IFBB Pro Bodybuilder and reigning two-time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler settled his lawsuit with NDS Nutritional Products. Cutler filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court in July 2007 “claiming misappropriation of image and likeness, invasion of privacy and unjust enrichment. ” Basically, NDS took a picture of Jay Cutler competing at a bodybuilding contest and placed it on their products without obtaining permission or paying Cutler for the commercial use of his image (”Bodybuilder Settles LA Lawsuit Against Nutrition Firm,” March 10).
Jay Cutler is sponsored by Muscletech, who pays Jay well for the use of his image in the promotion of Muscletech supplements.
Weider Publications has hired Issac Hinds of Lift Studios to expand coverage of female figure, fitness and bodybuilding at Flexonline.com.
Isaac wrote about his excitement at the hiring in an email he sent to me today:
I’m happy to be part of the Weider Team. I’ve been a fan of FLEX magazine for years and now to be contributing to their online presence is awesome. Peter McGough, Allan Donnelly, Lisa Clark, Chris Hoebrecker and the entire Weider crew are some of the best in the business. They recognize that there are a tremendous number of NPC and IFBB female competitors who deserve some of the spotlight. We’ll be providing a bit of that on FLEXONLINE.com. I’ll still be covering the women’s side of the sport on HARDBODY.com as well as bodybuilding.com and NPC NEWS magazine. This is another positive step in highlighting the hard working women in the industry.
This is good news for the sport of women’s bodybuilding and fitness. Isaac tells us we can expect to see additional news, updates and photos begining in April 2008.
Former baseball player and anabolic steroid advocate Jose Canseco was hired as a spokesman for a supplement company appearing at the company’s booth at the 2008 Arnold Classic. Testosterone Nation reports that Canseco is working with MVP Nutrition since he spent so much time talking to world fitness champion Michele Levesque.
So, you admit to using steroids. Then a supplement company hires you to say you built your muscles using their pills and powders? Um, okay. Canseco seemed to spend most of his time macking on the hired booth booty anyway.
But Jose Canseco actually works for German American Technologies, makers of Jet Fuel. Oops. Perhaps, GAT should consider hiring some attractive booth help to keep Jose from straying and inadvertently promoting the competition?
However, the most humorous anecdotes involving Canseco at the Arnold Classic involve the comments he received from Expo attendees (”iWitness: Arnold Sports Festival,” March 6):
[B]oth at the EXPO and the after-party, people kept walking by yelling “juicer!” and “steroid user!” at Canseco. Uh, you’re at the Arnold. Calling someone a juicer here is like walking into a porn convention and calling the women sluts. It’s, you know, kinda the whole idea.
How could they be oblivious to be surrounding by thousands upon thousands of anabolic steroid users the entire weekend? With over 150,000 people attending the Arnold Sports Festival, including a significant percentage of bodybuilders and athletes who use steroids, this event probably holds the record for the highest concentration of steroid users in a single location!
It has been reported that IFBB Pro Bodybuilders who competed in the 2008 Arnold Classic were required for the first time to sign a contract subjecting them to random drug testing. Jim Lorimer, the promoter and co-founder of the Arnold Sports Festival, told male bodybuilding competitors in an athlete’s meeting that the IFBB implemented a new drug testing policy in January 2008.
In previous years, IFBB pro bodybuilders have agreed to IFBB Professional League Rules that assert the “Pro League has power and authority to conduct drug testing at designated events.”
However, Jim Lorimer confirmed last week that the IFBB will act upon that authority this year by implementing random drug testing.
Jim Lorimer told the athletes that every one of the over 30 sports federations competing in the Arnold Sports Festival has a testing protocol including the International Federation of BodyBuilders (IFBB). Lorimer discusses the existing “amateur” protocol in the IFBB but also announced that in January 2008 the IFBB has implemented a testing protocol in the IFBB Professional League to “protect integrity and future of the sport.” The testing was implemented in response to other professional sports being “killed by the publicity” surrounding doping. Details of the IFBB’s new testing protocol were not revealed only that “there will be some testing throughout the coming year.”
The IFBB is a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) Code. The president of the IFBB, Rafael Santonja, has been active in WADA meetings and oversees IFBB Anti-Doping Rules administered at the IFBB Amateur level. These doping controls are said to conform to provisions of the WADA code. These same doping controls have not been administered in the Professional League.
It is highly unlikely that any attempt at testing, even periodic random testing, would target anabolic steroids and the exhaustive list of performance enhancing drugs listed in the WADA Prohibited Substance List.
Further details will be posted as they become available.
IFBB pro bodybuilder Dexter Jackson won the 2008 Arnold Classic bodybuilding contest on Saturday, March 1, 2008. This year’s contest had one of the most competitive fields in the contest’s history. Muscletime’s Raymond Cassar was in the press pit with some incredible photographs from the contest. His pics from the 2008 Iron Man Pro in Los Angeles were some of the best on the internet. Full contest results available at Muscletime.
