Plague of Strength

Happily enough for everyone involved, a badass reader named Landon Brock got hold of me this week and hit me with a rare article on Harold Poole (which as it turns out the guys from the dope German physical culture site Neckberg had as well) after he won the Most Muscular title at the AAU Junior Mr America. I posted the article in its entirety for the Patrons, but I’ll provide the workout and training weights here to give you some idea of how strong he was, at least at the outset.

When looking at these weights and thinking about my own training, I’d guess that his max squat was likely 500ish at this time and his overhead press was fucking bonkers, because he was repping the shit out of 70+% of his bodyweight in dumbbells over his head… standing. Given that as teenage lifter he between 175 and 200 pounds (his two weight classes in junior and senior years), I’d say that even by modern standards, Harold Poole was really fucking strong.

Harold Poole’s Workout Routine, circa 1960ish

Back Squat – 1×20(300), 3×15(335/355), 1×5(400), 1×1(450)

Leg Curls – 1×15(180+lbs)

3-way Calf Raises – 5×15(ea way)(150–200)

Incline DB Bench – 10×10(75’s)

Lat Pulley 1/2 Crouch – 10×10(200)

Lat Pulls – 2×30(50)

Pushdowns – 5×10(100)

Concentration Curls – 4×10(70)

DB Shrugs – 2×10(50’s)

DB Press – 5×10(70’s)

That violently shoehorned aside about Poole’s super early training and training weights notwithstanding, we can continue the story of Harold Poole’s actual life from Part 2. 1963’s Mr. America result proved to be an unbearable insult for Poole, who’d laid waste to the weightroom like a baby kaiju trapped in the Dubai Mall for twelve straight months. After what to him was an obvious and egregious snubbing in 1962, the man with less patience than fuck to give practically had a stroke when Vern Weaver was announced the overall winner in 1963. The crowd went fucking berserk. Poole ended up frozen halfway down the walk to the trophy, undecided about accepting the runner-up as the crowd whipped itself into a feral frenzy of booing and catcalling. He finally took the trophy, but when the top five were to take the podium for a group photo Poole disappeared backstage in tears, leaving a very confused Vern Weaver atop the podium, wondering how in the hell he’d gotten there because he was certain he’d lost to Poole.

“During all this time I sat in a chair back stage watching. Nothing seemed to affect me-I was numb. Even after Poole was on stage I didn’t realize that what had happened. I couldn’t speak and had to work very hard to smile. I really didn’t become aware of the situation until someone (I don’t know who) pushed me out on to the stage. At the time I don’t think I could have told anyone my own name. The only recollection I have is of noise and flashbulbs.

When the photographers were finished the crowd rushed on stage. Repeatedly I was asked how it felt to be Mr. America ’63. The only acknowledgement I could convey was a head shake and a slight smile” (Weaver)

A week later, when he took second in an even more bullshit decision in the Teenage Mr. America, Poole walked backstage and immediately smashed his runner-up trophy in rage. Incensed at the glass ceiling against which he seemed to be battering his fucking face, Poole began looking elsewhere for more fertile competitive grounds. Eschewing the NABBA organization for whatever reason (who’d have likely been his best bet, as they were the most prestigious in the world at the time and had crowned a black man as Mr. Universe in 1957 and an Indian named Monohar Aich a few years prior to that), Harold Poole chose the nascent Weider league, the IFBB, which had only existed for a few years but was seen as the brash upstart of bodybuilding that Uber would eventually be in the car service industry decades later.

It was no shock that Poole left the AAU, as the organization was steadily declining in influence due to its reliance on beauty pageant rules, its insistence on a weightlifting portion of the judging, and the racism that seems to have been in play, if for no other reason than a population of almost 90% whites expected a white man to represent them as their communal ideal. Bob Hoffman’s credibility among his readership was basically destroyed when the two emerging mass monsters of black bodybuilders, Sergio Oliva and Harold Poole, failed to win the AAU’s prestigious Mr. America title, and the winner of the 1958 contest, Art Johnson, conceded after the event that he’d no idea he was even in the top three, as the black man in eighth place named Art Harris clearly had a better physique than everyone else onstage (Roach I 259).

