Interview with Tony Pearson, Author of 'Driven' (Documentary Film Titled 'Driven: The Tony Pearson Story')

You can stream Driven: The Tony Pearson Story right now!

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Born into poverty and shaped by a childhood of abuse and neglect, Tony Pearson overcame unimaginable hardship to rise to international acclaim. His story (both the memoir and documentary), told with raw honesty, is a powerful testament to resilience, perseverance, and the triumph of the human spirit. Here is his Novelpro Junkie interview: 

1. What inspired you to write your memoir titled “Driven: My Secret Story”?

It was a story that I was never going to tell, because I'm a professional bodybuilder. They would write stuff and articles about me all the time that made me seem like I was this Superman. Then, I decided to write the story because I think I can help other people that’s going through a lot of issues. I watch a lot of documentaries and I see what people have gone through. Everybody has a story to tell.

 I was kind of ashamed to tell it because, from the deep south and picking cotton, just being an African-American kid in the deep south in the sixties. So, at the end of my career, I decided that I'm going to tell the story. For me, it was rewarding. It helped me a lot because you carry this baggage with you. There's another side of you that no one knows.  
As I was writing it, there were good days and bad days. When you're writing a life story, very sad things happen. We push things away, we don't think about those things. Then once you start really writing and think about it, it all comes back. That's why I said, “I was going to put it out there. It's risky. People are going to like it or they're not going to like it”. But then I realized I know so many people with a lot of different stories.

As I was writing it, I was telling people, “Hey, I’m writing a book and this is what happened”. And within 30 seconds or a minute, they start telling me about their story. I don't know these people very well, but they revealed what happened to them when they were growing up. They went through this and that. So, with that, I think I was on the right track.



2. What was your writing schedule when you wrote your memoir? 

I think 2017 I started writing it. I didn't know how to write a book. You know, I had a friend in LA, she knew somebody in England and this lady, she was helping me out how to write the book. It got to the point where I began to sound more British than American. So, I just took it upon myself to finish the book and it was really hard. It's not easy to write a book, especially when you're putting your soul out there. It’s time consuming and stressful. As I kept going through this and getting through it, I started to feel better.  It was a weight lifted off my shoulders.
 
 I wrote in the mornings, I wake up and like my mind is fresh and I'm ready to go. I've told so many people as I was writing this I go, this is not me, this is from above because information was coming to me so fast, I couldn't get on the paper fast enough. I'm not a writer. That's when I realized this is from higher power. This is God writing for me, writing through me.  So, every morning I would wake up at six o'clock in the morning. I'll go straight to the computer, without eating, and start writing. That's my best time to write. 
I had clients, but if I try to write in the evening, I’ll be exhausted, tired, and can't think straight. So, the first thing in the morning, that was it for me.  I got most of it done. It took about a year and a half, almost two years to finish it [the memoir].

 
3. Could you talk about how you met Muhammad Ali as he was the reason why you decided to get involve in sports.

 I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, way down in the deep south and we moved because of my great auntie, who I was living with at the time. She's torturing me every day in the deep south. My aunt’s daughter lives in St. Louis and she says, “we’re moving to St. Louis, because I think it is the best thing for us to do”. And I go, “okay”. We go there. I had never heard anything about sports. It was very poor. The last thing on your mind is getting involved with sports. But I was walking down the street one day and coming from a park and I looked and I saw a limousine pulling up in front of a high school. It had a police escort. It's a black limousine. And I said “Oh my God, it must be the president of the United States”. So, I ran as fast as I could get to this limo. I stood there and they opened the back door of the limo and Muhammed Ali stepped out. I'm staring up at this guy like, “Oh my God.”

