Shawn Ray’s 1990 Arnold Classic Disqualification - Interview
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SporDöküm
00:00That Arnold Classic that you were disqualified, there's a...
00:081990.
00:09Okay.
00:10That's not the 80s.
00:111990.
00:12Okay.
00:13All right.
00:141990.
00:15I think the first one was an 89.
00:16Right.
00:17So, so the first one they, so that first title you, okay, okay, so it was 90, okay.
00:23And I've heard your analogies about how you basically got, you reaped, you got, you know,
00:30you got all the media, you got all the accolades, and by the time, I think, was it Mike Ashley?
00:38Right.
00:39You know, he basically got, you know, his award mailed, you know, it was like there
00:44was no hoopla about it.
00:45But a lot of people though look at that DQ that you took, and then they look at Jay Cutler
00:53some, maybe what, 10 years later, maybe 13 years later.
00:57And I really kind of want to kind of like pick your brain as to why you accepted it.
01:05Because I've heard that Jay sort of threatened that he might go the lawyer route.
01:11And was it, maybe it's a different circumstance, I don't know, but why did you accept it?
01:18Why did you not say, no, I won?
01:21You know?
01:22Ironically, you started the conversation off about Joe Weider, and what it felt like to
01:29have a relationship with him.
01:30Joe Weider called me.
01:31I mean, the first call was from Wayne D'Amelio telling me I failed the test.
01:35Then I get a call from Joe Weider, actually, I think I called him.
01:41I called Joe.
01:42I said, like, basically, what am I supposed to do here?
01:46And Joe was the one that reminded me that I had won the Pro Ironman the week before.
01:53And that's what qualified me for the 1990 Olympia.
01:57And he said, you qualified for the Olympia, we're going to test there, make sure you pass
02:03the test.
02:07I'm thinking there's going to be this avalanche of negative publicity, like Ben Johnson style,
02:13right?
02:14On the cover of Sports Illustrated saying, busted, looking like a big cheater.
02:19I think the culture of our bodybuilding industry back then was everybody knew everybody was
02:24using something on some format.
02:27I mean, even the natural guys, nobody believed Mike Ashley was natural.
02:32So you're hard pressed to convince people that Mike was natural.
02:36Samir Banu failed the drug test that week, that year.
02:39A lot of guys, there's five other athletes that failed the drug test, but actually being
02:43the winner, spotlight was on Shawn Ray, being 23, 24 years old, with options, I might add,
02:53I knew that WBF was coming.
02:57They launched in September of 1990, but I knew it was in the inception.
03:03So by them failing me at the drug test, and mind you, I was as natural as I could be,
03:08it was a water-based drug, same drug that Ben Johnson failed the test, it's not something
03:13that gets you big, something gets you hard, something to help you with your conditioning.
03:19I had stopped that in January.
03:22So three months later, a water-based steroid shows up in my system, and I was just as surprised
03:28as anyone else, because no one knew how we were going to get the results back or how
03:33they were going to be handled.
03:36When this information came to me, I went straight to Joe Weider, and Joe said, you're already
03:40qualified for the Olympia, we're going to be testing at the Olympia, make sure you don't
03:45fail the drug test.
03:46So you can imagine, for me, I'm under contract with Joe, my concern wasn't can I get in shape
03:55for the Olympia, my concern was not failing a drug test.
03:59So naturally, from that moment on, I wasn't messing around with anything, I was too afraid.
04:06I was afraid I was going to lose my career if I fell two times in a row, and I'm the
04:11smallest bodybuilder up there next to Steve Brisbois.
04:14Olympia comes around, I pass the drug test, and I wind up in third place.
04:19Seemed like everything was forgiven.
04:21A couple guys failed the test there, we talked about that at Nauseam, Barry DeMay never took
04:28the stage, he failed the test, Ben Walcott-Smith, Vince Comerford, and of course Vince Taylor,
04:35which is a very little known thing, because Vince said he was cramping, which ironically,
04:45you get to the Mr. Olympia, you know cramping can go away in a matter of minutes, right?
04:51But he couldn't make it to the stage, he couldn't compete, so he bowed out.
04:55I think maybe the drug test could have scared him off.
05:01Mohamed Benaziza failed the drug test that week, and the difference, they got the test
05:05back before they took the stage, so we never saw them compete.
05:10I passed the test, I moved up to third from 13th place in 1988, and now I'm really feeling
05:17my oats because I'm going to go back to Columbus, Ohio in 1991.
