Danny Padilla won the Mr America and Universe lightweight classes in 1977 and was third at the 1978 Mr. Olympia. He competed at 5 feet 2 inches and was known as the Giant Killer.
Known for
The nickname is the record in three words. At his height he beat competitors a foot taller, taking the Mr America short class in 1976, the Mr America and Universe lightweight classes in 1977, and USA vs the World in 1978.
He placed third at the 1978 Mr. Olympia and fifth in 1979 and 1981, competing in the open division against men who outweighed him by fifty pounds.
Early career
His record opens in 1972 and the last recorded contest is in 2000, though the competitive core of it runs 1975 to 1985. He was runner-up at the Universe in 1976 and at the Night of Champions in 1979.
Championship record
Championship appearances
Counted from the same results table below: an appearance is one contest entered (in the years the Olympia also judged weight classes, one appearance can carry two placings), an Olympia title is the overall win in that division, and Top 3 counts first, second and third together. The last row is every professional contest on record for Danny Padilla.
Mr. Olympia
6Appearances
0Titles
0Top 3
Professional results
Every professional contest result on record for Danny Padilla, 27 in all. The table opens on the first 15 and expands in place from there. Nothing sits on a separate page. Won by names the winner of the division Danny Padilla competed in, and shows a dash where that winner cannot be pinned to one person in the database.
Showing 15 of 27 professional results.
Where these results come from. Each contest in the table was recorded from a named source, and for Danny Padilla that source is MuscleMemory. Open any contest above and that page names its own source and links to it where the source is still reachable. That archive no longer answers at the addresses we hold, so it is credited by name here and not offered as a link.
Every professional season
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1990
1991
1994
2000
Olympia
1st place
2nd place
3rd place
Other
- Pro Debut
- 1978
- Last Contest
- 2000
Danny Padilla at the Olympia, year by year
| Year | Placement | Division |
|---|---|---|
| 1978 | 6 | Men’s Open Bodybuilding |
| 1979 | 5 | Men’s Open Bodybuilding (lightweight class) |
| 1980 | 10 | Men’s Open Bodybuilding |
| 1981 | 5 | Men’s Open Bodybuilding |
| 1982 | 12 | Men’s Open Bodybuilding |
| 1985 | 16 | Men’s Open Bodybuilding |
Data updated
Physique benchmark
How Danny Padilla measures up
Fat-free mass index turns the height and weight on this profile into one number for how much muscle a frame carries, so a shorter competitor is not flattered by a bodyweight comparison. The normalised figure adjusts it again to a standard height, which is the version worth ranking. Both assume the 6% body fat a competitor steps on stage at, because that is the only condition the recorded weight was taken in.
29.2FFMI
30.6Normalised FFMI
136thOf 316 measured men
The closest Olympia champion on that measure is Sergio Oliva, at 30.4.
What this rank is not. This database holds a height and a weight for just 463 athletes, and they are overwhelmingly the ones somebody bothered to measure: 74 of them hold an Olympia title. Almost every competitor on record carries no measurement at all. The pool also mixes every division and era together, from the lightweight women’s classes to the open heavyweights, so it ranks size and nothing else. It says where Danny Padilla sits among the athletes we hold measurements for, not among competitors.
Amateur and other shows not counted above
13 results from amateur shows and other contests this archive does not class as professional. Every total on this page covers the professional career only, so these are listed here but never counted, and they have no contest page.
Show the list
More Men’s Open Bodybuilding athletes
Athletes from United States
Danny Padilla peak window
Legacy
Padilla is the standing answer to the question of what proportion is worth. He never won an open Olympia and he is still named in any serious argument about the best physiques of the seventies.
In 10 meetings, Boyer Coe finished ahead of Danny Padilla 5 times to 4.
Opponents are ranked by how often they shared a stage and how big the stage was, not by reputation. A meeting is one contest where both competed in the same division and both were placed.
Sources
Competition placings on this page come from our own contest database and cover 1972 to 2000.
The Giant Killer nickname is carried from the biography previously held in our corpus.
Some contests appear twice in the table below because one result was recorded under two division labels. They are single contests.
Win rate here is first-place finishes as a share of all 27 professional contest results. It is published only where a career holds at least five, because below that a single placing moves the figure by twenty points or more.