There's a little backstory to that because when I was in elementary school back in Memphis, we'd go to the library. You take the kids to the library and that one particular day I picked up a magazine, it was Time Magazine. Muhammad Ali was on the cover, had his belt on, the gloves, and I go, man, that's the most beautiful man I've ever seen. That was six years old, maybe.  I never forgot that. So, we go back to class, I put the book down, like whatever.
Now in St. Louis, a few years later, there he is in front of me. So once again, I believe in God 100% because it's just impossible, the things that happened, the way they happened, the timings, all that timing. He really inspired me and motivated me. And I said, “this is the champ of the world”. So, that inspired me to get involved in sports.

 So, I'm in St. Louis. I had a little bit more free time on my hands. I was a tiny little kid. I had no muscles. I couldn't run. It wasn't fast, not athletic at all, but I was pretty strong because as a kid, I picked cotton, chopped down trees when I was a kid. So, I was genetically strong. My dad's a very powerful man as well. He's genetically gifted. So, my friend said, “You should go off to the wrestling team. You’re really strong”. I said, “okay, that's what I'm going to do”. So, I made the wrestling team. That's how it all began…

* From wrestling team to bodybuilding:

I was enjoying wrestling until I messed up my knee and tore my knee, the ligaments in my knees. My wrestling coach says, “well, you can't wrestle anymore after a couple of years. I see you in the weight room every day”.
 I said, “yeah, I'm trying to rehab my knee. The doctor told me to go to the weights”.

In the weight rooms, I was being challenged by the kids on how much I can lift. But I responded very quickly to the weights, like my arms and legs started to grow, then I trained my whole body. It's an addiction. Every day I'm in the weight room.

So, my wrestling coach says, “Hey, you want to go to a bodybuilder's gym, a real gym with me?”  I said, “yeah”. So, he took me to a place called George Turner's gym back in St. Louis, Missouri. George Turner, he had the big gym and all the world champion bodybuilders that trained in this place and they all ended up going to California. So, we went there and it just opened, it was brand new. The gym has all the equipment.  I started working out. I didn’t know what I was doing. I'm just a kid, never had a trainer. George was watching me for hours and after three hours, he had enough, he came over, he said, “get in my office”.

 So I go to his office, he goes, “I'm gonna train you and I want you to be here tomorrow at six o'clock and don't be late”.  George was an ex-Marine. So, you don't mess around with this guy. I was terrified of George. When I showed up the next day, I was 16 years old. He started training me. So that's how it all kind of came together. It's just things that have happened that I had nothing to do with.

After about a year and a half or less, my legs grew, my arms grew, I put on muscle size, like 20 pounds of muscle. I started hearing about Arnold Schwarzenegger on TV, ABC Wild World Sports. I saw it a couple of years in a row. Arnold was winning the title, Robbie Robinson, these legendary bodybuilders. I'm watching, “oh my God, look at those guys. I want to look like that”. Because bodybuilding to me is an art form.  I'm an artist in a way, not just a bodybuilder.
So, I said, “Wow, man, I want to look like that”. I said to George, “I'm going to move to California. I'm going to Venice, California”. He replied, “Well, you’re not going to make it out there. You're never going to make it out there... You have no chance”. And I said, “well, my heart's telling me to go.  I've got to go”. There was an urgency. I felt the urgency to go. I don't know why I had no fear until I got there…

LA is a jungle. In 1976, coming from St. Louis, we lived in a small part of St. Louis. It was quiet, peaceful. You go to a little high school, elementary school. It was very peaceful. When we got to downtown LA, the bus stop, I took a one-way ticket straight to California. George gave me his best wishes. He says, “okay, you want to go, you got to go”. George knew if you really want to be a bodybuilder, you have to go to California, especially in those days. Bodybuilding was not particularly a good thing. “Why do you want to lift weights? Why do you want to build muscle?” My family said that to me. All my friends said “what's wrong with you? Get a real job”. So I said”, no, I'm going. I was determined to go”.
When I got there [ California], this guy named Ken Waller—who George trained, (four world champions came out of the gym). We all went to California, a total of five. We all made it to LA and won some world titles. I looked him up and from there, that's how it all started.

