On Episode 273 of The Menace Podcast, Dennis James was joined by Chris Cormier, Milos Sarcev, and special guest Shahriar “King” Kamali, who explained why his development in the world of bodybuilding was never derailed by negative voices.
The current era of bodybuilding is very much about a pristine appearance on social media, where peace and balance lead to brilliant results, but in the real world, the pressure of competition and the effects of negative voices often serve to stall our progress. One man that was able to stay true to his vision, despite the pressure of being an elite bodybuilder, was King Kamali, who began his career with an overall win at the 1994 NPC Collegiate Nationals and went on to tread the boards at both the Mr. Olympia and Arnold Classic finals.
“He can feed off the negative energy, right?” said Sarcev of Kamali. “We were talking about, who, under the circumstances has to have everything in order, to function, and if it’s something negative (it throws them off). King, you were king of that.”
King Kamali Explains How Tough Love Helped Him to Deal with Negativity
“That’s because of Fairfax Hackley,” Kamali told TMP. Fairfax Hackley is the master trainer who was awarded the Dwight David Eisenhower Lifetime Achievement Award in Fitness by the United States Sports Academy in 2017. “Every weekend, when I went to pose for him, from the nationals, to my pro debut, he was the meanest motherf***er I’ve ever experienced. I mean everything was negative, nothing was positive. ‘You ain’t even gonna make the first top ten, what’s wrong?’” Kamali would need a thick skin to share the stage with warriors like Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler.
The big man explained that he’d struggled to get his head around such hard criticism at first, but finally figured it out. “And at the end, I understood,” he shared. “He told me, ‘I was trying to toughen you up.’” Of course, bodybuilding is a dog-eat-dog business that’s not always as friendly as it appears on some Instagram profiles. Kamali was told by Hackley that the ability to take negative energy and turn it into positive energy was a skill that would be valuable to his journey. “I just took that (mindset with me) for my entire career,” shared The Persian Pearl, who became one of the most distinctive posers of all time.
To watch the full episode, where the panel also made Arnold Classic predictions and discussed all the latest bodybuilding news, see below.