The Hennepin County medical examiner has determined that amateur bodybuilder Erik Fromm died from an accidental overdose of Fentanyl. Fentanyl is a highly potent painkiller described as 80 times as strong as morphine. Fromm was in a severe car accident that resulted in severe pain.
Fromm had a serious traffic accident about a year ago in Wyoming, causing him severe pain in his lower back and in his legs and arms, said Kevin Schreifels, a friend of Fromm’s.
“He was rating the pain pretty high,” said Schreifels, a doctor at Lyn-Lake Chiropractic in Minneapolis. He said he was unaware of Fromm using fentanyl.
Elite Fitness published an article today discussing the implications of Liberty Media’s acquisition of a controlling stake in Bodybuilding.com:
Many people have already heard that the world’s largest bodybuilding company, bodybuilding.com, sold a huge controlling stake to Liberty Media, parent of QVC, for $100 million dollars. However, what some people don’t know is that there are those who are panicking for various reasons and some even believe that the sale could cause the sport of bodybuilding to die off!
I was one of the people panicking about the implications for professional bodybuilding. When there are changes in ownership, particular when a closely held private company is acquired by a publicly traded conglomerate, there are often changes in strategy and management.
So, within hours of the January 7, 2008 acquisition announcement, I contacted Ryan DeLuca, the CEO and founder of Bodybuilding.com to clear the air. DeLuca granted me an interview (which was published on Muscletime) the same day. Ryan assured me that the Bodybuilding.com strategy included increased involvement in the sport of pro bodybuilding:
[Bodybuilding.com's involvement in pro bodybuilding] will continue to increase. We are 100% dedicated to giving back and helping the sport of bodybuilding to grow and prosper. If anything, this deal will only help us with that mission!
In spite of Ryan DeLuca’s refutations of changes in strategy as I confirmed in my Muscletime interview, Elite Fitness points out how the rumors persisted.
Strewn across Internet sites and forum boards are claims that bodybuilding.com must remove anything even remotely controversial from their site as part of the deal. That means anything to do with steroids and other hardcore bodybuilding topics must be axed in order to suit Liberty Media.
The change in the Bodybuilding.com forums that fueled many of the rumors was the relocation of the “steroid forum” to a sub-forum of the “IFBB section.”
When asked of any changes he had noticed on the site, Hawryliw said, “The biggest change I have seen was the steroid section being moved to the IFBB section. They claim it was to help to keep “noobs” (beginning users) from asking stupid questions. We all know the real reason was to take the steroid section off the front page to avoid any negative light. Ironically, steroids were prohibited from being talked about in the IFBB section before. Now, steroids are a sub-section.”
This was noticed several weeks ago by Anthony Roberts (a few days in advance of the acquisition announcement by Liberty Media).
But there is a big difference between censorship (deletion) and a reorganization of the forums of a message board. Elite Fitness further confirmed that Liberty Media has not asked Bodybuilding.com to delete controversial steroid content from their forums.
And he told me what is really going on with the issue of controversial material being moved or removed due to the Liberty Media deal mentioning, “This is not true. They have not asked us to remove anything or change anything on our site. Of course, with more national media watching what we are doing than ever before, we have to be extra careful with what we do or say so we don’t end up on Dateline.”
Unfortunately, it is not raining steroids, but at least the sky is not falling.
New York Yankees baseball player Andy Pettitte allegedly obtainedhuman growth hormone from his father who obtained it from Kelly Blair who may have obtained it from pro bodybuilder Craig Titus. It has yet to be determined where Craig Titus obtained the growth hormone. Former IFBB Pro bodybuilder Craig Titus has been in jail awaiting trial in the murder of his personal assistant
Kelly Blair is the owner of 1-on-1 Elite Personal Fitness in Pasadena, Texas. He attended Deer Park High School with Andy Pettite. Craig Titus is formerly from the Houston area.
According to the Craig Titus and Kelly Ryan Investigation website:
The Daily News reports some of the drugs came from steroid-user Craig Titus, a champion bodybuilder who is facing a murder trial in Nevada for the slaying of his former live-in assistant.
Kelly Blair is also allegedly linked to Roger Clemens son:
Also, Blair was reportedly seen working with Koby Clemens, the son of seven- time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens, who was involved in a heated congressional hearing this past week. However, the Daily News reports that Koby Clemens, who is now playing baseball in the minors, hasn’t been linked to any illicit activity at the gym.
IFBB Pro Phil Heath stole the show at the 2008 Iron Man Pro in Los Angeles this past weekend. Muscletime covered the event and photographer Raymond Cassar has some of the best pics of the contest available on the Internet, especially his impressive photos of Phil Heath.
