Not Arnold Schwarzenegger, but His Biggest Rival Was 4 Time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler’s Hero Growing Up: “I Actually Didn’t Even Watch Pumping Iron”

The rivalry between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone is one for the ages. It lasted for nearly 20 years, involving some eye-catching moments between the two global superstars. Their first meeting was at the 1977 Golden Globe ceremony, where Arnold won the New Star of the Year award.

During that period, Arnold was also dominating the professional bodybuilding circuit. He won back-to-back Mr. Olympia titles during the years 1970-1975. 4-time Mr. Olympia, Jay Cutler once revealed why he considered Stallone a bigger inspiration than Schwarzenegger, despite the latter’s significant achievements in bodybuilding.

Jay Cutler once had an interesting take on Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone

During the Straight Outta The Lair with Flex Lewis podcast, Cutlet explained his biggest inspiration in his childhood days. Talking about this, he said, “The strange thing about me is like as a teenager and at around 12 you know, I saw like the rocky films and I saw Stallone and I saw Bloodsport and Van Damme and Stallone were like my heroes.”

Further, he added, “I actually didn’t even watch Pumping Iron for the first time until I was actually a professional bodybuilder because we just didn’t, we didn’t have like, I don’t know we just, we were very, you know, we grew up in a lake on our farm so we didn’t we weren’t allowed to do like I never had sugar cereals or like we ate a lot from our gardens and you know we raised cattle and whatever else.”

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Concluding his remarks, Cutler said, “So it was kind of like we were very, uh you know we didn’t have like supermarkets in the town that we’re in or anything. So my dad would do the shopping and we were just limited on what we would be able to eat. But most of it was from the ground or you know off you know the local farms or whatever yeah.”

Schwarzenegger shares a picture with Stallone

Earlier this week, the seven-time Mr. Olympia title winner took to Twitter to share a picture with Stallone. The two superstars celebrated Halloween together as Arnold tweeted, “Happy Halloween.”

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Later, Stallone also took to social media to express his feelings after meeting Arnold at his office. Despite their intriguing rivalry, the two went on to become good friends and have mutual respect for each other.