Ramy: X-factor or Ex-Factor?

Big Ramy has been a potential wild card at pro shows for years. Will he redefine the bodybuilding manual? This analysis, written before the 2014 Olympia, looks at a few possible scenarios.

Twelve months ago in the countdown to the 2013 Mr. Olympia contest, a major— maybe the major— talking point was could rookie Big Ramy (real name Mamdouh Elssbiay)make improvements to the physique that wowed the audience and crushed the opposition when he won that year’s New York Pro in his pose-for-pay debut?

Now we know that repetition is the mainstay of all things bodybuilding, but as we look forward to preview Big Ramy’s chances at the 2014 Olympia being staged in Las Vegas on September 19 and 20^th, there’s a “been there, done that” mood about such thoughts. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” It’s like being in the middle of the movie “Groundhog Day,” listening to a politician’s same-old, same-old speech.

Let’s review why. In his Olympia debut last year, Big Ramy, stacking 285 pounds on his 5’10” frame, placed eighth. The main knock was that while he had the astonishing size, fullness and sweeping contours, he still had to etch in Olympia-level detail in the style of the top five from 2013. Namely, Dexter Jackson, Shawn Rhoden, Dennis Wolf, Kai Greene and reigning champ Phil Heath, whose physique has more detail than a Wall Street banker’s tax dodge filing. The consensus was if he was able to carve in that top five-like detail, he would be a threat to anyone and may be the next Mr. Olympia— even as early as 2014.

The word was that detail would surface when Ramy, after an arduous eight months prep following the 2013 Mr. Olympia, rolled into the Big Apple to dispute the 2014 New York Pro last May 17. But like the starting official at the Kentucky Derby, just hold your horses a second or two, sparkie. Because in mid-March came the news that Big Ramy had been hospitalized due to a severe upper chest respiratory infection. Of course, given his rapid four years rise and increase in bodyweight, online boards hummed with the inside information (inside in the sense that info came solely from inside their heads) that his hospitalization was due to stuff pumping through his veins, and not a bug clogging up his respiratory system. Thing is, if a bodybuilder trips on the sidewalk and breaks an ankle, it’s immediately drug related.

FLUSHING HIS WAY TO SUCCESS

That’s as may be, but at the time his mentor Dennis James was confident that his charge would recover in time to be on target for peaking at May’s New York Pro. But as the weeks went by, it seemed unclear if that would happen. Then on May 3, two weeks before the New York event, Big Ramy made a guest appearance at the IFBB Pittsburgh Pro weighing a purported 315 pounds. He was huge, but was carrying so much water those in the first three rows were issued umbrellas. It was clear there was no way he would be ready to flex with competitive intentions 14 days hence, and so we resigned ourselves to Big Ramy having to look past the New York Pro for an Olympia-qualifying assignment.

But in a sensational manner 48 hours prior to the Gotham muscle soiree, Dennis James announced that Big Ramy would defend his title at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in lower Manhattan. He duly showed up at 290 pounds, having shipped more water than an Evian factory on overtime— and at a self confessed “85 percent” cruised to a straight first victory; his closest challenger being the ever-improving Juan Morel.

So that’s a résumé of our subject’s helter-skelter of a 2014 rise so far, but like pedaling 1,000 miles on a stationary bike, we’re still in the same place and have not moved from the same “How Good is Ramy?” spot we were at the same time last year. The year-old question still cries out, “Can he reinvent his physique and attain that awesome detail look that can make him an Olympia threat to Phil Heath?” Dennis James is adamant he can, saying if an 85 percent Ramy can dominate a pro show, a 100 percent version will frighten the bejesus out of the Olympia lineup. And James promises a 100 percent Ramy will stride out for battle when the prejudging for this year’s Sandow dispute commences at around 9:00 p.m. on September 19 at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas.

