by Christian Duque
Former 212 Mr. Olympia Shaun Clarida just won the 2025 IFBB Pro League Japan Pro. Reigning 212 Mr. Olympia Keone Pearson is also competing in open. Former 212 Mr. O Derek Lunsford has won 2 open Olympia titles. Former 212 great Hadi Choopan has won the open Olympia as well. Both Choopan and Lunsford have won open Arnold Classic titles. It’s also been long said that if the G.O.A.T. of The 212, The Welsh Dragon, James “Flex” Lewis had ever crossed over, he could have been the first 212 guy to win the open Olympia. In fact, for years the fans toyed with the idea all over the message boards, Facebook Groups, and sub-Reddits. Back then everyone wanted Flex Lewis and Phil Heath to battle it out. And most fans couldn’t say which guy would emerge victorious right off the bat. Many other 212 guys have crossed over and done very for themselves as well. Guys like Jose Raymond and David Henry are just a couple that come to mind.
So if 212 guys can compete with the open guys and not just place well, but win big titles, then why is there a 212 division? That’s a point being pushed hard by legendary bodybuilder Lee Priest. Priest, who placed as high as Top 6 in the open Olympia, sees no basis for the second bodybuilding division and he was able to do that during an arguably much more competitive era. I mean let’s not forget that Priest was competing against giants that would come in extremely shredded. Nonetheless, what he gave up in height and weight he made up for with super-dense muscle and excellent posing. This further makes his point, but let’s look at more angles.
Many critics look at The 212 as having some accommodation for smaller bodybuilders. It used to be thought that a guy that was under 200lbs just couldn’t stand with some of the monsters in the open category. Of course, when historians would point to legends like Frank Zane and Lee Labrada, the rebuttal was always that the mass monsters of the late 90’s and early 2000’s dwarfed even the huge size of guys like Lee Haney and Mike Christian. After a while, it seemed like a lot of whining, if I’m being totally honest. That said, before The 212 came into existence, there was the 202. That was the division dominated by Kevin English. And for that run, yes, many of the guys were noticeably smaller than their open counterparts. Still, it was exciting because it was a new division and at the end of the day it was still bodybuilding.
As is always the case with bodybuilding, however, competitors wanted to grow more. Many competitors found the 202 weight-cap to be very limiting. For a brief period, the 202 and The 212 both existed, but ultimately, the former gave way to the latter. The added size allowed for a new crew of champions to emerge and many of the guys that excelled in the 202 vanished. The 202 really looked like a munchkin division and many fans were left not knowing what to do with it.
The fans got bored; you can only imagine what it must have been like for promoters and supplement companies. The industry did not know how to work with these guys because their amount of fans was always in question. How many fans were actually buying magazines or DVDs for guys that were essentially midgets with muscle? When you could have your pick of who to follow, whether it was a mass giant or somebody that barely weighed 200 lb, who was really short, and was competing with other really short and light guys, it just didn’t have the desired effect. A lot of supplement companies didn’t want to work with a less competitive division. The 202 and The 212 were and are less competitive divisions. And in many cases, promoters felt obligated to include them, even though it was probably not making them any money. What it was doing was making shows longer and forcing the fans to sit through it. There was a great deal of marketing that also went into the formula. For example, it’s never been the 202 Olympia or The 212 Olympia, it’s The 212 Olympia Showdown. It’s a totally different contest. It may be a bodybuilding division and it may be part of the Olympia weekend, but when you win it, you’re not a Mr. O. I know that the media carried the vibe and the Federation has bigger fish to fry that correcting them, but if you win The 212 Olympia Showdown, you’re The 212 Olympia Showdown champion – you are not The 212 Mr. Olympia.
