Fans were excited to see Flex Lewis make his Open Bodybuilding debut at the 2020 Mr. Olympia. Unfortunately that will not be happening, as he recently revealed that an injury has forced him out of the contest.
In the eyes of many, Lewis is one of the best 212 bodybuilders of all time, and rightfully so after seven consecutive wins at the Olympia. Therefore his announcement that he would be making the move to Open competition was largely met with intrigue from fans who were curious to see how he would look. Initial concerns were that he would be a bit undersized, but the closer things got to the Olympia the more it seemed that he had the potential to be a legitimate threat to the throne.
Unfortunately it seems that we will not be getting the answers that we were hoping for this year. In a post to his Instagram, Flex Lewis revealed that he would no longer be competing at the 2020 Mr. Olympia. Some sort of injury, that he plans to go into deeper detail about at a later date, has forced him to make the decision to withdraw from the competition. It is not something he decided lightly, and was the result of many conversations with his wife and doctor.
“This isn’t a video I thought I’d ever be doing, let alone ten weeks from the Mr. Olympia,” Lewis said. “But unfortunately I will not be competing at this year’s show. This decision wasn’t easy, it was actually made easier for me by my wife, my coach, and the doctors that are involved.
“This injury was sustained and it’s being taken care of right now,” he continued. “But if I was to keep going in the direction I was going, it would have probably impacted my entire career. I will go into the details in another video, but I wanted to let everybody know that I’m mentally okay. I’ve had some time to deal with this. I’m not going to lie and say the first week I battled heavily with the decision and I thought I could battle through this and persevere. Unfortunately the reality of everything is that I couldn’t.
“Us bodybuilders are taught to put our hearts back to front, ignore the pain, keep on trucking forward,” Flex Lewis said. “We’re supposed to hurt going into shows and on the daily. This is what we do, but this was something bigger than me. I’m very, very grateful, incredibly blessed to have the wife that I do, who recognized that I would not stop, who contacted my coach who didn’t really know the significance of the injury, and with the both of them, they sat me down and talked to me. Of course it wasn’t a decision I took lightly and ultimately it was made by one of the three doctors that I would injure myself further and it would have an impact on my life down the road.”
From there, Flex Lewis went on to express deep gratitude for the support of his fans, as well as extreme disappoinment in the fact that he will not be competing. However he does assure fans that he will be back better than ever in 2021, and that he will bring the package to the stage that fans were expecting. Hopefully whatever is going on will not be too serious, and he can recover well.
Published: 16 October, 2020 | 12:35 PM EDT
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