05:21Ironically, they decided to throw all the drug testing out by 1991, no more steroid
05:28testing.
05:29It was gone, just vanished.
05:34So I redeemed myself by moving up to third place and passing the drug test.
05:38When it came down to me, I had Joe telling me, don't worry about it.
05:43With Joe telling me not to worry, and him writing my check every month, and controlling
05:48the media machine, what argument was I going to have?
05:51I was going to fight for $60,000 for what?
05:56A little bee that probably was going to test positive too, or a drug I knew I had taken.
06:02So he didn't get an argument out of me.
06:03Jay Cutler, on the other hand, in 2001, failed the diuretic test because that was started
06:09after Mohamed Benaziza died in 1992.
06:12They didn't want bodybuilders dying, and so they wanted to protect them from themselves,
06:18and the diuretics were more deadly and dangerous than steroids.
06:22So they brought in the diuretic testing, and a little side track there, in 1996, Nassar
06:30Al-Sombadi was third in the Olympiad in Chicago, failed the drug test, they didn't give him
06:35his money, and he never got acknowledgment.
06:39Everybody behind him moved up, he was DQed.
06:42The difference is, they got the test result back after the show, so everyone thinks Nassar
06:47Al-Sombadi was third in 1996 in Chicago, but he was DQed.
06:53He didn't make the stink out of it, he didn't make an argument, so it went away as fast
06:59as it happened.
07:01Jay's drug test came back dirty, and they had talked to him about that it was dirty,
07:08and he threatened a lawsuit because of the handling of the urine after they took the
07:16samples, and Wayne D'Amelio didn't want the negative publicity, so he didn't make a big
07:23deal out of it.
07:24I knew it, all the other athletes knew it, Jay was second.
07:28You take Jay out of the way, I move up from fourth place in 2001 to third place in my
07:34final Olympiad.
07:35I didn't make a stink of it, because by that time, I was done.
07:39Thankfully, I didn't want to do it anymore, I didn't want to be a part of the Ronnie Coleman
07:46victory lap, and Ronnie went on to win, I don't know how many more times, four or five
07:53Mr. Olympia's after that.
07:55But because you didn't have anyone arguing about Jay failing the diuretic test, it fell
08:02flat and it disappeared.
08:05And again, I think that goes back to the immense power, I don't think people realize how much
08:12power Wayne D'Amelio actually wielded in those days to make a call like that.
08:16I would say that he was quite, quite powerful.
08:22Going back to after your first Arnold win, after your DQ, how aggressively, because we've
08:30been throwing around the acronym here a little bit, WBF, how aggressively did the WBF come
08:35after you?
08:36I would imagine, especially, as they say, sharks see blood in the water, I'd imagine
08:42the second you got DQ, you're probably getting bombarded with calls from Tom Platz and people
08:48like that.
08:49Did they come at you real aggressively, especially after that DQ or at all during the run of
08:55their shows?
08:56It was still in the infancy stages.
08:59So that was March of 1990, they made the announcement that they were formulating a
09:05magazine in 1990 at the Olympia, where I got third.
09:11And then they went into a bodybuilding federation, it came out like a month after that, they're
09:17going to create their own bodybuilding federation.
09:20It wasn't until they got to that level that they contacted me and all the other athletes
09:26to come fly to Hartford, Connecticut, Stanford, Connecticut, to the headquarters of the WBF
09:33and sit down with this man.
09:36So they did, they bought me a first class ticket on Grand Am Air, which was nice because
09:42I'd been flying around already and I wasn't flying first class.
09:46So here I got this new federation, Tom Platz is the spokesperson, they booked me on a first
09:53class ticket to go meet Vince McMahon.
09:57And Vince was famous, you know, I mean, the WWE was big.
10:02Was it WWE back then or was it WWF I believe is what it was.
10:08So I walked in, I sit down, I meet, you know, Shane, his son trained at Gold's Gym in Venice
10:14and he was a fan of mine.
10:17I mean, I do the whole spiel with those guys and I come home and it wasn't like the offer,
10:22the dollar amount was right then and there, it was just an introduction.
10:25We all went down, we met them and they get back to me and they offered me $225,000 for
10:31the first year and $250,000 the second year.
10:37That was a shit ton of money.
10:40I mean, that would have paid the house I was living in off, I would have been done.
10:43That would have made that $60,000 I lost disappear.
10:48I wanted to be Mr. Olympia and when I put everything together, what I was going to give
10:53up was all of my world travels independently that I was doing on my own, all my videos
10:59that I was making, my pictures, my t-shirts, my posters, Sean Ray Productions, which I
11:05started in 1987.
