The 2007 Mr. Olympia - Did Victor Martinez Beat Cutler?
The 2007 Mr. Olympia
Did Victor Martinez Beat Jay Cutler?
Victor Martinez winning the PBW Championships in Tampa last August 9th was more than a contest victory it signaled the Dominican Dominator’s return to the sort of form that earned him his homeland moniker in the first place. Make no mistake this was the best Victor we’ve seen since 2011 when he finished fourth in the Mr. Olympia and a week later won the Arnold Classic Europe, relegating Dexter Jackson to runner-up status. And in Tampa he was not facing a run-of-the-mill line-up, as he came out ahead of that densely muscled William Bonac, a fast improving Mo Bannout, the show stopping Maxx Charles and a resurgent Ben White. Suddenly Victor, who was 11th at last year’s Olympia, seems to be back in business. Which prompts recollections of 2007 when he so nearly took the Sandow away from reigning champ Jay Cutler.
Really the contest pivoted around changes that both guys experienced during the Friday night prejudging and the Saturday night finals. The sort of fluctuation that is common in modern day bodybuilding. So before zoning in on the 2007 Olympia here’s a some random thoughts about these 24-hour changes. Have you ever visited one of those Hall of Mirrors places where the glassware so distorts your image you could be Rolf Moeller one second and Rosie O’Donnell the next – a paneful experience. Watching modern bodybuilding is a little like that: the physiques changing in front of your eyes, morphing from washboard Sammy to, “My abs were there five minutes ago” in as much time as it takes to say, “I coulda been a contender.”
It used to be (Oh! Gawd! I can hear the collective groan, Grandpa McGough’s about to drag us on another trip down Memory Lane) that a guy would be in shape say, Thursday for a
Saturday show and he wouldn’t change much at all for several days: he’d be in shape for the contest and for photo shoots in the days following. Now with all the, “Meet me at midnight, knock twice, spin round three times, hop onto one foot, close your eyes, chug this down and scream Aunt Nelly” eleventh hour ministrations that are now part and parcel of modern bodybuilding, physiques are like a women’s mind – continually changing.
The 2007 Mr. Olympia contest, staged over the weekend of September 28-29, was a case in point. At the start of the prejudging on Friday night the reigning champ Jay Cutler at 259 pounds was as flat as a Dick “Guy walks into a rack” Cheney monologue. In contrast Victor Martinez was full and seemed set to cause an upset. And then like some strange alchemist ballet, Jay seemed to fill up. The real eerie part being that it appeared he was siphoning off – whatever it is that flows in and out of muscle tissue – from Victor as the latter seemed to flatten at the same rate that Cutler grew. By the end of Friday and certainly by the Saturday night finals Cutler, now some eight pounds heavier, seemed to have overtaken the 250-pound Martinez. Normally it takes a human being nine months to produce an eight pound increase – Cutler did it overnight. There now follows a pregnant pause while those in the know say Cutler won because of his then affiliation to Weider Publications (co-promoter of the Olympia) and MuscleTech (main sponsor). A scenario that holds as much weight as a gnat’s jockstrap.
At the conclusion of Friday night’s prejudging Cutler led Martinez by two points. At the Saturday finals Victor beat Cutler in the posing round (yes, it used to be judged in those blissful far-off pre-Kardashian days) to reduce the deficit to one point. Now all the marbles were up for grabs as the duo went through the eight comparisons again to score the posedown round. I watched the 2007 Mr. Olympia in its entirety from center vantage just behind the judges and as I saw it Jay Cutler did just, just, enough to win that last set of comparisons, which he did by with a score of 6 points against Victor’s 9 (lowest score wins). But if Jay Cutler had not filled out his physique from Friday to Saturday then Victor Martinez would have been the 2007 Mr. Olympia, and nobody would have complained.