Harold Poole himself heard Hoffman once proclaim at the head judge at the Mr. America that “as long as I am the head of the AAU, no one who is a Black or a Jew or anyone who is of mixed blood or is a Puerto Rican, as long as I am alive, not any of them will ever win the AAU Mr. America” (Ibid). It was little surprise, then, that Oliva and Poole were boxed out in the Mr. America, which was then being judged under what were essentially beauty pageant rules rather than bodybuilding rules- they scored bodybuilders based on how well they fit the “American ideal,” so in spite of Poole’s quality education he was left in the cold due to a speech impediment and the fact he was a doorman at a strip club.

Sidebar Counterpoint– I’ve no idea if the above is apocryphal or not, but I will admit that it sounds a bit like sour grapes. Hoffman was well known for publicizing black athletes in both strength sports and bodybuilding, and he was known to speak glowingly of them behind closed doors as well, though in the kind of old-timey language that makes him seem like a low-key racist without historical context. As Tom Minichillo, who helped prep Poole for meets and advised him on matters of posing and the like, said that Hoffman exerted no influence on the judges for good or ill, and that although he agreed that the 1962 Mr. America decision was total bullshit, the only genuinely wrong thing he’d seen done in terms of judging did indeed fuck Harold Poole, but it would occur a couple of years later in the IFBB.

You can, however, contrast that with Bill Pearl’s account of Hoffman a few years earlier, who had walked out of a weightlifting contest the second it was announced that Art Harris was to pose and the man was revealed to be black. Pearl was incensed that Hoffman would do such a thing, and it seemed to have given him a really shitty impression of the AAU as a whole. Thus, it’s likely that Hoffman either was trying not to be racist or trying to look like he was trying not to be racist (by featuring athletes of color in his magazines). By the standards of his day, at least, the man was a Biden-style slight-left centrist… it’s just that society has progressed so much, so quickly in the US in the last 70 years he seems like he might have been a low-key Klan member.

Compounding this issue was the fact that weightlifting was still heavily a part of the Mr. America. Though it was not like the FICU Mr Universe, which was contested by Olympic weightlifters immediately after the world championships for weightlifting. The Mr. America was contested at the end of AAU Nationals for weightlifting, and the physiques of the competitors often reflected their weightlifting background. As physiques progressed beyond two quick lifts and a slow overhead grind, the judges at the AAU Mr America began weighting “athleticism” and “appearance” just as heavily as muscularity and symmetry, and that often penalized the black lifters with no background in weightlifting. Twenty five percent of a bodybuilder’s points came from performing the three Olympic lifts in front of an AAU official prior to the contest, at one’s own expense.Even with a weightlifting background, however, Sergio still found himself on the outside looking in at the AAU Mr America, as his cultural (he was a Cuban defector) background was distasteful to the future mayo-scarfing. knowledge-fearing, “good people” of the US.

With all of that in mind, Harold Poole followed his training partner Freddy Ortiz into the newly formed IFBB. Ortiz, who at 5’5″ and 190 pounds rocked nearly nineteen inch arms that made him a formidable opponent for anyone in that era… provided they didn’t take a look at his legs. Over in the AAU, future supplement mogul, badass acrobat, and surprisingly punk rock doo-wop singer 5’11” and 222lb Val Vasilieff snagged the top honors (edging out the next lifter I’ll be profiling for his crazy physique and bench press, Bill Seno). Like Vern Weaver and most of the Mr Americas prior to him, these men were no Youtube commenters- they actually lifted serious enough weights that most of them were likely considered strength athletes first, but they all carried enough mass to stand onstage with Poole… or did they?