Arnold was an inspiration too, because when I saw him on television, “oh my God, never seen none like that before”. He's witty, smiling, and charming with everybody. I watched him performing on stage and just the way they transitioned from one pose to the next, you can see it's like, your body is like an inanimate chart. That's what bodybuilding is, it's sculpted. You can see, identify all the muscle groups and how they tie together and small hips, small waist, broad shoulder. It's a genetic thing too, because if you don't have good genetics, you're not going to be a great bodybuilder. You'll be okay, but you're not going to be one of the great ones. And I think that's what George saw in me. He saw this kid with no legs, no arms, but he said, we're going to train those bird legs first. That's what he said. And I think he saw the structure, genetic structure, but I need to gain 20 pounds, 30 pounds of muscle, which I did eventually.



 4. Which one was harder, training or writing this book?

Writing the book…. I end up in the hospital at like three o'clock in the morning, nervous breakdown. Like I said, I would train, get up in the mornings and write for an hour and a half, eat, shower, get to the gym, train clients all day. Then I had to do my workouts. It was very challenging.  Also, once you start reliving your past, that's emotional too, because I'm writing it and I'm thinking about it all day.

The good days were when I was writing about winning titles. But when I'm dealing with my Auntie Betty being tortured down south, those are the bad days I got to write. Especially after the lady [British ghost writer] left, from England, has a British accent. I’m from the country and had a country accent in the deep South. No one's going to believe this. So that's where I had to do it myself.

Now writing that book was the greatest challenge ever. The second greatest challenge is the audio book. Arnold spoke about that recently because he had an audio book and for him to say that was hard. That was hard to do because I didn't know when you write that book, your voice changes.  You have your morning voice, afternoon voice, your voice changes.  A lot of things can happen as you're writing. That was the hardest thing. It was harder than the book because the book you just sit and write, no one hears you. People are listening to your voice. Say you're driving your car; you turn on the voice and you hear every little detail that's wrong.  I'm aware of that. I pay attention to every little detail, but that's how you embody when you want to win. You have to pay attention to detail. That's from head to toe. Face expression, body expression, posing, conditioning, presentation, all these things come into one if you want to win. So, it's the discipline. It was crazy. But I did it.

 
 5. What do you hope readers of your memoir will take away from reading your life story? 

It was a hard life.  I watched a lot of documentaries myself, and I've seen other people go through more things than I've gone through. But for me, it was a lot. I didn't have my mom. I didn't have my dad. My auntie, she drank every day. She was brutal. She was torturous. I just want people to see that you can achieve no matter where you came from. You can get past it. I'm just trying to motivate people, that's all. And to express myself because it helped heal me too. I was doing it for myself.

The reviews said that a lot of people say, “oh man, I went through a lot of the same things”, “This is what happened to me too”. but they're not writing about it, they're not telling the story. So, I would recommend doing it. Like I said, for 40 years I said, “I'm never gonna write this story. I'm gonna take it to my grave”.  

In the fitness world, magazine writers and readers, the judges, they all know me. When the book came out, they said, “man, we never knew that about you. You hid it pretty well”. We saw this guy who's doing well in life and coming from the Midwest or high society lifestyle. They used to write these crazy articles about me and I would read them and “oh my God, if they only knew. It's not true at all”. They [writers] make you like a big star. That's part of their job. Robbie said to me, “don't believe your own press”. That's all he said. “Don't believe your own press. you get great articles; you get some really bad articles too. They slam you and there is nothing you can do about it. Just eat it”. He made it very clear.  I read the articles, it's very nice. But that's not who I am. That's not where I came from.

So, [the take away for the reader is] just to inspire them, let them know that it's okay to share your story. At the end of the book, that's what I said. It's okay to share your story.


 
6. In your book, George Turner was your trainer when you first wanted to become a bodybuilder. If you could describe him in three words, it would be…

Brutal. Torture.  No mercy.

