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I can just say that it's not health reasons as some people are speculating.
If you are in the top six you're being pretty much compared to the guys in the top six. You've done your front-double biceps, your lat spreads against Ronnie, Dexter, Jay, so why come to the night show? You've got the same judges that judged the pre-judging. All of a sudden are they going to say, "Oh wait a minute! He looks better in that pose?" It would be good if they left it to the audience, and sure the audience has its favorites like Gunter and other crowd favorites, but overall, if you left it to them and just used that as a small percentage of the score, I bet the audience would vote, like they do on some of those TV shows where the audience can vote for who they think looks best. If you have the same judges judging it I can't see it changing that much unless they want someone new. There has been a lot of rumors that Ronnie might get beat, so I guess they could use it to the effect where they say that Jay looks better, so Jay gets one point extra and wins the Olympia.
Well, in the overall posedown, that's what you did. Someone would do a double bicep shot and you would stand beside them and do a double bicep shot. If they did a lat spread, you'd do a lat spread. So they might think its new, but it's the same shit that we've always had!
I'm not sure what the schedule is for next year because some shows are being canceled, so I'm going to wait and see. But, the Ironman and the Arnold definitely.
I just find that the lower bodyfat I get, I don't get any leaner and my legs get softer. I just find that by going down too low my muscles just get flat.
Pics of Lee Priest from the 2000 NOC courtesy of http://eastcoastmuscle.com.
Lee at one of his latest races.
Next year I want to plan on doing the whole 12 races, and try for Rookie Of The Year and do well in that.
Lee in September of 2002 with one of his race cars. So I'm doing a bit of oval stuff to keep up on it. But I like both the dragster and the stockcar, but right now I have more opportunity to drag, so I've been doing that.
Now its big f^ckin egos in this sport! We are all out to do the same thing: we all want to go into a show and do the best we can. If you win, you win. If you don't, you don't. But you get guys these days, if they don't win, its this-or-that, or its racist? Whatever! I don't know how many times a black guy's won a bodybuilding show, but the fist time they don't win it's suddenly racist. Back stage at some of the shows, everyone and their egos and shit like that is just crazy!
Like I said too, some of those guys get egos and then the fans get turned off because they become arrogant with the fans. I've always just tried to be myself, speak my mind and I've always been nice to the fans. I'm a shy person. Sometimes people might think I'm arrogant because I don't talk much, and someone might come up to me and say hi, I say hello back. But, unless you engage me in a conversation I sometimes won't start it, just because I'm shy. I just try to be down to earth, with some of these pros now, I get pissed off at them because its like - f^ck! - I don't want to even be considered in the same class as some these a-holes!
I always laugh at stuff like that when other people are writing that I'm the next to die and this sort of stuff - I look at it this way: I started competing in the pro ranks almost 11 years ago, and if you want to call it the "old guard" even though I'm still young, a lot of the guys I started competing with in 1992-1993 are not competing any more.
I started competing a few shows before Ronnie, so there are not really many of the guys I started competing with back then are still competing. If you look back at some of the contest line-ups from 1993, 1994 and 1995, really only one last guard was Shawn Ray, and now he is retired. Everyone like Milos Sarcev, Porter Cotrell, Mike Matarazzo, Vince Taylor, Kevin Levrone? I'm still young and I'm one of the old guards who are left. There have been a lot of people come and go, and even a lot of people who turned pro in the late 90's who are not competing anymore. So for all those people who predicting my death or that I'd give up and disappear? I'm glad they aren't predicting my lotto numbers!
I know amateurs and some pros, right now more amateurs, who are on the shit who are on it year round. They go on it eight weeks, come off for two weeks and go back on for another eight weeks. I'm not saying steroids are going to kill you, but in the long run I can't see abusing it being good for you. It's like any drug, you can abuse asprin, you can abuse anything and get problems. You can have one or two drinks of alcohol and be fine. You can have ten drinks and drive drunk, killing yourself and someone else. It's like anything: If you abuse it in the long run it's going to cause problems. People might see me and think I am unhealthy, but I have my blood checked twice a year, had things checked out, and right now everything is fine. I haven't got the high cholesterol that people think or anything else! But in this sport, if anything happens, it's always attributed to drugs. That's one thing I've always hated about the sport: people who don't know. If you want to know anything about me, ask me and I'll tell you. But yet, even when I tell people, I get pissed off when I read the boards - I laugh at it now - because I'm telling the truth. I've got no reason to lie to you. If I take 5000mg of testosterone a week, I will tell you: I take 5000mg of testosterone a week. I don't give a f^ck if you know what I take, because I'd rather tell you the truth of what I take than somebody else. When I tell people the small amount, they say "Bullshit! I've heard you take this?" I say, "I'm the guy taking it, and I'm telling you what I'm taking!" It's just a frustrating part of it, because I know people who tally it in their minds saying, "If Lee is taking 2ccs of this and 2ccs of that, and I'm taking 4 of this, 5 Anadrol and taking this and that, and I'm not as big as him so he's f^ckin taking more!"