Even with the d-bol flowing like wine in the 60s bodybuilding scene, teenaged Harold Poole was still a fucking monster among men. In the 1963 NABBA Mr Universe (in which Poole declined to compete), the winner of the tall class was a 212 pound intellectual, proto-Zane named Tony Sansone (who sadly died of cancer at 39, which is why you know Zsane’s name but not Sansone’s), who would have been easily outclassed by Poole (and who would have been fucking mangled in a modern competition by the hyper-shredded winner of the short class, unknown amateur shredbeast Pierre van den Steen). A 19 year old Arnold was outsized by Poole, and the teenager could hang with mass monsters 6′ 230ish pound Reg Park and 5’11” 235lb Bill Pearl of the day without being out-angled once- the man appeared to be on the cusp of greatness, and it seemed that all that remained was for him to walk into the IFBB and collect his trophies.

Poole began his IFBB run with two consecutive wins- the 1963 Mr Universe, in which he defeated future Mr. Olympia Larry Scott, and the 1964 Mr. America, in which he defeated every bodybuilding badass of the early 1960s, from Don Howorth to his occasional training partner Freddy Ortiz to natty Arnold-slayer Chet Yorton. In that, he became the first black Mr America in any federation, after which the AAU eventually came to their senses and crowned openly gay and black bodybuilder (who would go on to win the Mr O once) Chris Dickerson. With those two contests in the bag, Poole turned his eye to the third- the newly-announced Mr Olympia.

The Olympia was at that time in its nascence, because 1965 was the first time it was being contested. Prior to its invention, Wieder had an unofficial policy that the most prestigious title honors were shared among three contests- the Mr. America, Mr. World, and Mr. Universe. The Mr America was only open to Americans, and the Mr World was only open to non-Americans, while the Mr Universe was open to everyone, but wasn’t direct compeition for the winners of the American/non-American contests. So, in order to have a sort of unified belt they’d have to win all three Weider titles- the Olympia being the seemingly least important of the three at the time.

When Poole arrived at the venue for the first Mr. Olympia, he was likely very impressed with the event and assured of an interesting contest even though his competition was just two men- 5’7″ and 205lbs owner of 20″ arms Larry Scott (1938-2014), who Poole had easily defeated for the Mr Universe in 1964; and NABBA and IFBB Mr Universe (who would also be AAU Masters Mr America a decade later) 5’10” and 235 lb Earl Maynard (b. 1935). Maynard won the Mr. Universe that night and was a distant third in everyone’s eyes before the judges even made their announcement (not that he cared- unlike the other two, Maynard had shit going on besides bodybuilding and was a pro wrestler at the time. He went on to act in over 20 films and was tag team partners with Rocky Johnson, the Rock’s dad, in 1970).

Though Larry Scott was essentially the same one-hit wonder he’d been all his life, rocking a fierce set of arms on a small, shredded frame like Freddy Ortiz, he managed to beat Harold Poole and Earl Maynard without much effort. The details of the contest are basically lost to history, as there was a hell of a lot going on that weekend- 2500 spectators had packed the Brooklyn Academy of Music to watch hand balancing, a bunch of rock bands (Weider really liked to toot his own horn about seeming hip to the music those wacky kids listened to), strength exhibitions, the Miss Americana contest (which was more of a beauty pageant than chick bodybuilding/figure/fitness/physique), and the Universe/America/World competitions. All we really have is a bit of shaky video and a couple of photos, but the pundits all seem to agree with Weider’s rendition:

“Certainly, the fans had already seen plenty –the best physiques the world has to offer. But tonight they would see something new –the introduction of what will soon become the world’s greatest physique contest . . . the 1965 MR. OLYMPIA. This contest, open only to top title winners, will draw the greatest each year. And winners may return to try again — to re-establish greatness each succeeding year. And year by year this contest will grow. . . and it will quickly become the one great incentive to keep the stars training.

This year men like Harold Poole, Earl Maynard and Larry Scott competed. As each man stepped into the light he received a tremendous ovation. But even before Larry Scott came out the fans chimed, “We want Scott. . . we want Scott!” As soon as he stepped out of the wings the auditorium exploded with thunderous applause. It was deafening . . . a roar . . . and flashbulbs flooded the stage with so much light that it seemed as if the sun had rose. The roar became a deafening hum and the floor actually trembled from the pounding of feet. The crowd went wild — mad with excitement and enthusiasm. . . and it was clear that Scott was the winner — that he had been unanimously declared the world’s greatest bodybuilder . . . the first of the great bodybuilders — the first MR. OLYMPIA” (Weider).  

