Having labeled today’s crop of bodybuilders part of the ‘Frankenstein Era,’ Lee Haney has questions about the direction of the Men’s Open division. In a recent interview on YouTube, Haney assessed the physiques of Derek Lunsford, Hadi Choopan, Nick Walker, and Samson Dauda months from the 2024 Mr. Olympia contest.
In the last few years, the prestigious Mr. Olympia title has changed hands three times. After Mamdouh ‘Big Ramy’ Elssbiay fell below expectations in fifth place at the 2022 Mr. Olympia, Hadi Choopan swooped in to claim the Sandow trophy. When it was time to defend the honor, Choopan lost to his teammate Derek Lunsford, who went on to become the sport’s first two-division Mr. Olympia winner.
As a prominent bodybuilding champion of the 1980s and 90s, Haney has watched the sport change for better or worse. While he believes his era personified the essence of bodybuilding, he fears today’s athletes have taken their pursuit of size too far.
Lee Haney Rates Physiques of Derek Lunsford, Hadi Choopan, Nick Walker, and Samson Dauda Months from 2024 Mr. Olympia
According to Haney, athletes of the Open today have focused on size instead of ‘proper bodybuilding engineering.’
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“The quality of physiques that are out there now… and most of them look the same. When you take a guy that’s five-seven, five-eight, and you put 300 pounds on him. Particularly a rushed 300 pounds, without thought, without proper bodybuilding engineering, you get this colossal of a physique that doesn’t look right.”
He argues that the physiques of Open contenders aren’t as pleasing to the eye as they were in the days of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Frank Zane.
“It’s not pleasing to the eye and I say eye I mean the general public. The thing that made bodybuilding attractive. It made everybody from the office guy to the attorneys, everybody wanted to look like a bodybuilder. That’s how I fell in love with it. I saw Arnold, I saw Larry Scott, Frank Zane, that was a thing of beauty.”
Although symmetry, balance, and muscle maturity once represented the standard of bodybuilding, Haney asserts that competitors favor mass instead.
“This is where bodybuilding has gone. It’s saying mass, mass, mass! It’s not saying symmetry, balance, and muscle maturity. It takes time to build a masterpiece. I’m not seeing that in this era of bodybuilding. I’m seeing more massive guys which if you look at Ronnie, Ronnie was massive. But guess what? Ronnie had a symmetry and well-thought development to his mass.”
Given his shorter stature and mass, Haney believes there’s ‘nothing appealing’ about Nick Walker’s physique.
“What I’m seeing in a type of physique, like say Nick Walker, for instance, his height and that amount of mass is nothing appealing. I’m just saying, but I’m glad in the world of bodybuilding that there is space for everybody.”
He appreciates Derek Lunsford’s balance but doesn’t believe his physique is what the masses want as their Mr. Olympia champion.
“Derek, his balance is good. The one thing that I looked at is the fact that he went from the 212 division all the way up to heavyweight, I mean that’s a lot of weight to put on in one year. But, again, we are talking about the Open class of the Mr. Olympia. So, this is what the Olympia is saying, this is what we want.”
“Is it what the masses want? Is it what everybody is looking for? I don’t think so,” shares Lee Haney.
Haney suggests that top Open class talents are carrying excessive mass in their quads with imbalanced calves.
“When you’re at that height, you’re carrying thigh mass like that of a powerlifter. A lot of them train like powerlifters. When you train like a powerlifter, you’re going to look like a powerlifter. So you have overdeveloped quads and small calves. Then, you have overdeveloped other body parts such as delts and just a different kind of a look,” said Lee Haney.
Given their stature and muscle, Haney believes Lunsford, Choopan, and Walker have ‘the same type of physiques.’
“As I was saying, a lot of them look the same. Derek, Hadi, with that height, Nick. It’s the same type of physiques. Whereby my day, the classic day of bodybuilding, they wouldn’t — it just wouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have happened because bodybuilding was saying something different.
It was saying, okay, we’re not all about size, we are all about symmetry, we are about balance, we are about presentation, we are about drawing the general population to come out and see us and to want to be us.”
If he had to choose, Haney maintained that Samson Dauda’s look represented the ‘hallmark’ of a Mr. Olympia champion.
“I love Samson. When I saw this cat man I said ‘Oh my goodness, he reminds me of me.’ I’m smaller but I really like what I see in Samson. Again, if you’re looking for balance, you’re looking for symmetry, you’re looking for muscle maturity, great presentation, that should be the hallmark of Mr. Olympia, not just the biggest mass monster.”
Haney isn’t the only notable bodybuilding veteran taking a closer look at the top contenders headed to Las Vegas later this year. Recently, Jay Cutler assessed the Open class, naming Derek Lunsford, Hadi Choopan, and Samson Dauda as his three ‘kings’ of the 2024 Mr. Olympia.
Having won eight Mr. Olympia titles consecutively with balance, proportions, and symmetry, Lee Haney has doubts about the future of the Open class. He contends that competitors have placed too much of their focus on size instead of what defines the art of bodybuilding.
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Watch the full video from the Ron Harris Muscle YouTube channel:
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