They don't look at the genetic side of it. I've been dieting, training and competing since I was 13 years old - that's 20 years! It's a long time. Many people who train don't get enough nutrition, and they stay out all night partying, and they wonder why they aren't growing or why they feel overtrained. If you want things to work, you've got to have it all down. You've got to have the nutrition, diet, training and rest down in order for it to work.
Plus bodybuilding is a long term sport. Many people come into the sport and think that in a couple of years they will be as big as me and turn pro. NO! I say to them: try training for six or seven years first and then go on about it!
If you can try and show it as a healthy lifestyle which it can be - some people might say that it's not because of the drugs - but name one pro sport out there that does not use drugs? Like I said, it's the ones who abuse it that make it unhealthy. You can still do it safely if you use small amounts. Just trying to get it more accepted and perhaps changing the contest a bit more, making it more mainstream. People out there playing darts can win $100,000. We have shows where we go in and diet our asses off, and if you win you get $10,000, after taxes you have $6000 left! 
There are guys out there who train their asses off that don't have a contract, and he wants a contract to do what? If you are the athlete's rep you don't have to be liked - you aren't competing anymore. What are they going to do, suspend you? You have to take the things that we complain about to them. A good example is what happened with GNC - they got rid of the prize money. I said to Shawn, "The guys that signed on for $100,000, they should f^ckin sue them!" If you are getting ready for a show, thinking you're going to get $100,000 and they tell you four weeks out that you are only going to get $15,000 or $20,000, you'd say "WHAT?" In any other sport or industry - wether its movies, commercials or whatever - if you sign a contract, that's what you get. I've signed contracts and have learned the consequences of not being happy with a contest, and I've had to pay a $5,000 fine. I've e-mailed Shawn and Shawn said that the guys who aren't happy can pull out - but still, the other end isn't keeping their end of the bargain. If I signed a contract and pulled out I'd get fined and suspended. For some reason guys in this sport won't stand together. Yes, we need the IFBB because we don't have much choice to compete somewhere else unless someone starts a new federation - but the IFBB needs us too. The Mr. Olympia doesn't excite me to compete, and that's one of the reasons why I'm not doing it - I'd rather do the Arnold Classic. It's more professionally run, it's on mainstream TV, it has Arnold's name, and it's more accepted as a show. Half of people don't know about the Mr. Olympia - its never advertised in Vegas, and it's not in the paper the next day. I see people on the street and they ask me "Are you the one in Mr. Universe?" they don't even know about the Mr. Olympia. They say that the Mr. O is the #1 show in bodybuilding, but I think the Arnold classic is right up there. The way you are treated at the Olympia is ridiculous. They are pushing us here and there, and they come back stage, telling us to go out early without oil, telling us that we don't have time to prepare. I'm not going out there without oil on, looking half-assed - so go ahead and start the show - without us! I guess the guys just don't want to make waves. Imagine if the Mr. Olympia is sold out, people have come from all over the world to watch it, and the athletes say, "Unless we get what we want, we aren't walking on stage tomorrow" - I bet they would come up with something pretty quickly. Just trying to get the guys to stand together as a whole is the hard part. Someone will run back to someone and say, "Lee or this person is saying this or that, and here is what they plan on doing", and so they blackball you before you get anywhere! Some of the things that Shawn is saying now I've been saying for years. It's like, what have you done Shawn, gone back and read some of my interviews?
(May 17th, 2001)
There was a lot of the things that I did that people complained about, like at the Olympia when I wanted everyone to get money, and people were complaining, "Why is Lee causing trouble?" I think that if you go to the Olympia to compete, you should get money - and they eventually gave everyone who placed out of the top twelve $2000. It's not much, but at least it's something. Craig Titus was saying, "I can't see why Lee is doing this or that, he's just causing trouble." I said that I was willing to give some of my money away, which I had no problem doing. Now Craig is saying, "We're going to get the athletes money" - it's like, where were you guys before when I wanted to do it and you were bagging me for doing it, and now all of a sudden it's the "in thing" to do? I wanted to do things for years and no one stood behind me and supported me, they just kept their mouths shut. I've paid over $17,000 in fines and had a twelve month suspension, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and stand up to something if I don't agree to it.