In his second attempt at the Olympia crown, Harold Poole got straight up fucked hard without lube. Not only was this a far more seasoned and impressive field than the previeous year, but Poole came in to the contest as big and full as the world had ever seen him, and he dwarfed everyone else onstage. In a field consisting of 5’9.5″ 220lb natty strongman paratrooper Chuck Sipes, 5’10” 225lb Cuban defector and former Olympic weightlifter Sergio Oliva, reigning Mr O Larry Scott, 6′ 235lb arm-heavy Mr Universe Dave Draper, and the best Harold Poole the world had ever seen, the world definitey got a fucking show. But, instead of also getting the first first black Mr Olympia and the youngest Mr Olympia, Harold Poole took second to Larry Scott in a tie-breaker that was total bullshit. The head judge had contracted with Larry Scott to take him on a tour of Europe with him, and he had to take the winner with him, so he voted for Scott in the tie-breaker (Roach II 114). Poole’s version jibes with historian Randy Roach’s, and provides a few more details.

Here is what I heard took place. At the second Olympia after the first round of judging I had the contest won. Then a promoter called Lud Schustrich, who was from England, went to all of the judges and told them he had Larry Scott under contract to give exhibitions in England and that he (Larry) had to win the contest. They all listened to him and took the judging again and I lost by one half of a point. I heard about this five years later from Tom Minichiello. At the time he told this to me I said to him: “how could you have allowed that to take place.” He said, “Harold, you have to understand, I was only one judge.”

After that, Poole’s mind basically broke. He knew his days were numbered even against Larry Scott, who’d put on another ten or fifteen pounds of rip for the second Olympia using dbol. He made another run at the Olympia in 1967, as the golden boy Larry Scott had retired, but Sergio Oliva blew the fuck up on dbol and outsized Poole completely. With that, Poole’s entire universe was basically shattered- racism fucked him out of the AAU Mr. America and judges’ chicanery fucked him out of the Mr O, the two most prestigious and life-affirming titles an American bodybuilder could have won at the time.

Poole had one last move he could make- to Dan Lurie’s WBBG, where he would win their Pro Mr America in 1967 and 1968. Dan Lurie had been a well-known figure in bodybuilding who never had enough capital to compete with the Weiders after they totally fucked him over, stole the IFBB from him, and saddled him with a bunch of their debt when they were all first starting out. His fed was based in the NYC bodybuilding scene and prided itself on being a real representation of America’s melting pot, although that pot was suspiciously identical to a jar of mayo everywhere in the US but major cities.

Lurie had been fucked over in the Mr America just like many of the winners of the Most Muscular trophy in the AAU, because winning that trophy meant you had the best physique on the stage- the overall really just meant you looked like a Hitler Jugend member, you could recite Bible verses from memory without stuttering, and you had no acne. Even when he’d won most of the individual best bodypart awards and the most muscular, the judges still found a reason to fuck him over every year for three years, if for no other reason than he was short (5’6″ and 165lbs).

It was unsurprising that Harold Poole and Dan Lurie found each other, because they seemed to share the same beefs with the shitty business practices of the IFBB and the dumbass pageant bullshit and racism in the AAU. After winning the first two years of that contest, he just sort of petered out, getting progressively lower placings every year for another ten years. As it happens, he’d only really competed in Lurie’s shows because he knew he could win them, so it wasn’t as though they formed an anti-Weider cabal or something in an effort to wrest control of the bodybuilding world from shitslugs.

It must’ve seemed like no matter how hard he fucking tried, life was just stacked against Harold Poole. If they didn’t hate his skin they hated his stutter, and if they didn’t hate either of those, someone was gonna find a way to grease the wheels for another bodybuilder because Poole refused to grease them for himself. He had a brief stint as a pro wrestler, tag teaming with fellow BME Bruno Sammartino under the name Prince Poole, but he was again too impatient to really reap the rewards.