11:07They absorb all of that because now they can sell my image and likeness and promote and
11:11they get the money.
11:12That's how they recoup it.
11:15They also said that they were going to put us in, potentially in movies, potentially
11:19in promos, but we wouldn't have to travel anymore.
11:23We wouldn't have to fly around and guest post, but if they wanted us to, then we would have
11:28to do it for them and we don't get paid.
11:30I'm calculating in my head that I may be flying all over the place making the kind of appearances
11:36I'm making, but I'm not going to be paid for it because it's absorbed in my monthly check.
11:42A monthly check when you're making $225,000, pretty big.
11:48You get a check like that coming, we were in a recession in 1990.
11:54So going back, of course I wouldn't talk to Joe because that's the first call I made and
11:58talked to my family and Joe basically said, look, they're going to do this and we don't
12:05know how long they're going to do it.
12:07We've been doing it and we don't have any plans to go anywhere.
12:11So you can go for the big money on a short term or stay with us for the long money and
12:15get security.
12:16You're world famous.
12:17You go with them, you're going to be their famous, they're going to make you as famous
12:22as they want you to be and you're not going to be Mr. Olympia.
12:28So I chose to stay, I think I served myself well.
12:32I didn't get into bodybuilding for money and I said back then, money comes and goes.
12:37I got into bodybuilding to try to be the best Shawn Ray could be and to a person in
12:42the WBF, they all got worse with the exception of Gary Stride.
12:46I don't know if you were done or not, but just to jump in, the thing with WBF though,
12:50and I don't know if it was apparent when you went over there or when they were announcing
12:57everything they were doing, but it seemed like their guy was Gary Stride.
13:01That was a problem for me personally.
13:04It was a problem because I'd just beaten Gary Stride and he was getting in the line.
13:09He got a three year contract at $400,000 a year and we were nowhere close to those numbers.
13:16And so that's really for me what was the deal breaker because they didn't want to hear my
13:21argument.
13:22I'm still thinking I'm the best of the group that they have and they're still trying to
13:27convince me that this is a show and we could do more with Gary because he's bigger and
13:32I'm like, he's bigger, but he's not better.
13:34And I don't want to get myself sued, but for marketing, I feel like there might've been
13:46some in their eyes, their marketing, I think something similar happened with Gunter Surkamp
13:53when he hit the scene too.
13:55I don't know if you know what I'm saying.
13:58I got to be careful, but I feel like there was a little bit of that going on there.
14:03There was a lot of that.
14:05Yeah.
14:06I don't want to say it, but I mean, there was a lot of it.
14:09Listen, they had Aaron Baker, they had Tony Pearson, and then the rest was Gary Stride,
14:18Jim Quinn, Mike Quinn, Vince Comerford, David Dirk.
14:25They didn't have the great bodybuilders and they didn't have to throw a lot of money at
14:31them, but the good ones that they have, like Mike Christian, Mike Christian was a great
14:36move for him.
14:37He wasn't never going to move into Mr. Olympia.
14:39Mike made $600,000 in two years, but it ruined him because he had some other issues he was
14:46battling and it ruined a lot of those bodybuilders because they were given a lot.
14:51To whom much is given, a lot of it is required.
14:53When you get free money and you have a lot of free time, there's no reason to get out
14:59of bed when you're sleeping on silk sheets.
15:01They took away their motivation, they took away the drive to go and earn their money,
15:07and it took away the drive to be the best that they can be because it didn't matter
15:11what they looked like, they were still going to get their check, and they did.
15:15All of those guys, with the exception of Aaron Baker, got worse.
15:20Yeah, and I think what really killed the WBF was drug testing.
15:24You know, that first year they looked pretty good, that second year they looked like garbage,
15:29and the only one that looked really good that second year was Gary Stratum, and a lot of
15:33those guys say he wasn't even testing.
15:35So no, he wasn't, he wasn't, and you can see that, and so that's a problem, and they didn't
15:43have a farm club, they didn't have an amateur farm club to grow into the WBF, and they didn't
15:48have a tour set up for these guys to take it on the road to generate revenue.
15:53You can only burn so much money, and it was, they were bleeding money on their magazine,
15:57they were bleeding money on their product.
15:59They started something like IcoPro or something like that, some supplements.
16:03So it was a losing proposition, a great idea, it was better for us because it made Joe Weider
16:09dig deeper into his pocket to take care of those that were loyal to him.