So which Big Ramy will we see? The X-Factor one who will fulfill James’ promise and threaten to rock Phil Heath’s world, or the Ex-Factor version who will not be much different than what we’ve seen so far and has already maxed-out on his potential in his astonishing four-year growth spurt? Like my surgeon said when I had that nasty interaction with the crossbar of a bicycle, “It’s crystal ball time.” Jump into the time machine and warp forward to consider how the differing Ex-Factor and X-Factor scenarios may play out at this year’s 50^th Mr. Olympia contest.

THE EX-FACTOR SCENARIO?

Since May’s Night of Champions, Big Ramy had been a full-time guest at Dennis James’ Phoenix, Arizona home. This had been agreed by both such, was their determination to leave no stone unturned, no rep undone, no calories miscalculated, no pose unpracticed in an all-out assault on toppling Phil Heath from the Olympia throne.

And yet …

At the athlete’s meeting held at the Orleans Arena on Wednesday, September 17, each time the door to the meeting room opened, heads would swivel to check who had just entered. After 10 minutes, most of the Olympians were already seated, and the press there noted that one competitor was missing. Then the door opened and the absentee walked through. But he didn’t exactly walk through; he sort of turned a little sideways so that his massive frame and shoulder width could navigate the doorframe. Big Ramy had arrived and he looked huge, although his face was not sunken in as much as some of his rivals, which in this modern “I can make you look like Skeletor in 12 hours” age of bodybuilding was no cause for alarm.

And yet …

Fast-forward to 8:45 p.m. Friday evening, with Olympia prejudging about to commence in 15 minutes and the 20 competitors are stationed backstage— most lying on the floor with their legs on a chair— playing the time-honored “I’m keeping my duds on as long as possible— I’ll only show you mine if you show me yours” game.

In a corner, Dennis James is seated bending over to speak in somewhat hushed tones to a prone Ramy. One hears phrases like, “Now remember what I told you … ” and “Don’t relax for a moment onstage— keep flexed all the time.”

Earlier, Dennis had told me their four-month contest-prep game plan had been executed to perfection. But I’ve known Dennis a long time, and something alerted me to the thought he wasn’t as confident as he had been last May. The backstage marshals started to issue orders urging the 2014 class of Olympians to get ready to do their individual mandatories. Of the 20, Big Ramy was number 15, with front-runners Dennis Wolf being 17 and Kai Greene 19. Defending champ Phil Heath was number 20 and would be last man out. Once the first competitor, Juan Morel, went out Big Ramy would have to wait 30 minutes or so to flex his stuff. With 10 minutes to go and still wearing his 50^th Olympia celebration tracksuit, he started to pump up. A few press-ups, then some light dumbbell curls and lateral raises and stretches. With six minutes to go, he stripped to his trunks to have oil applied.

With the vagaries of backstage lighting and a competitor not being fully flexed, it is sometimes difficult to gauge if he has peaked or not. But, humbly I submit, that as a backstage inhabitant at countless pro contests and 30 Olympias, and as someone who is solely there to observe and not to hang out and shoot the breeze to all and sundry, I have developed a good eye as to who is ready or not. I took stock of Big Ramy. At 290 pounds, he dwarfed everyone around him …

 And yet …

He left the oiling-up area and went toward the stage to await the instruction to go out and do his eight mandatories. As he strode away from us, photographer J.M. Manion asked, “So what do you think?”

I replied, “He’s not ready— no real improvement since May.”

And so it proved as he went through his mandatories. Although the humongous mass was there in solid condition, and his thighs had more flair than Ali Baba’s pants, the promised cross-striations were not there, and his back— though as wide as the Grand Canyon— lacked real thickness. In all, like a one-paragraph résumé of the history of the world, he lacked detail. He drifted into another eighth place, replicating his 2013 showing, and the man who had been vaunted as Phil Heath’s worst nightmare was at contest’s conclusion assigned the moniker of the Ex-Factor— one who had promised so much but then stood still. It seemed that like Ed Kawak’s antics at the 1988 English Grand Prix (and this is a true story), when he set fire to his hotel room when trying to fry some eggs, Big Ramy really was just a spectacular flash in the pan.

THE X-FACTOR SCENARIO?