“While training at my gym, Poole became friendly with pro wrestlers Bruno Sammartino and Tony Marino, and he asked them if they would help him break into wrestling. Both Sammartino and Martin liked Poole and agreed to help him, but they told him, “Just because you have a great looking physique doesn’t mean you got it made. You gotta be tough on the inside and able to take it. It’s not easy.” They agreed to try Poole out in a “dark match” to see if he had the guts to make it as a pro wrestler. (A “dark match” takes place in the ring with no spectators.) Bruno came into the gym a couple of days after the dark match and I said, ‘Well, tell me, how did it go? Was Poole okay?’ Bruno replied, ‘Tommy, let me tell you, Marino and I threw him around like a wet rag. He took a lot from us. His elbows and knees bleeding, he dragged himself up on the ropes and
looked at us and said, ‘more I’ll go again more.’ There was no doubt.
Poole has what it takes to be a pro wrestler and to be accepted by the veteran pros.’

What Poole didn’t have was patience. He started wrestling under the name of Prince Poole. Unfortunately, at this time in pro wrestling, only a very few were doing well financially (like Sammartino). Things weren’t going fast enough for Harold. So after a few months, he packed in his short career as “Prince Poole,” professional wrestler (Minichillo).

Harold Poole worked as a bouncer and did security for celebrities like Twiggy, as well as bouncing the craziest club in crime-ridden 70s and 80s NYC, but his heart had been broken too many times for him to fully commit to a competitive career rather than a party-first philosophy that left him unable to really compete at the elite level, and with some substance abuse issues that made life difficult to compete in as a general rule. He did run Denie’s Gym in Jersey City for a while, in addition to being something of a celebrity bouncer for his work at the Cheetah Club, but at some point he went off the rails, moved to Florida and sort of faded into obscurity.

After beating his substance issues he taught a hybrid martial art style heavily based in taekwondo, in which he trained for 18 years but claims never to have tested for his black belt because of that stupid deadly weapon bullshit dads who couldn’t fight always trotted out back in the day:

“I do not hold a black belt because if you hold a black belt and you hurt someone out on the street, they will put you in jail. I don’t care about a white belt, green belt, black belt or whatever. What does it mean? The main thing, with society as it is today, is to be able to protect yourself and your family when you are out there. That is the main thing” (Robson).

In that statement you can really see he’d gone full fucking Boomer, as he’d already babbled on about Jesus a considerable amount after carrying on about how the Christian man was under attack by terrorists, who are literally everywhere- for whatever reason that 6′ 273lb mountain of a man was certain Saudis were gonna nuke Clearwater, Florida, and the only thing that could save us was reading the Bible. As I said, the man’s mind was utterly broken in 1966, so it’s unsurprising that a man who’d likely beaten numerous people to death with his bare hands in the back alleys of New York City was so terrified of Muslims in the skies that he thought he could hide his gigantic body behind a fucking Bible.

In Conclusion

In the end, I am not suggesting we erect a statue of Harold Poole, because chances are some fat white fuck with a limp dick and a sixth grade education will probably shoot up your local Walmart about it after endlessly bitching on social media. While Harold Poole was fucking cool, no one wants to catch a bullet from some MAGA-screaming nothing because Americans living outside of actual cities are fear-crazed mongoloids who fear change and otherness like most people fear flesh eating bacteria. That said, his name is one we should definitely know, and should probably be on lists of AAU Mr Americas and Mr Olympias- he does stand as an awesome example of what’s possible for natural lifters, as well as perhaps a cautionary tale to remember that this shit isn’t that deep- it’s just lifting weights. That said, you can learn a lot about a culture by the way in which they spend their free time, so try and keep your minds open to the possibility that the information you will later need in life generally isn’t evident at the outset- you can end up a hell of a lot more wise than you intended simply by readily assimilating and synthesizing new information, (provided it’s not a conspiracy theory, as they’re almost invariably baseless beliefs promulgated by the mentally and spiritually weak).

So spark a fattie to a fallen badass, if for no other reason than the man set a world record in the bench press in the middle of a bodybuilding competition- anything less would be uncivilized enough to call yourself a conservative.

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