Muscle Pros Coming Next Year

Professional bodybuilding is coming to Barbados next year and it will be under the banner of the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation (WNBF).

Two of the finest bodybuilders this country has ever produced, Bernard Sealy and Albert Scantlebury, world leaders in their prime, are organising the event from the local end in conjunction with Manasseh King, a former chief administrator.

The competition will be held in early June, and musclemen from Holland, England, Japan, China, Italy and the United States, will be coming to Barbados.

The WNBF requires all bodybuilders to be drug-free for seven years. All professional athletes must be drug tested the morning of the competition, and the amateurs must undergo polygraph tests. The overall winner in the amateurs will be tested for banned substances.

United States-based Sealy, the only Barbadian to win the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB) Mr Universe title representing Barbados, informed WEEKENDSPORT of the new venture while on a two-week visit to the island.

“Along with the pro show, there will be an amateur contest as well,” he said. “There will be prize money in the pro contest, and the amateur will be a qualifier for the professional ranks, of which the overall winner in the men’s and women’s will earn their pro card.”

Sealy, 50, a past winner of the WNBF professional Mr Universe, is convinced both events will be well attended by bodybuilders.

“From the United States alone, we can get competitors coming to Barbados from about 15 states, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Boston, Texas and Washington,” he said.

Scantlebury, a five-time Mr Barbados and a world championship bronze medal winner in the light heavyweight class in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1990, said the WNBF was opening the door for drug-free bodybuilders to compete against each other.

There will be a masters category for amateurs and it will be divided into the over-40s, 50s and 60s.

“Barbadians can expect to see another Bajan-New Yorker, Kenny Hall. He is 74 and still dominating the Over-70 Masters category. Wherever he goes to compete he brings the house down, and he only poses to calypso,” Sealy said.

The effervescent Hall, who was originally from Bank Hall, competed in Barbados in the early 1990s at the Bernard Sealy Classic.

Sealy added that he is also looking to develop a Caribbean championship.