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by Christian Duque<\/em><\/p>\n 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\u2019s also been long said that if the G.O.A.T. of The 212, The Welsh Dragon, James \u201cFlex\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s look at more angles.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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\u2019s and early 2000\u2019s 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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t have the desired effect. A lot of supplement companies didn\u2019t 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\u2019s never been the 202 Olympia or The 212 Olympia, it\u2019s The 212 Olympia Showdown. It\u2019s 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\u2019re 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\u2019re The 212 Olympia Showdown champion \u2013 you are not The 212 Mr. Olympia.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s not this. The 212 is the open Olympia\u2019s redheaded step-sibling. The prestige is far less, as is the prize money, as is the draw for the fans. And that\u2019s not just me saying so, it\u2019s 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\u2019s like women\u2019s bodybuilding and women\u2019s physique. Once the ASC scraps a division, that\u2019s it. But is Arnold the bad guy or he is the ultimate businessman? If a division doesn\u2019t pay the bills, then why keep it?<\/p>\n 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\u2019re 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\u2019s very few shows that would ever do that because there\u2019s just not the amount of fan interest to justify putting it on as a lone professional contest.<\/p>\n Furthermore very few people even know what The 212 rankings are. I\u2019m 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\u2019s just more glaring. I would say that despite there being hundreds, if not thousands, of open pro bodybuilders worldwide, I\u2019d say that there are around 50-75 well known bodybuilders who most serious fans could point out. With regards to The 212, I\u2019d say there\u2019s maybe 15-20 competitors who most knowledgeable fans could pick out. Of those 15-20, only about 5-10 are what I\u2019d consider first-callout material. If you want to narrow it down further, I\u2019d say there\u2019s maybe 3-5 212 guys who could conceivably win The 212 Olympia Showdown. That makes for an otherwise dull fan experience.<\/p>\n
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