Arnold Classic 2007

Anyone go? I live in Columbus and went this past weekend on Saturday. The place was a fucking zoo. You literally had to shuffle around shoulder-to-shoulder with people. Granted, there were a bunch of huge dudes taking up more than an average amount of space there, but it was still ridiculous. They obviously had no limit on the number of tickets sold or people allowed inside.

The actual sports and booths were pretty cool. I saw 15-yr old girls doing 80Kg snatches, strongmen doing the “manhood stones” event, 650+lb bench presses, martial arts board breaking, and gymnastics. The animal pak cage was kinda fun(ny) too. They had random audience members working out and challenging the huge freaks who worked there. Some 11 yr old challenged them to pushups, and although he didn’t win, his form was a helluva lot better and he wasn’t about to pass out afterwards. 400lb bench but not much endurance/cardiovascular fitness. Still scary huge guys though.

Arnold made a brief appearance during the arm-wrestling competition. One guy there who I’ve seen on TV, don’t know his name but he’s like early 50’s, balding, somewhat thinner but ginormous popeye-sized forearms–anyway he was funny because he got all pumped up/enraged and almost flipped the armwrestling table before he started. A real entertainer.

The booths themselves I can’t comment much on. Lots of big guys/girls with lots of horrible looking spray-on tans. My god, there’ve been advances in fake-tan technology, but all they seemed to use there (particularly the women)was the orange crap for whatever reason. It was difficult to try many of the products or talk to any reps because of the huge crowd, but I bet it would be fun to go on maybe a friday morning before the crowds hit. Plenty of samples then I’m sure.

Anyway overall it was worth going, but I’m definitely not going on Saturday again next year.