The mentality of a lot of classical concert fans can best be summarized by the sentence "hey, stop having fun, guys!" In fact, come to think of it that could also apply to the dull and stodgy world of bodybuilding.
I was reminded a little of that when I heard about the WBF - World Bodybuilding Federation, a bodybuilding league and competition created by Vince MacMahon, the panache filled huckster and showman responsible for the WWF (and more applicably, the XFL - a better metaphor for this bodybuilding league). A detailed history of the league, and one of the best blog reads in some time, can be found here.
The WBF was an insanely surreal carnival version of broadcast bodybuilding with bodybuilders adopting weird personas. For example, Tony Pearson had been an actual pilot and so his "character" came out with pilot goggles and gloves and so on as he did the usual bodybuilding flex and grind. There were catwalks that glowed, lots of arm candy girls, fireworks, and smoke bombs detonated in the background. Everyone had a "persona." The professional wrestling school applied to the WBF, where lots of effort was made to turn bodybuilders into not just athletes but superstars. And then there was the narration, which can best be described as YELLING, the kind of color commentary expected of Professional Wrestling. It's so different from the two stodgy dweebs in a booth prattling about "symmetry."
Tony Pearson I must admit, was something of a sensation. The narration insisted that he was "drug free," a claim that is usually worth a belly laugh and not much more. Though I am inclined to believe it in the case of the WBF for the same reason I believe it in American Gladiators: they're under far too much scrutiny to not play conservatively.
I hate to admit it, but I kind of like it all. I've often admired bodybuilding in other cultures like Korea because they don't just do the usual, graveyard-boring "stage where people flex to speed metal."
The WBF had a grand total of two competitions, in 1991 and 1992 and Gary Strydom won both. Here's an area where professional bodybuilding and this bizarre carnival converge: people win not so much because they are necessarily the best but because they have the connections. Gary Strydom was approached to wrestle by MacMahon, who had charisma, but Strydom turned him dwn. This is not too different really from the situation in "real" bodybuilding. Cory Everson is a great athlete but she only really won all those times because she was in the Weider's back pocket, after all. In that sense WBF is more like "real" bodybuilding than anyone would care to admit.