Throughout the athlete’s meeting on Wednesday, as Big Ramy sat in the front row of the four assigned for Olympian cheeks, Dennis James sat at the back, from time to time glancing across at me smiling and slowly shaking his head. It smacked of elements of a tsunami warning as in, “You guys just don’t know what’s about to hit you.”

I asked him about his smiling countenance and he replied quietly and simply, “Wait and see; wait and see.” You didn’t have to be Albert Einstein to realize Dennis was as confident as Randy Couture facing a UFC challenge from Richard Simmons.

What was to be said is that James’ Sphinx-like, “I’m saying nothing” persona was picked up by the other competitors and they too wondered if the former Olympian was just indulging in an epic psyche-out strategy, or he really knew that Big Ramy was about to deliver the 290-pound goods. Whatever, they, 48 hours prior to prejudging, were already thinking about the massive Egyptian: first round to the menacing Dennis.

Throughout the next two days, James kept up his smiling “wait and see” demeanor. Thus when we all assembled backstage on Friday night, I went up to him and presented him with a can of gourmet kitten food. Somewhat nonplused he asked, “What’s this for?”

I countered, “You’ve been grinning like a friggin’ Cheshire Cat all week, you might as well start eating like one.”

When Big Ramy stripped for action, Stevie Wonder could have told you he had nailed it. He walked out in front of the 10,000 gathered in the Orleans Arena, and they executed such a collective intake of breath that oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. Then, recovering themselves, they went nuts. He was 290 pounds, but sharper than Stephen Hawking’s IQ. He was as wide as a bantamweight posedown, and his tiny waist, accentuated even further by the mighty dimensions of his upper and lower body, made his head-to-toe shape look like a study in 3-D Photoshopping. Those flared thighs were full and as cut as the Pope’s copy of 50 Shades of Grey, his hams and calves had suddenly sprouted and his back looked newly reinforced with armor plating. He was, as we say in the U.K. when conveying the supreme accolade to someone, “The dog’s bollocks.”

With all the 20 competitors completing their mandatories, they all rumbled onstage to await the first comparison. The nasal New York tone of head judge Steve Weinberger barked out only two names, “Phil Heath and next to him … Big Ramy!”

And so we witnessed …

EX OR X: WHAT’S IT GOING TO BE?

OK, there we have the Ex and X-Factor scenarios. Which one will actually play out on September 19 in the gambling capital of the world? In my opinion, neither of them. Instead, I think the reality will be somewhere in the middle. I think Big Ramy will be more detailed and more refined than we have so far seen, but we really are expecting too much to ask that the X-Factor scenario outlined previously comes to fruition in 2014.

Like most factors in bodybuilding, the bottom line is genetics: you either have that feathery type detail embedded in the muscles or you don’t. It may be that Heath-like detail is not there for Big Ramy to mine out. Another few years of training will enable muscle maturity to kick in and improve separation, but it won’t unearth crazy detail if it’s not inherent in the genes. To defeat a Mr. Olympia, history proves you have to beat him at his own game or wait for his decline. Phil Heath’s game is packing his physique with more detail than we’ve seen before: He’s the Devil with the details everyone else has to get past.

However, as far as Big Ramy is concerned, taking into account his size and shape— augmented, as I expect, with greater detail— I see him unveiling a package that will carry him into the top five, maybe top three at this year’s Olympia. But I think he will have to carve in even more detail and deeper separation to really take on a 100 percent Phil Heath.

But let it not be forgotten— as if?— that this freak has been training for only four years. So his current journey has been much shorter than that of his peers. The logic is that he is much further away from tapping out on his full potential than those he is competing against, who have either already done so, or are just about there. In short, it would seem he has more unused potential than any other current pro. They have maxed-out on muscular development while he has still some way to go. What stage of his individual journey he has reached will become clear at the 50^th Mr. Olympia contest, which kicks off on September 19^th at the Orleans Arena, Las Vegas. Watch this space … a space Big Ramy seems, sometime somewhere, destined to fill.

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