 But honestly, I was okay with it. Why? Because my body was changing. I was terrified of George. When he spoke, I said, “how high do you want me to jump?”  George was the type of guy that if you say “I can't” or “I don't think I can”. He's going to escort you straight to the door. Don't waste his time. He challenged me….
Thank God for George. He passed away. He's in the documentary. We went to his grave site and I talked to George. He helped so many people. He would help you, people are afraid of him too.  But, that's how you get things done.  He wasn't here to waste his time.


 
7. You went through a tough childhood. However, growing up, you found an outlet in wrestling before becoming a bodybuilder. What lessons would you pass to anyone who might be facing the same experience that you faced? What advice would you pass to that person? 

For a lot of people, for me it was bodybuilding. Some people love music, they love dance, they love reading, they love all these other different sports. I think you need to get yourself involved in something that's to occupy your time, something you can focus on, something that's good you can build on, something to achieve. I think we're all here on this planet to achieve something in life that has a purpose. I think that's a great outlet, just go through stuff that brings you joy.


 8. As a professional bodybuilder, you have traveled around the world for competitions and promotions. Could you talk which country you liked the most and why? 
 
 I was everywhere. I was in Germany for quite a bit of time. Germany was great and I was doing seminars and exhibitions. I lived there for a while too.  I think Italy was the best overall. The people were so warm, invite you in. I remember I went on a six-week bus train ride from Austria to Italy.  I walk into a gym and go, “Oh, Tony Pearson, oh my God, come on, man”. They don't know me. So, I'm staying at their house. I'm training at their gym. It was very warm.Madrid, I lived in Madrid, a great place.  All those places are very nice. They were in the sport of bodybuilding. They read about you in a magazine. Now you're standing there. I had a great time in Europe, but Italy was overall the best. I did a lot of work in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Japan. Australia was great. I competed down there.  It was a roller coaster ride, but it was a lot of fun.


9. Could you talk about how you first met Arnold Schwarzenegger and when is the last time you spoke to him? 

The last time I spoke to him was 2018. He had Arnold's class in Columbus, Ohio. I competed in the first two. It was the 30th anniversary in 2018. After the first couple of years, I competed in that Ingleback for a long time. I saw him in 2018 and he didn't recognize me because I shaved my head. I said, “But Arnold, it's me”. So, we took a bunch of pictures together and it was good to see him again. Once again, I'm still grateful for him, for saying those few words, those few words was the motivating factor. 

I think I saw him at the beach. He did a weightlifting thing on Santa Monica Pier  just before the pandemic hit. So, I saw him for a brief moment there. He's all over the place. You can't get to Arnold. He had the bodyguards with him and. But I grabbed the shot, goes “Arnold, it's me, it's Tony Pearson”. And he goes, “oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah”.
He loves to make jokes about stuff. So, I'm flexing my arms, showing my abs. This guy's always in fantastic shape, he says.  Then I was flexing, he goes, “why don't you flex harder?” I go, “I am flexing”.  He likes to make jokes all the time. So, it was good to see him.
 
How Arnold discovered him: 

 So, I went to LA [ first time in the city] and I was training at Muscle Beach. I couldn't afford the gym. I just told somebody I got thrown out of the Gold's Gym, the original Gold's Gym. They're all over the world. So, I go to Gold's Gym and the owner says, "I want to buy a membership." I can't afford it.

I just arrived. I said, “was Arnold here?” he goes, “well, he was here, a few hours ago” and he goes, “well, you're to have to leave”. They escort me out.
 So, I got on the muscle beach outside in the sun. It's like a weight pen. A lot of guys are training out there and music blasting tours from all over the world, going to Venice, California. They want to see the muscle guys that wait at the weight pen. I trained every single day and Arnold discovered me there.  One day, I'm training, I turn around and he's standing in front of me. I mean, what were the chances? luckily, I was training that day and Arnold was there at the same time. And then he trained me. He said, “let me take you to a workout”. Then, he wrote down an address and said “go to Joe, tell him I sent you”. Joe Weider and Ben Weider, owned a gym called body belt, they created it. 

