.
What followed was eleven seasons in the middle of a deep open division. He took fifteenth at the 1992 Arnold Classic and sixth there in 1993, was runner-up at the Pittsburgh Pro that year, and spent 1996 and 1997 touring the European Grand Prix circuit without finishing higher than ninth at any of them. The results that stand up best came at home: second at the Canada Pro Cup and second at the Toronto Pro in 1997, then third at both the Night of Champions and the Toronto Pro in 1998.
Training
He credited the calves to the ring. Matarazzo boxed before he competed, and put the development down to the hours spent up on his toes waiting on an opponent rather than to calf raises. It is the sort of claim that is easy to doubt and hard to argue with when you look at photographs of him from behind.
Championship record
Championship appearances
Counted from the same results table below: an appearance is one recorded placing at that series, a title is a first place, and Top 3 counts first, second and third together. The last row is every contest on record for Mike Matarazzo, amateur shows included.
Mr. Olympia
7Appearances
0Titles
0Top 3
Arnold Classic
3Appearances
0Titles
0Top 3
All contests on record
33Contests
1Wins
6Top 3
Physique benchmark
How Mike Matarazzo measures up
Fat-free mass index turns the height and weight on this profile into one number for how much muscle a frame carries, so a shorter competitor is not flattered by a bodyweight comparison. The normalised figure adjusts it again to a standard height, which is the version worth ranking. Both assume the 6% body fat a competitor steps on stage at, because that is the only condition the recorded weight was taken in.
35.2FFMI
35.4Normalised FFMI
41stOf 316 measured men
The closest Olympia champion on that measure is Dorian Yates, at 35.6.
What this rank is not. This database holds a height and a weight for just 463 athletes, and they are overwhelmingly the ones somebody bothered to measure: 73 of them hold an Olympia title. Almost every competitor on record carries no measurement at all. The pool also mixes every division and era together, from the lightweight women's classes to the open heavyweights, so it ranks size and nothing else. It says where Mike Matarazzo sits among the athletes we hold measurements for, not among competitors.
All results
Every contest result on record for Mike Matarazzo, 33 in all. The table opens on the first 15 and expands in place from there. Nothing sits on a separate page. Won by names the winner of the division Mike Matarazzo competed in, and shows a dash where that winner cannot be pinned to one person in the database.
| Year | Contest | Division | Place | Won by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Mr. Olympia | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #21 | Ronnie Coleman |
| 2001 | Night of Champions | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #5 | Orville Burke |
| 2000 | Night of Champions | Men's Open Bodybuilding | Unplaced | Jay Cutler |
| 2000 | Toronto Pro | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #6 | Markus Rühl |
| 1999 | Mr. Olympia | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #11 | Ronnie Coleman |
| 1998 | Mr. Olympia | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #9 | Ronnie Coleman |
| 1998 | Night of Champions | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #3 | Ronnie Coleman |
| 1998 | San Francisco Pro | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #7 | Kevin Levrone |
| 1998 | Toronto Pro | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #3 | Ronnie Coleman |
| 1997 | Canada Pro Cup | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #2 | Miloš Šarčev |
| 1997 | Grand Prix Germany | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #11 | Kevin Levrone |
| 1997 | Grand Prix Hungary | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #10 | Kevin Levrone |
| 1997 | Grand Prix Spain | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #10 | Kevin Levrone |
| 1997 | Mr. Olympia | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #13 | Dorian Yates |
| 1997 | Night of Champions | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #4 | Chris Cormier |
| 1997 | Toronto Pro | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #2 | Miloš Šarčev |
| 1996 | Grand Prix Czech Republic | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #9 | Nasser El Sonbaty |
| 1996 | Grand Prix Russia | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #9 | Nasser El Sonbaty |
| 1996 | Grand Prix Switzerland | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #9 | Nasser El Sonbaty |
| 1996 | Mr. Olympia | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #13 | Dorian Yates |
| 1996 | Night of Champions | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #5 | Flex Wheeler |
| 1995 | Florida Pro Invitational | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #7 | Flex Wheeler |
| 1995 | South Beach Pro Invitational | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #7 | Flex Wheeler |
| 1994 | Arnold Classic | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #9 | Kevin Levrone |
| 1994 | San Jose Pro Invitational | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #8 | Kevin Levrone |
| 1993 | Arnold Classic | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #6 | Flex Wheeler |
| 1993 | Mr. Olympia | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #18 | Dorian Yates |
| 1993 | Night of Champions | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #8 | Porter Cottrell |
| 1993 | Pittsburgh Pro Invitational | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #2 | Porter Cottrell |
| 1992 | Arnold Classic | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #15 | Vince Taylor |
| 1992 | Ironman Pro Invitational | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #5 | Vince Taylor |
| 1991 | Mr. Olympia | Men's Open Bodybuilding | Unplaced | Lee Haney |
| 1991 | USA Championships | Men's Open Bodybuilding | #1 | Winner |
Showing 15 of 33 recorded results.
Where these results come from. Each contest in the table was recorded from a named source, and for Mike Matarazzo that source is MuscleMemory. Open any contest above and that page names its own source and links to it where the source is still reachable. That archive no longer answers at the addresses we hold, so it is credited by name here and not offered as a link.
More Men's Open Bodybuilding athletes Athletes from United States
Death
Matarazzo died on 16 August 2014. The cause was a heart attack, and he had lived with health and heart problems for years before it.
He was also unusually direct about why. He went on record saying that steroids had caused those problems and that he regretted what he had done to his body. Of the twenty-one bodybuilders in Fitness Volt's account of heart-attack deaths in the sport, he is the only one who said so.
Legacy
The record says he never won a professional contest. It also says he was top five at the Night of Champions four times, runner-up three times in two seasons, and on the Olympia stage seven times across eleven years. He was a fixture rather than a champion, which is a harder thing to be for a decade.
He is still cited for two things: the calves, and what he was willing to say out loud about what the sport had cost him.
Sources
Contest record from the Fitness Volt bodybuilding database. Nickname, boxing background and on-stage reputation from Top 12 Athletes with the Biggest Calves in the World. Cause of death, his health history and his own account of its cause from 21 Bodybuilders Who Died of Heart Attack.
One conflict worth naming: that article gives his age at death as 47, while the birth and death dates on record here give 48. The dates are what this page reports.
Most-met rivals
Compare any two athletes →In 14 meetings, Ronnie Coleman finished ahead of Mike Matarazzo 13 times to 1.
Opponents are ranked by how often they shared a stage and how big the stage was, not by reputation. A meeting is one contest where both competed in the same division and both were placed.
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