"It's Yates, you fool! His thickness and grainy conditioning eclipse anything anyone has seen before!" I yell back.
"Next to anyone but Ronnie, he would be the greatest, Palumbo asserts, his normally relaxed demeanor taking on a noticed edginess."
"You were wrong about that girl in LA with the Adam's apple and you are BOTH wrong about this," Romano throws in, pushing an angry index finger into Palumbo's chest. "Once we see Victor back at 100% he will redefine the sport."
I throw my hands up in the air and turn to walk away... "Morons," I mumble under my breathe. "You both nee..." My comment is lost as the air is forced from my lungs when a strong hand is firmly driven into the center of my back, sending me into the nearby bookshelf.
Caught off-guard and unsure who pushed me, I refocus my eyes and see John Romano against the opposite wall, feet dangling, being choked by his once-friend Dave Palumbo. I notice a faint grin on the corner of John's mouth and see his left hand clutching a heavy glass paperweight that may well turn the tide of the battle.
Regaining my composure, I reach over and click the door lock, just in time to stop Sean Andros and Jeff the Producer from bursting in and turning the tide of the conflict. I shove a chair tightly under the knob of the heavy wooden door and reenter the fray. Palumbo is dazed and staggering, a stream of blood gushing down his temple. Romano is on all fours, gasping for air and grasping at his almost crushed windpipe.
I jump on Dave's wide back, my arms wrapped around his neck, choking with all my might. He spins, a bull in a china shop, but I caught him by surprise. Vascularity does not work in his favor, as I can easily choke off the thick vein in his neck to cut off the flow of oxygen to his brain. Always a fighter, Dave's final action before unconsciousness is to throw both of us backwards across the desk. I hear bones break. The pain as I try to breathe tells me it's a few of my ribs and, even though I am pinned under Dave, I realize something horrible happened to my spine that has made my lower body no more than dead weight.
Sean and Jeff pound frantically at the door. At first I assume it is concern or a desire to break up the violence that's going on in the office but then I hear one of them scream, "Cutler! Cutler is the greatest!" The other voice screams, "No, you jackasses, Sergio Oliva crushes ALL of them!"
Then, standing over me with the blood-smeared paperweight in his hand, Romano drops a knee into my chest, loose ribs popping under the weight, a dazed look on his face. "Martinez..." he whispers and he begins the downward slam of the paperweight to pulp my braincase.
"YATES!" I scream, as I thrust the letter opener clasped in my hand deep into Romano's side; a final, desperate act. And then it goes black...
I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart racing as if I swallowed a bottle of ephedrine, and know what I have to do. While I don't claim psychic abilities, the raw reality of this nightmare tells me it was more than just random synapses firing as I processed random thoughts and sensory input of the day. This scenario could happen, WOULD happen, if I didn't do something to avert the impending carnage.
Each of us: Dave, John, Sean, Jeff, myself and ALL of the people at Rx Muscle share a passion for the sport of bodybuilding and the science and lifestyle associated with it. Our readers share an equal love of all things bodybuilding. Our opinions vary and those differences sometimes erupt. This is not a bad thing but part of the spice that flavors what we are creating here. It just needs to be expressed in a positive manner. Hence, the introduction of the Megalympia online challenge to determine the greatest bodybuilder of all time.
Imagine if you will... champions from different eras and organizations, all at their best possible conditions, facing off side-by-side until only one ultimate champion remained!
In the Rx Muscle Megalympia Championships, 173 of history's finest champions will face-off for supremacy. After submitting a list of the top champions, I opened things up for the Rx Muscle readership to nominate their picks. From that group, I placed them all into alphabetical order, assigned them a corresponding number (1-173), and used a random number generator (from http://www.random.org/integers/) to assign them to matches.
What we ended with was 45 three-way match-ups and 19 two-way battles for Rx Muscle readers to vote on. Here are the first eight Matches:
1. Rich Gaspari vs. Darrem Charles vs. Hidegata Yamagishi
2. Samir Bannout vs. Toney Freeman vs. Alq' Gurley
3. John Defendis vs. Orville Burke vs. Reg Park
4. Mat DuVall vs. Ron Love vs. Troy Zuccolotto
5. Ron Teufel vs. Frank Zane vs. Craig Titus
6. Sergio Oliva vs. Paul Demayo vs.Dave Palumbo
Tony Pearson vs. Mark Dugdale vs. Joe DeAngelis
7. Kevin English vs. Thierry Pastel vs. Aaron Baker
For each of these, I have written a short bio and competitive history of each athlete. We are voting for whom we think would win if all three were onstage in their best possible condition. Go to the polls at the Rx Muscle Forums, under "MEGALYMPIA CONTEST" and enter your choice.
http://forums.rxmuscle.com/forumdisplay.php?f=73
Also feel free to post your thoughts, photos and YouTube clips in the threads discussing each of the matches.
Each match has seven days for you to put in your vote and then the polls close. I will be putting up new matches on a regular basis until we whittle all 173 contenders to the 64 champions that will go on to Round Two. From there they will be randomly matched against another champ and we vote for the top 32. Then in Round Three, an even more imposing group will go one-on-one to the Sweet Sixteen. Round Four will get us down to an imposing eight champions. Round Five will determine the Final Four, etc.
We encourage debate on your choices but this contest strictly forbids the use of paperweights or letter openers in order to get that point across! Check out the forums at: http://forums.rxmuscle.com/forumdisplay.php?f=73