 So, I had to take three buses to get to Woodland Hills. That's where the big corporate office was. I go in and say, “Arnold sent me out here. See you do an article for the magazine. They put me in the magazine”. I had no titles, nothing.  Half an hour later, Joe comes out. He looks me up and down and goes, “Arnold, since you're here?”  That's how I began and from that point on, I never missed my workouts.

Without Arnold, I didn't know how to become a bodybuilder. I’m in LA. I’m just a kid. They didn’t have time for me. I didn’t have any muscles.  It's a tough sport. It's really tough, kind of like football. It's like the UFC, a very intense sport, either you in or you out.

So, I won Mr. Venice Beach. I was so proud of my first contest. Then I said, “I'm going to be Mr. American in two years”. Once again, I was a kid talking, mouthing off. But I did, within two years, become Mr. America. Arnold had a lot to do with that, giving me direction. He said to me, “you'll be a great champion”—in that accent he got—"you'll be a great champion someday”.  And that stuck with me because—and I wrote in the book—if any other professional bodybuilder had said that to me, I wouldn't believe them. But when he [Arnold] said it, I thought, “this is the best bodybuilder on the planet. You must know”. And I believed him. That's what got me motivated to continue. Nobody wants to see you get to the top. Everybody wants to be number one. All the negativity is going to follow you. But just ignore it. I tell people, even now, just ignore it.  Use that energy to show them. That's what I was trying to do. So, I won Mr. America and then my career took off from there.

 It was never easy. It sounds easy now, but it was a lot of work, a lot of sacrifice. You have to train so hard, honestly, train three or four hours a day. I would train twice a day, six days a week, year-round. I was not out of condition because you want seminars. You want to do exhibitions. You want to be seen and you have to be in shape. You can't just show up out of shape. It's embarrassing to you and the promoter. So that’s what I did. I was in shape all year long for 20 years, and had a 20-year career.


10. What is the genesis of your book being made into a documentary? 

The documentary is based on the book. The production company, Tequila Mockenburg production company, out of LA. The lady who owns it—by the way, she's the daughter of Joe Weider—she read the book. She read the book twice and decided to adapt it. I think she saw something in the book that she liked.  I had a friend from LA who came to train with me over here and that's how I got introduced to her. And it's just word of mouth because I wrote the book and said, that's it. It doesn't go anywhere. But then she got the book and read it.  And  that's how we did the documentary.  Uh, it's not just about bodybuilding. It's a real life story. He was always a bodybuilder. No, it's nothing to do with bodybuilding. I became one as part of my life, but it's how I was raised and what I went through, you know, and a lot of people go through stuff like this.  How many actors have gone through hell and back  now they're superstars. They make big names. And I had said, Oh my God, they went through that. Wow. But it survived. You got to be a survivor and that comes from within. You got to really toughen up. I mean, you have your ups and downs. Everybody goes up. I was depressed at times. I'm down and out, but I talked to myself.  You have to keep moving forward. Keep moving forward. Forget about the naysayers. You got to do what you got to do. It's a crazy world.
 
11. Could you talk about your experience with director Andrew Menjivar on the documentary?

Great guy, just brilliant. He's brilliant. There are parts of the film that were on the floor [didn’t make it in the final cut]. You got an hour and a half for the film. He probably had like three or four hours of material.

I went to the premiere in Hollywood at the Chinese theater. That was shocking for me because the man's Chinese theater in Hollywood had the premiere of my little documentary, but it was there and I was sitting there watching it and just the way he put it together for an hour and a half, it just all fits so perfectly. The timing, the music, the transitions, everything. The guy is a genius, absolute genius. 