I left and went to work with MuscleTech, and they promised the world. When I signed the contract and did what I said I was going to, and at the end they said that they weren't going to keep their word, saying that I didn't have it in writing because they said it. If I'm a company like Twinlab for example, and you ask me about a product, if I don't like it I will tell you up front. And, if I don't like one of their products, I will go to the company and tell them that I don't like the taste or that I don't think it works. I will ask them: can you have your people do something about it or change the mixture? I'm not going to say "take it" just because I'm with the company. I told MuscleTech that and that's the way I am.
I'd do interviews with MuscleTech and tell the truth, and when the interview came out, none of what I said was published. I asked them, "Why the f^ck did you bother to interview me?" Shit like that went on back and forth.
People always ask me why I got so fat for those pictures, and I always say that I was heavy to begin with but for those pictures I really had to push it out. If they say, "Here is $10,000 look as bad as you can" I'm going to do it! (laughs). I can look heavy, push my stomach out and not shave and look like a wreck.
Lee in the off season. People always look at those pictures and always say that they can't believe how bad I looked. I hate to break it to them, but I didn't actually look that bad! If you push out your stomach, don't shave for a while, get a bit puffy and get fluid on you, you'll look bad in no time.
When it came to dieting, I never used their product to diet down. I just did what I normally do: I do the hard training for two and a half hours a day. When I train I still do it for two and a half hours a day - even for biceps and triceps. People always tell me that you can't train that way, but people are always looking for the quick fix. Back in the old days Arnold who had thick quality muscle trained for two hours at a time, and often trained chest twice a day. With all of these recovery supplements today, you should be able to train each body part every f^ckin day! A lot of pros that I've seen used to be hard and ripped. But once they get here they become lazy and think that they have it made. They think that they don't have to work as hard as they used to. I stick to the basics, and people ask me why I don't just take some growth hormone, but nothing is going to work like hard work. I'd rather do the extra work so that come dieting time I can eat a bit more when I am hungry.
We are in a sport where we are judged on our physiques, and that's fine. But you have a guy who can be a top pro in the world and having him being torn to shreds by these guys that sit behind their computer. I think these people should post their pictures. Maybe some of them look okay, and I'm sure some do, but if they are going to tear us down they should let us see their pictures.
In no other sport have I seen the fans get so involved in the sport, and yet tear down the athletes. In football and baseball they are all heroes, and some of them might mess up a play occasionally, but in bodybuilding if you do one thing wrong they tear you to shreds and if you come in out of shape you look like crap and you are washed up! You can't win, so it has gotten to the point where I get amused. I had a guy come up to me once in the gym when I'm training arms and tell me that I should do curls this way. I looked at his arms and they were about fifteen inches. That would be like me walking up to Tom Platz and telling him how to squat! Sometimes now I will just post something on a web board and wait for the responses! I get entertained by what people do!
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Sure there are some figure girls out there who do train, but you could go to any beach somewhere and see twenty hot figure girls who could go on stage and turn professional. That money should be going to the fitness and bodybuilding divisions. Look at the crappy money that women's bodybuilding gets! With women's bodybuilding you have friends, family and fans who respect what goes into it. But look at the way that figure is promoted: The mainstream can accept it more because they just look like girls in bikinis. I don't want to say T & A, but you pretty much have every guy in there looking at tits and ass!
If I never win another bodybuilding show again it won't bother me, so long as I do my best, come in looking good, and make my fans happy.
Lee with his racing partner. But with the racing, its much more technical - the reaction times, etc. It makes me want to try to win some of these races. I want to compete in bodybuilding, and if I win that's great, if not, OK. But with racing there are no judges: if you win it, you win it. With bodybuilding, as long as I know that I've come in as the best I can be, that I did my diet right, and I did my training right, I'm happy. If I place lower than I think I should, then I will go into the next show and I might place higher. It depends on how you look on the day, how everyone else looks and what the judges feel like. On any given day any pro can win a show.
Between Jay, Chris and Dexter, it could go any way. If I had to choose, it would be Ronnie first and the other three in any order. On any given day, who the hell knows!
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