Shawn Rhoden was one of my favorite people. I met him 15 years ago when I was the senior writer for FLEX magazine and he made a surprisingly strong Mr. Olympia debut, finishing 11th in 2011 in what was only his third pro contest. As we walked together from the Orleans Arena to the adjacent hotel, he was thrilled by his placing and the fact that he made a callout with Mr. Olympias Phil Heath, Jay Cutler, and Dexter Jackson. I told him he deserved a few spots better. “I really hung with them, huh?” Rhoden asked, softly as always, smiling at the memory, as if to confirm that this time he hadn’t dreamed it. “You did and you will,” I answered.
Shawn Rhoden moved up more than a few spots the next year when he was a shocking third at the 2012 Mr. Olympia, one of the best “out of nowhere” placings in Olympia history. Over subsequent years, when we both lived in Southern California, we shared meals at The Firehouse restaurant near Gold’s Gym, and I always dug his laid-back Jamaican vibe and perpetually friendly demeanor. He hated the arrogance of some of his peers. He was the rare champ who never failed to ask me about me. That’s just who he was, and always with a smile.
This is the story of Shawn Rhoden.
SHAWN RHODEN: BEGINNINGS
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, on April 2, 1975, Shawn Rhoden, one of four brothers, immigrated with his family to Maryland in 1990. Previously a soccer player, he took up bodybuilding at 17 and began entering teenage contests shortly thereafter. Of the first one he said, “I was 153 pounds, felt like I was nothing but a ripped set of abs. But I won, and all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Wow, this is fun. This is great.’ We ended up doing shows every other weekend that summer, and I kept winning.”
Working out under the tutelage of pro bodybuilder Yohnnie Shambourger, Rhoden filled out his skinny frame. “I began to realize how much I enjoyed the gym and the sport,” he said. “It gives me a rush. Other sports are about teamwork, but bodybuilding, you get exactly as much out of it as you put into it.” He was second in the light-heavy class of the 2001 North American Championships, but dropped to 14th in the heavy class of the 2002 Nationals.
THE ABYSS
That year of 2002, his father, whom he called “my No. 1 fan,” died soon after being diagnosed with cancer. In his grief, Shawn Rhoden turned to alcohol. He drank heavily, regularly. And then just kept drinking. Forget the gym; it was all about the booze. “In the span of six to eight months, I drank more alcohol than most people drink their entire lives,” the future Mr. Olympia admitted. “I had given up training and was doing kitchen design, working for a flooring company. At night, I was drinking heavily, and then I’d get up, go to work, and that night do it again.”
After urinating blood, Rhoden was hospitalized. That’s when he dedicated himself to kicking the addiction. The detox began. “For days, I had shakes. One minute I was burning up, the next I was freezing cold,” he admitted. “It was so difficult, one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. Whenever I see a drink now, I still think of it, and I never want to do that again.”
THE RISE OF RHODEN
After recovering, Shawn Rhoden still didn’t return to the gym for six long years—his late 20s and early 30s when inferior bodybuilders were growing and winning. He worked, he stayed sober, he ate a lot of junk food, and his former life as a bodybuilder slipped ever further away. But it didn’t concern him. Without his No. 1 fan in his corner, he’d lost his competitive spark.
It was the challenge of a bodybuilding cousin that encouraged Rhoden to, finally, return to the gym. At first, his weakness was humbling. But as the muscle returned, he realized he could make one of the greatest comebacks in bodybuilding history. And he did just that. All but forgotten by the bodybuilding world, at 34, the Jamaican-American delivered his first “out of nowhere” shock, winning the heavyweight and overall 2009 North American Championships.
Up and down again, Shawn Rhoden was 16th in his pro debut in 2010 only to qualify for the aforementioned 2011 Mr. Olympia the following year. Though he landed out of the posedown in the 2012 Arnold Classic, he went on to win four pro shows later that year, including the Arnold Classic Europe; and there was that third in the 2012 Mr. Olympia behind only Phil Heath and Kai Greene. Shockingly, at the age of 37, Shawn Rhoden had arrived.
With his superb legs (sweeping quads, deep separation), wispy waist with sharply etched abs, and his pleasing lines, the 5’10”, 245-pound Jamaican-American known as Flexatron was celebrated for his shape more than his size. His chest, back, and shoulders lagged a little, hurting him in some poses, but his front double biceps was hard to beat. Shawn Rhoden sported an aesthetic silhouette reminiscent of his nickname namesake, Flex Wheeler.
SHAWN RHODEN, MR. OLYMPIA
Over the next five years, while living in L.A. and training under Charles Glass, Shawn Rhoden added two more Mr. Olympia thirds, as well as a second (in 2016), a fourth, and a fifth. He also collected two more pro titles. Consistently conditioned, he stayed very near the summit of bodybuilding, but he seemed destined to be one of those guys who contends for the Sandow trophy annually but never carries it home. His Olympia fifth-place finish came in 2017 at the bodybuilder-ancient age of 42, the year Phil Heath won his seventh straight Sandow. Flexatron was slipping; The Gift wasn’t. Had Rhoden’s time passed?
Shawn Rhoden had one more surprise left, and it was the biggest of all. In 2018, he came in in the shape of his life, complete with cross-striated quads and finely etched back details. In one of bodybuilding’s greatest upsets, he defeated Heath by four points for the Mr. Olympia title. Shawn Rhoden, at 43, became the 14th and oldest Mr. Olympia champ. “It was a long time coming, and I had a lot of doubters, but I knew I could get here if I came in my best,” he said backstage afterwards. He did and he did.
SHAWN RHODEN, AFTERMATH
Shawn Rhoden never competed again. In July 2019, as he was preparing to defend his Olympia title, he was charged with raping a female protégé in Salt Lake City the preceding October. The case never went to trial, but the charges remained, and Rhoden, who maintained the incident was consensual, was banned from the Olympia stage. He continued to train and eat high-protein, continued to promote bodybuilding, if often in a suit and tie, hoping for his name to be cleared and his next comeback to begin.
He was great at comebacks. He’d been as low as he could go only to claw his way to the top once before. He only wanted a chance to do it again. He moved to Las Vegas in 2021 and was working with a new supplement company. But there would be no comeback this time. Shawn Rhoden died on November 5, 2021, of a heart attack, at his home in Las Vegas. He was 46.
Shawn Rhoden left behind a six-year-old daughter, Cora. Days before he died, he spent Halloween with her in Santa Barbara, California, and in an Instagram post filled with smiling, costumed photos of father and daughter he quoted Maya Angelou: “Life Is Not Measured By the Number of Breaths We Take, But By the Moments That Take Our Breath Away.” Flexatron’s final post three days before his way-too-young death rocked the bodybuilding world reads: “Brick by brick and patience it will take. See you on the other side.” Indeed. The 14th Mr. Olympia is gone but never forgotten.