 I was crying. He brought it to life. Reading the book is one thing, but when you see it on the big screen…. I give them all credit. I give them all credit. I narrated it.  At first, I wanted someone to be a narrator, to retell the story for me. But he said that I needed to do it. He did a fantastic job. The whole crew did—the producer, director, the whole crew. It took about three years to complete it.

  I live in Vegas and the production crew says we got to come over.  I was competing in that last show [a bodybuilding show that he watched in 2019 and saw his good friend Doug Bricknoly winning, which inspired him to compete in 2020.] and Patricia (the person that read the memoir) said she wanted the crew to come over to the show and film me. Looking back, if I didn’t do that show, there wouldn’t have been a documentary.  

It took two, maybe three years to finish it. We went back to the location in Memphis and we went to St. Louis to film. It was challenging, going to Memphis and reliving all those things that happened when you were a kid. It's funny how we protect ourselves and your emotions… It all comes back to what happened, the memory of it. You shut it out, you forget about it, you move on. People always say, “move on with life, forget about it”. But I think you have to deal with it first to let it go.  So, they did a lot of filming in Memphis. Then we moved to St. Louis. We went to George Turner's grave and we did all those things in St. Louis and then we went back to LA. There's a lot of stuff that happened with being in LA too. It was a roller coaster ride, but it was fun.

There's a lot of stuff you couldn't put in. There's a lot of stuff in that book. You would have an eight hour movie. So. But he put it just, they did it just right. I want everybody to go watch it. It's on Amazon Prime. You can watch it. And so now and a half very quick, but transition from scene to scene, the lighting, the music, everything just worked, worked perfectly. It felt like an actual movie. You know, when I wrote the book, I was kind of writing it like a movie, like a movie scene. The director wouldn't have very much to do because what I wrote is going to put you in that position. In my mind, that's what I was writing. I'm writing a story, I want it to sound like a movie already.  And that's what you're saying. The production people said, yeah, the way Tony wrote it, it was kind of like a movie. And we just kind of took it from there. And it's amazing how much work goes involved and that's involved in that. Just, every little detail has to be done. But once you watch it, it just flows perfectly all the way through. This is really nice.  So much work. I give them so much credit. to want to do the story and inspire other people.

The Film Premiere: We had the premiere in LA. A lot of people showed up, it was almost a full house. They showed up to watch it. I think 90 % of the people there don't know anything about bodybuilding. They're from Hollywood, don't know anything about this whole thing. But one by one, they came to me and said, “we love that story. We don't know anything about bodybuilding. But we love the story. That's a good story”.  I remember sitting halfway through, I'm bawling.  My dear friend over here, she's giving me tissues because I remember her giving me the tissues, wiping my eyes. Seriously, I'm like bawling, watching this thing and you couldn't hear a pin drop in the movie. So, when I won Mr. America, they stood up and applauded. I got emotional. They stood up and were appalled at the whole thing. It was very touching. The movie, they [film crew] did a great job.
 
12. In your documentary, some well-known people appeared in it including James Maslow, Andre Rush, Eric Fleishman and Fabio Lanzoni. Could you talk about any memorable moment with them from the film? 


Oh yeah, all the guys. Great, good friends, very humble, very nice people. Mr. Roche, he's Mr. Intense. Fabio is a really good friend of mine, known for years. We worked out together in the documentary. Jerry Branum is like one of the big writers for the Wheaters Company all those years. These are the people telling me we never knew this story. We know you, but you know this.
I thank them one by one for being taken apart in this. I have time to do that and support me and support the cast. It was great.  I needed them. I needed them there. These are pros, been around forever. I'm very grateful that they took the time to   be there for me.
 

13. Have you considered adapting your book into a feature film? If so, would you make a cameo if there is a feature film adaptation? 

