Instead of Ronnie Coleman or Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tony Freeman had different idols.

On January 30, Freeman sat down with the Muscle & Fitness YouTube handle to answer several questions from fans, and the very first question thrown his way was, “Who were your bodybuilding idols coming up in the sport?”

“Flex Wheeler, Kevin Levrone, Chris Cormier. Then Ronnie, and you know. I met Jay when he was 18, so me and Jay and I had a cool relationship. Dexter Jackson, of course. So yeah, just the typical ones that are everybody’s favorites.”

Freeman seriously began considering bodybuilding as a career in the 1990s. It came in 1992, at the 1993 NPC Junior Nationals. It was the same time when Dorian Yates won his first title, kicking off a top-three circle that included him and rotated between Wheeler, Levrone and Cormier.

However, in 1998, Ronnie Coleman kicked off his 8-year streak. He became another big name Freeman looked up to.

However, like one of his idols, after spending nearly a decade in the sport, Freeman stopped competing in 2011. Well, let’s hear it from the man himself.

Tony Freeman on Why He Left Bodybuilding

“I tore my pec in ’95, August 1, 1995. I was 285 at about four percent body fat. I was about nine weeks out from the show. I tore my pec, and luckily, it was a partial tear. None of the doctors wanted to touch it because at the time, I was so swole you couldn’t even tell it was torn,” said Toney Freeman in an interview last year.

Despite that, he skipped the surgery. That year, he finished fourth, and the next year he was taken out of the lineup. “They took me out of the lineup. When that happened I was like man I got a torn pec and I’m dealing with politics so I just quit.I was just done with it.”

Known for his “X-Frame,” Freeman slowly faded from the sport, but his legacy continues to this day.

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Written by

Suryakant Das

Edited by

Siddharth Shirwadkar