Mr. Olympia 2022 – results and photos

The biggest event in the history of professional bodybuilding is up for grabs! Announcing the results of the fifty-eighth Mr. Olympia on Saturday, December 17 ended the main program of this year’s Olympia Fitness & Performance Weekend by Joe Weider, which featured 375 top professional competitors in eleven categories. For most categories, it can be said without any long research that their occupancy at Olympia Weekend was record-breaking, and when we write about this particular Olympia Weekend as the biggest event in the history of professional bodybuilding and fitness, we are not exaggerating at all. After all, the organizers themselves speak the same way. After two years, when it was held in Florida’s Orange County Convention Center, the Olympics were again hosted by Las Vegas, where the Super Bowl of professional bodybuilding somehow belongs the most. Everything here is bigger, better, shinier, and importantly for Olympia Weekend owner Jake Wood, it’s also surprisingly cheaper.

The most important points of the program took place in the Zappos Theater, which is part of the Planet Hollywood Las Vegas hotel resort and casino. Not only can it accommodate 7,000 seated spectators, but all the equipment from the stage, lights and audiovisual equipment is already in it. So there is no need to buy or rent any of it separately. And saving a few bucks with Olympia Weekend’s high turnout is pretty darn good. Jake Wood revealed a few days ago that every competitor who continued to race as a qualifier, won again and thus took the qualification away from someone else, saved him 1,500 to 2,000 dollars. The costs of the arrival of one athlete are therefore not small at all. To participate in Mr. Thirty-six fighters were nominated for Olympia 2022 during the fourteen-month qualification period, of which twenty-eight made it to the podium in Las Vegas. Even though for various reasons Nathan De Asha, Shaun Clarida, Regan Grimes, Angel Calderón Frias, Hassan Mostafa, Leandro Peres, Behrooz Tabani and Steve Kuclo did not use the promotion to the legendary bodybuilding competitions, the record for the number of participants in the Olympia was also broken in men’s bodybuilding open Weekend. So far, the most heavy-duty drivers on the Mr. Olympia introduced them in the 1991 season, when twenty-seven of them appeared before the judges for the competition, with the contribution of the Czechoslovak bodybuilding legend Pavol Jablonický. For the sake of completeness, let’s add that Shaun and Angel, as competitors qualified for both competitions, preferred the start at the 212 Olympia, where they eventually became the two best members of the starting field!

Looking for a favorite to win before the competition was not difficult at all. If to Mr. Olympia is going to start with the reigning champion, which is usually him. However, the course of Friday’s prejudging, which did not begin until late in the evening at the Zappos Theater, showed that the cards may be dealt differently this time. And not only for the winner of the last two years, Mamdouh Elssbiay, but also for some other members of last year’s top six. With the increased competition, which was taken care of by fourteen complete newcomers in the starting field, Mr. Olympia, it appeared that some of the more experienced fighters may have to swallow a bitter pill and accept that they will be worse off this year. Hadi Choopan, Derek Lunsford, Nick Walker, Brandon Curry, Samson Dauda and Mamdouh Elssbiay were given space in the important first and last semi-final calls by the judges. It didn’t get to William Bonac or Hunter Labrada. What was even more interesting was that for all the prejudging, the referees did not once move Elssbiay to the middle of the row. There, Derek and Hadi were the number one and two most time posers, and many believed that this meant the two of them were surprisingly in the running for the win! However, some professional bodybuilding commentators (including King Kamali and John Hansen) have expressed the opinion that Elssbiay is so good that the judges did not need to put him in the middle of the line at all and calmly left him to the side to walk away from there to win. But that didn’t seem very likely. And it wasn’t just the fact that referees would act in this way contrary to customs. Although “Ramy” did not compete in an ill-prepared manner, several defects could be seen in his figure, which, unfortunately for him, were already so obvious that it seemed that it was simply not compatible with the position of the best bodybuilder in the world.

The results of Mr. Olympia 2022

Men’s bodybuilding stars open at Mr. Olympia 2022

Photo:
www.npcnewsonline.com / Jeff Binns