I would like to be a cameo or walkthrough. The book has all the elements, I think it has a great love story, ups and downs and trauma. I wrote it like that. My story is so detailed that I put you [reader] in the scene. I put you in the moment. Like when I went to see my auntie after all those years, I went back to see her, visit her and had to face her. I was a bodybuilder. I had muscles at the time, but I was still scared. I was afraid of her. So, I go to her house with a Southern accent. I go in and like I said, I'm nervous.  She doesn't know what to expect. I forgave her and she saw this, she had a picture of me on the wall. She said, “you did a lot of wonderful things.” I'm looking at her like, did she forget what I've gone through? But I think that's what she knew and that's all she knew. She didn't know what love is or how to treat someone. She was so proud. Oh, wow. Put the picture on the wall. So, yeah, so it was, I had to go back and face the music. You had to go back and face it to free yourself. your abuser, that's your abuser. So now I'm at peace. I'm at peace.
 

14.   If you weren’t a bodybuilder, what else do you think you could’ve been?

Going back to St. Louis, I had no college degree.  I don't know. Working at McDonald's. I had no experience doing anything. I was sheltered as a child. I was locked up. I had no experience speaking. No, I don't know what.  I don't know. I mean, that this, this, this, like I said, God put this plan in me, you know, when I was 10 years old, let me tell you really quick. I was  tortured from three years old to like 15. I asked God,  said out loud when I was 10 years old, why must I live through this?  Like I said, I'm an old soul and I believe that. Why must I live through this?  I didn't get my answer until 40 years later, I was writing a book. One morning I'm writing and then it hit me. “Oh God, yeah, okay, this is why”. So yeah, I don't know what I would have done. I make the right decision, the right move. I didn't know that until I went back to St. Louis and maybe going back was telling me you did the right thing back to Memphis, back to St. Louis, the same neighborhood. I went to the same spots. We had to go to the same spots. There was nothing happening, nothing. It was 10 times worse because the upgrade, the upkeep of the community was not there. I have no clue. I have no clue. I think I was born to do this.
 
 Let me reward it in another way. Let's say you have the opportunity to do something. What else do you think you would have done besides building? Even if the opportunity presents itself to you. It's, it's what, so I was 17, I was 19, 18, 19 years old. It would have to be sports of some sort. I could see that. But working at McDonald's and nine to five and no, no sports. Yeah. Cause that would excite me. And I mean, genetically, like I said, I was pretty strong and had muscles and, you know, could play football or soccer or something. I could see sports. The only thing that's gonna go, wow. But am I gonna make money from that? I don't know. I get a real job? I don't know.



15. If you have your own talk show, who would your first three guests be?


Denzel Washington... I did an audition. I sat next to him the whole time. Very cool guy. It was the mid-90s. the film “Devil in the Blue Dress”, one of his movies. Somehow during the audition, he showed up and I'm sitting right next to Denzel Washington. Cool guy, just cool.
Oprah would be great. Halle Berry... If someone did a film adaptation of my memoir, I think Oprah should be my auntie. Hallie Berry should play my mom.
My mom was very beautiful. I saw my mom a couple of times, beautiful. So, Hallie Berry as my mom.
Fabio will have to be on my show. He’s a friend of mine.



16. Last question, what has weightlifting taught you about life?

  Hard work…..Nothing comes easy. You do the time.  Don't give up on yourself. I'll just keep fighting, keep fighting. It's taught me a lot of discipline because I couldn't go out partying. couldn't, I don't do drugs. I'm in bed at a certain hour. I got to eat at a certain hour. I got to train at a certain hour. If you want to be one of the best. So, you sacrifice everything and still with no guarantee that you're going to win anything.
 It’s like gymnasts, they practice all day long. I was training at a gym, and part of the gym were boxers. As a bodybuilder, I'm watching these guys every day, some of them semi pros, and when they come in, I'm watching them fight. That's intense. You think bodybuilding something these guys punching and punching for hours and hours all day long to be great. That's discipline. So any sport that you do, you have to do a lot of work unless you're so incredibly gifted. You still got to do work because the people who are not gifted are training 10 times harder to beat you. They're coming out no matter what. So yeah, it taught me a lot [ about life].