By Ron Harris
All you younger guys, get ready to roll your eyes, because here I go with a cranky old man rant. Back in the day, it was incredibly difficult to turn pro in bodybuilding. Only the class winners from the Nationals and the overall winners from the USA and North American earned pro status – that was it! As such, we had a crop of excellent amateurs that were all good enough to do damage on the pro stage, if they ever made it there. Often it took them five to 10 years at the National level. This gave us astonishing quality. Just for perspective the top five in the heavyweight class at the 1991 NPC Nationals was, in order, Kevin Levrone, Flex Wheeler, Paul “Quadzilla” DeMayo, Ronnie Coleman, and Matt Mendenhall. Google Matt’s photos if you don’t know who he us. He never turned pro, but he was on dozens of magazine covers in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, and would destroy most of the men turning pro these days onstage. The point is amateurs were stars on par with