Many fans of The 212 would like to treat it as the Mr. Olympia Under 212lbs. Kind of like back in the day when the Olympia was divided by weight classes. That’s not this. The 212 is the open Olympia’s redheaded step-sibling. The prestige is far less, as is the prize money, as is the draw for the fans. And that’s not just me saying so, it’s unfortunately become the norm. Very few fans lose their minds for the 212 division. This reality was highlighted by the fact the Arnold Classic no longer offered the division once the G.O.A.T. Flex Lewis retired. Even with big champions like Hadi and Derek in the mix, they never brought it back. It’s like women’s bodybuilding and women’s physique. Once the ASC scraps a division, that’s it. But is Arnold the bad guy or he is the ultimate businessman? If a division doesn’t pay the bills, then why keep it?
At the end of the day, if the Olympia ever got rid of The 212 that would be it for the division. I believe in a very real way the Olympia keeps it alive. They’re very few pro shows that offer the division as a standalone. That is also very telling. If it was in fact a very popular division they could do something like that. They could offer an amateur competition plus a 212 pro show, but there’s very few shows that would ever do that because there’s just not the amount of fan interest to justify putting it on as a lone professional contest.
Furthermore very few people even know what The 212 rankings are. I’m not even sure if there are 212 rankings. And there are only a handful of 212 guys who command superstar status. A similar case could be made for open bodybuilding, but with The 212 it’s just more glaring. I would say that despite there being hundreds, if not thousands, of open pro bodybuilders worldwide, I’d say that there are around 50-75 well known bodybuilders who most serious fans could point out. With regards to The 212, I’d say there’s maybe 15-20 competitors who most knowledgeable fans could pick out. Of those 15-20, only about 5-10 are what I’d consider first-callout material. If you want to narrow it down further, I’d say there’s maybe 3-5 212 guys who could conceivably win The 212 Olympia Showdown. That makes for an otherwise dull fan experience.
What’s also creating a lot of doubt in the division is that a lot of top 212 guys are trying their hand at open. And why shouldn’t they? There’s more money, more fans, and more opportunities that become available to them that would not be readily available if they stayed in the weaker bodybuilding offshoot. And The 212 has definitely become a weaker crop than open bodybuilding. This is why when Derek won his 212 Olympia and didn’t bother defending it. He wanted to grow, get huge, and win a Sandow. When you win The 212 Olympia Showdown you don’t get a Sandow and you’re really not a Mr. Olympia. It’s basically a second class bodybuilding division.
It has become very difficult to keep 212 champions in the division because the truly great ones want to compete in the open. With that being the case and with them doing so well with the bigger guys, we go back to Lee Priest’s original point of why does the division even exist? It’s a good division and it has the potential to hold its own in certain contests, but there are so many things working against it that it almost doesn’t make sense to keep having it anymore.
I have to be honest in that this is not a position that I have held for a long time, but rather a position that I’m starting to come around to because I really don’t see the benefit anymore. When guys like Derek, Hadi, Shaun – I mean even Shaun who’s on the smaller end of The 212 – can win open shows like Reno and Japan, why do we need to have a 212 at all? If the lightest guy in The 212 can win open titles, then it really doesn’t make any sense. But at the same time it has become part of physique-based sports. It’s been around for quite a long time so to get rid of it would also be somewhat drastic in my opinion. I think it all comes down to the Olympia. If the Olympia keeps it on its roster then the division will survive, but if Olympia removes it, I don’t see it going on beyond that. Because then it would be the Olympia and the Arnold cutting it. What would be left at that point? The New York Pro, Tampa, maybe some other smaller shows? I don’t think the division would survive. I don’t think it’s really surviving right now either – I think it’s being allowed to survive. I think right now it would be more of a pain in the ass to get rid of it than it is to keep it alive on a subsistence level.
In conclusion, as far as I’m concerned, I agree with Lee Priest. I don’t see the need for The 212. That’s not a position I held as recently as a year ago but it’s a position that is growing on me more and more. As always, I like to leave the final word to you, the loyal readers of IronMag. So what say you? I look forward to reading your feedback in the comments. Please be sure to copy and paste a link to this article on all your social media feeds. It is bound to generate lively conversation.
