Jay Cutler attends the 2022 Olympia with girlfriend Angie Feliciano (right). / Instagram
Four-time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler didn’t hold back when discussing what went wrong with the 2022 Olympia. He blasted the bloated production with fellow bodybuilding legend Milos Sarcev (who coaches Samson Dauda, among others) on his podcast, Cutler Cast. As The Barbell previously explained, the Friday evening show lasted a monotonous five hours, ending at midnight Las Vegas time (3:00 AM Eastern time) with the men’s open prejudging, the event that most fans most want to see. Mr. Olympia prejudging didn’t even begin until after 11:00 PM local time. The 2022 Olympia featured the largest lineups ever in 11 different divisions, and that wasn’t a positive. Yesterday, it was announced that Olympia qualifications will be stricter going forward.
Here’s the highlights from Cutler and Sarcev.
JAY CUTLER ON MR. OLYMPIA PREJUDGING’S LATE START
“Listen guys, let’s be honest. It’s complete bulls**t that [Mr. Olympia competitors] are sitting backstage for hours on end. Remember, what time is this at. This is absolutely ridiculous….I guarantee sitting backstage like that was total bulls**t. This is still a f**king bodybuilding show. So, I know they want to turn this into a production, and they have all these divisions, but people are coming to see the men’s bodybuilding. They are coming there for the men’s open. It should be the priority. It used to be the starting point for prejudging on Friday. If you remember, that’s how it used to be rolled out. That’s how it should’ve been.”
“No one is going to stay [at Olympia shows anymore]. This is what I’m saying. It’s still a f**king bodybuilding show. Why are you going to torture people to sit through certain [divisions]. I would end up training late just to be able to say, ‘Okay, I’m going to peak at this time to see what my body does.’ At the same time, there’s certain divisions that need to be grouped together and not mixed in for the men to carry it, if that makes sense. If seven o’clock is the prejudging, that’s where it should start.”
“I know four people that told me they couldn’t stay up and watch it [on Pay-Per-View]. I had a kid in California that couldn’t stay up to watch it.”
MILOS SARCEV ON MR. OLYMPIA PREJUDGING’S LATE START
“So, would we have a better show three hours earlier? I think everyone would look tremendously better….I mean, this is unpredictable. What are you going to do. It should be [at a] set [time]. Soccer match starts at whatever, basketball match, boxing match. I understand if they say, ‘Hey guys, there’s a bus running over at 10 o’clock, so you’re going to have to sit in your room and be downstairs at 11 o’clock.’ We [would have the opportunity] to start preparing [properly] for this.”
JAY CUTLER ON THE OLYMPIA PRODUCTION
“I went back there [backstage during the Olympia]. It was a mess. There was no space at all. You had to go outdoors to get into the backstage. It definitely wasn’t the right set up for Olympia production.”
[Note: The 2023 Olympia will be held in a different venue in Orlando, Florida.]
